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Recommendations based on The Fifty Year Swordby Mark Z. Danielewski
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House of Leaves
by Mark Z. Danielewski
A family discovers a hidden door in their home leading to an ever-shifting labyrinth.
House of Leaves begins with a first-person narrative by Johnny Truant, a Los Angeles tattoo parlor employee and professed unreliable narrator . Truant is searching for a new apartment when his friend ... (Wikipedia)
The Raw Shark Texts
by Steven Hall
A man's surreal journey of self-discovery as he confronts a mysterious entity.
Eric Sanderson wakes up with no memory of who he is or any past experiences. He is told by a psychologist that he has a dissociative condition known as fugue but a trail of written clues purporting ... (Wikipedia)
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
by Max Brooks
A collection of interviews recounting tales of the zombie apocalypse.
It has been nearly twenty years since the start of the apocalyptic worldwide pandemic known as the Zombie War, and about ten years since the war has ended in humanity's victory. The framing device ... (Wikipedia)
Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A satirical exploration of human folly, exposing the dangers of unchecked science and technology.
Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ... Dr Felix Hoenikker, ... (Goodreads)
The Haunting of Hill House
by Shirley Jackson
A group of people investigating a mysterious and haunted house, uncovering its secrets.
It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, the lighthearted ... (Goodreads)
The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
by Bill Watterson
Collection of beloved comic strip stories featuring the adventures of a boy and his stuffed tiger.
Join, Calvin and Hobbes, on all their adventures in this four-volume collection of every comic strip from the comic strip’s eleven year history (1985 to1996). Calvin and Hobbes is unquestionably one ... (Barnes & Noble)
I Am Legend
by Richard Matheson
A man is the last survivor of a zombie-creating virus, struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.
Robert Neville appears to be the sole survivor of a pandemic that has killed most of the human population and turned the remainder into " vampires " that largely conform to their stereotypes in ... (Wikipedia)
Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs
Surrealist exploration of addiction, delusions, and reality.
Naked Lunch is a non-linear narrative without a clear plot. The following is a summary of some of the events in the book that could be considered the most relevant. The book begins with the ... (Wikipedia)
All Families are Psychotic
by Douglas Coupland
A dysfunctional family's story of love, loss and redemption.
The novel is the tale of the Drummond family from Vancouver gathering together to watch Sarah Drummond's space shuttle blast off at the Kennedy Space Center . The Drummonds are a group of misfits ... (Wikipedia)
Junky
by William S. Burroughs
A gritty, autobiographical account of a man's descent into the underworld of addiction.
Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch , an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junky , his first novel. It is a candid eye-witness account of times and places that are now long gone, an ... (Goodreads)
Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace
A journey through the absurdist world of entertainment, drugs, addiction & death.
There are four major interwoven narratives: , These narratives are connected via a film, Infinite Jest , also referred to in the novel as "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat ". The film is so ... (Wikipedia)
Fences
by August Wilson
A family struggles to reconcile their differences and understand their place in a segregated society.
The focus of Wilson's attention in Fences is Troy, a 53-year-old working class head of household who struggles with providing for his family. The play takes place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ; ... (Wikipedia)
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
by Douglas Adams
An offbeat detective story set in a surreal, supernatural world.
Dirk Gently, who calls himself a " holistic detective", has happened upon what he thinks is a rather comfortable situation. A wealthy man in the record industry has retained him, spinning a story ... (Wikipedia)
John Dies at the End
by David Wong
A bizarre supernatural adventure, blending horror and sci-fi elements.
John and Dave, two perpetual slackers and long-time friends, encounter strange phenomena in an undisclosed small city in the Midwestern United States and gain a reputation for dealing with paranormal ... (Wikipedia)
Habibi
by Craig Thompson
A love story between a young man and woman within the context of Middle Eastern culture.
From the internationally acclaimed author of, Blankets , a highly anticipated new graphic novel. Sprawling across an epic landscape of deserts, harems, and modern industrial clutter, Habibi tells the ... (Goodreads)
Einstein's Dreams
by Alan Lightman
Exploring the mysteries of time as imagined through the dreams of Albert Einstein.
The novel fictionalizes Albert Einstein as a young scientist who is troubled by dreams as he works on his theory of relativity in 1905. The book consists of 30 chapters, each exploring one dream ... (Wikipedia)
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
A small group of misfit college students uncover a sinister secret and their lives become entangled with dangerous consequences.
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the ... (Goodreads)
Slade House
by David Mitchell
A supernatural thriller involving mysterious doorways that lead to a mysterious house with a sinister secret.
In 1979, Nathan Bishop and his mother are invited to the house of the respected Lady Grayer. Nathan is quickly acquainted with her son Jonah, and the two spend the afternoon in the garden of Slade ... (Wikipedia)
Ariel
by Sylvia Plath
A collection of raw and intense poems that explore themes of death, femininity, and personal struggle.
Sylvia Plath's celebrated collection. When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel . Her husband, Ted Hughes, brought the ... (Goodreads)
Bluebeard
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A woman's exploration of her husband's dark past, uncovering secrets and shocking truths.
At the opening of the book, the narrator, Rabo Karabekian , apologizes to the arriving guests: "I promised you an autobiography, but something went wrong in the kitchen..." He describes himself as a ... (Wikipedia)
The Wind Through the Keyhole
by Stephen King
A young boy embarks on a quest for truth, uncovering secrets of a forgotten past.
The novel begins with Roland and his ka-tet arriving at a river on their journey to the Dark Tower. An elderly man who operates a ferry gets them across the river, and warns them that a severe ... (Wikipedia)
The Rum Diary
by Hunter S. Thompson
A man's journey to find himself and meaningful work, set in a tropical paradise.
Begun in 1959 by a twenty-two-year-old Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary is a tangled love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto ... (Goodreads)
The Magus
by John Fowles
A man's search for truth, enlightenment and freedom amid a web of deception.
The story reflects the perspective of Nicholas Urfe, a young Oxford graduate and aspiring poet. After graduation, he briefly works as a teacher at a small school, but becomes bored and decides to ... (Wikipedia)
Saga, Volume 3
by Brian K. Vaughan
A family's epic adventure of survival in a dangerous and unpredictable universe.
The Eisner, Harvey, and Hugo Award-winning phenomenon continues, as new parents Marko and Alana travel to an alien world to visit their hero, while the family's pursuers finally close in on their ... (Barnes & Noble)
Welcome to the Monkey House
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A collection of short stories exploring the absurdities of human life.
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly , ... (Goodreads)
The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book
by Bill Watterson
A compilation of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, exploring the humor of everyday life.
Find Sunday comic favorites in this classic, Calvin and Hobbes, collection. This is a collection of the classic comic strip that features Calvin, a rambunctious 6-year-old boy, and his stuffed tiger, ... (Goodreads)
The Year of the Flood
by Margaret Atwood
A dystopian tale of survival as humanity faces a new plague, and two women fight against a powerful corporation.
The Year of the Flood details the events of, Oryx and Crake, from the perspective of the lower classes in the pleeblands , specifically the God's Gardeners. God's Gardeners are a religious sect that ... (Wikipedia)
Mason & Dixon
by Thomas Pynchon
Epic tale of two surveyors in colonial America, exploring the boundaries of knowledge and identity.
Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon ... (Goodreads)
The Long Walk
by Richard Bachman
Fourteen boys face a grueling test of endurance and willpower as they compete in a life-or-death march.
One hundred teenage boys join an annual walking contest called "The Long Walk" or just "The Walk". Each contestant, called a "Walker", must maintain a speed of at least four miles per hour; if he ... (Wikipedia)
The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories
by Tim Burton
Collection of darkly humorous, twisted tales of peculiar and fantastical characters.
From breathtaking stop-action animation to bittersweet modern fairy tales, filmmaker Tim Burton has become known for his unique visual brilliance – witty and macabre at once. Now he gives birth to a ... (Goodreads)
