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Recommendations based on Lonesome Travelerby Jack Kerouac
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The Dharma Bums
by Jack Kerouac
A journey of self-discovery, fueled by a passion for Buddhism and nature.
The character Japhy drives Ray Smith's story, whose penchant for simplicity and Zen Buddhism influenced Kerouac on the eve of the sudden and unpredicted success of, On the Road, . The action shifts ... (Wikipedia)
Big Sur
by Jack Kerouac
A semi-autobiographical novel about Kerouac's time in Big Sur, California, struggling with alcoholism and the pressures of fame.
"Each book by Jack Kerouac is unique, a telepathic diamond. With prose set in the middle of his mind, he reveals consciousness itself in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous ... (Goodreads)
On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
A young man's journey across America, seeking adventure and freedom.
The two main characters of the book are the narrator, Sal Paradise, and his friend Dean Moriarty, much admired for his carefree attitude and sense of adventure, a free-spirited maverick eager to ... (Wikipedia)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
by Hunter S. Thompson
A wild and hallucinatory journey through the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas.
The basic synopsis revolves around journalist Raoul Duke ( Hunter S. Thompson ) and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo ( Oscar Zeta Acosta ), as they arrive in Las Vegas in 1971 to report on the Mint 400 ... (Wikipedia)
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
by Charles Bukowski
A collection of raw and unfiltered short stories and essays, exploring the gritty and seedy underbelly of society.
Bukowski uses his own life as the basis for his series of articles, and characteristically leaves nothing out. The different stories range from hooking up with the wife of a stranger who invites him ... (Wikipedia)
Factotum
by Charles Bukowski
A portrait of a struggling writer, seeking solace in alcohol and women.
Set in the 1940s, the plot follows Henry Chinaski , Bukowski's perpetually unemployed, alcoholic alter ego , who has been rejected from the World War II draft and makes his way from one menial job to ... (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)
Howl and Other Poems
by Allen Ginsberg
A collection of poems exploring themes of individualism and modern culture.
Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories
by Truman Capote
Collection of stories, exploring the lives of eccentric individuals in New York City.
In autumn 1943, the unnamed narrator befriends Holly Golightly. The two are tenants in a brownstone apartment in Manhattan 's Upper East Side . Holly (age 18–19) is a country girl turned New York ... (Wikipedia)
Tales of Ordinary Madness
by Charles Bukowski
Poignant, darkly humorous exploration of life as a struggling artist in Los Angeles.
Inspired by D.H. Lawrence, Chekhov and Hemingway, Bukowski's writing is passionate, extreme and has attracted a cult following, while his life was as weird and wild as the tales he wrote. This ... (Goodreads)
Last Exit to Brooklyn
by Hubert Selby Jr.
A gritty, dark exploration of post-WWII life in Brooklyn and its inhabitants.
Few novels have caused as much debate as Hubert Selby Jr.'s notorious masterpiece, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Irvine Welsh, author of ... (Goodreads)
Ask the Dust
by John Fante
A young writer's journey of self-discovery in 1930s Los Angeles.
Ask the Dust is the story of Arturo Bandini, a young Italian-American writer in 1930s Los Angeles who falls hard for the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress. Struggling to ... (Goodreads)
Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
A day in the life of a high-society woman, delving into her inner thoughts and feelings.
Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about ... (Wikipedia)
The Razor's Edge
by W. Somerset Maugham
A spiritual journey in search of personal fulfillment, as an individual in a rapidly changing world.
Maugham begins by characterizing his story as not really a novel but a thinly veiled true account. He includes himself as a minor character, a writer who drifts in and out of the lives of the major ... (Wikipedia)
The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
A fantastical, satirical examination of Soviet life, intersecting with the supernatural.
The novel has two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds as Professor Woland . He is accompanied by Koroviev, a grotesquely-dressed valet; Behemoth , ... (Wikipedia)
Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A humorous exploration of life's absurdities, through a madcap journey of a protagonist.
Kilgore Trout is a widely published, but ignored and virtually invisible writer who is invited to deliver a keynote address at a local arts festival in distant Midland City. Dwayne Hoover is a ... (Wikipedia)
The Monkey Wrench Gang
by Edward Abbey
A comedic adventure of environmental activism, fighting against corporate pollution.
The book's four main characters are ecologically minded misfits—"Seldom Seen" Smith, a Jack Mormon river guide; Doc Sarvis, an odd but wealthy and wise surgeon; Bonnie Abbzug, his young Jewish ... (Wikipedia)
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
by Tom Robbins
An eccentric story of freedom and adventure, exploring themes of identity, fate and love.
Sissy Hankshaw, the novel's protagonist , is a woman born with enormously large thumbs who considers her mutation a gift. , The novel covers various topics, including free love , feminism , drug use ... (Wikipedia)
Wait Until Spring, Bandini
by John Fante
An Italian-American family struggles to make ends meet in a small farming community in the 1930s.
The film follows the Bandini family as they struggle through hard times in 1920s Colorado . Unemployed and broke, Svevo Bandini ( Joe Mantegna ) tries to come up with the money his family needs to ... (Wikipedia)
Diary
by Chuck Palahniuk
An exploration of the depths of human depravity, exposing the darkest aspects of society.
Diary takes the form of a "coma diary" telling the story of Misty Marie Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in a hospital after a suicide attempt. The story is not exactly told by Misty but through ... (Wikipedia)
Inherent Vice
by Thomas Pynchon
A comedic crime story set in a strange, surreal world of 1970s California.
The setting is Los Angeles in 1970; the arrest and trial of the Manson Family is featured throughout the novel as a current event. Larry "Doc" Sportello, private investigator and pothead, receives a ... (Wikipedia)
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
by Cormac McCarthy
A violent and bloody western epic, exploring the depths of human depravity.
An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
A group of expatriates in 1920s Europe, struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of WWI.
On the surface, the novel is a love story between the protagonist Jake Barnes—a man whose war wound has made him unable to have sex—and the promiscuous divorcée usually identified as Lady Brett ... (Wikipedia)
Lullaby
by Chuck Palahniuk
A dark satire of modern society, following a journalist in search of the mysterious 'lullaby' killer.
Newspaper reporter Carl Streator has been assigned to write articles on a series of cases of sudden infant death syndrome , from which his own child had died. Carl discovers that his wife and child ... (Wikipedia)
Money
by Martin Amis
A satirical look at the power of money and the cut-throat world of 1980s high finance.
Money tells the story of, and is narrated by, John Self, a successful director of adverts who is invited to New York City by Fielding Goodney, a film producer, to shoot his first film. Self is an ... (Wikipedia)
The Trial
by Franz Kafka
A man is arrested and put on trial for a crime that remains unclear throughout the novel.
On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K., the chief cashier of a bank, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. Josef is not ... (Wikipedia)
Hopscotch
by Julio Cortázar
A surrealist journey of self-exploration and imaginative play.
Horacio Oliveira is an Argentinian writer who lives in Paris with his mistress, La Maga, surrounded by a loose-knit circle of bohemian friends who call themselves "the Club." A child's death and La ... (Goodreads)
The Waves
by Virginia Woolf
Inner musings of six characters in search of individual identity, expressed through the ebb and flow of the sea.
The novel follows its six narrators from childhood through adulthood. Woolf is concerned with the individual consciousness and the ways in which multiple consciousnesses can weave together. Bernard ... (Wikipedia)
Pet Sematary
by Stephen King
A family's terrifying journey of life and death, as the line between the living and the dead blurs.
Louis Creed, a doctor from Chicago , is appointed director of the University of Maine 's campus health service. He moves to a large house near the small town of Ludlow with his wife Rachel, their two ... (Wikipedia)
Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman
An exploration of the relationship between the individual and the divine, viewed through the lens of nature and its rhythms.
A collection of quintessentially American poems, the seminal work of one of the most influential writers of the nineteenth century. ... (Goodreads)
