I watched The Tic (cute, though dumber than it needs to be, and i'm not sure where they can go with it) The top book on my pile is T.C. Boyle's 'A Friend of the Earth'. Very, very bad choice! Excellent novel, wholly credible. So, now i'm afraid to go to sleep.

The question: What to read when reality has got you in a headlock?
Please, not any author who uses the same word four times in a paragraph (that drives me bughouse!). I'm looking for sunshine and optimism, rather than dark, intelligent humour.

Get A Life! How to Make A Good Buck, Dance Around the Dinosaurs and Save the World While You're At It
by Wayne Roberts and Susan Brandrom
Get A Life Publishers, 1995, $20 (paper)
2255B Queen St. East, #127
Toronto, Ontario, M4E 1G3

On the other hand if it is a novel you're looking for I can't help. I don't have time these days for novels.

its about a guy whose parents die and he has to take care of his (dave eggers, that's the author) younger brother and he's working on a fledgling magazine at the same time

engieboy,
Though i'm not at all sure i'm up for any heartbreak just at the moment, i'll make a note of it for later.

quote:

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The question: What to read when reality has got you in a headlock?

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Of course, it is a matter of taste, and that is hard to suggest for. I like Bernard Cornwell for this kind of thing-- his stories are almost always well written, contain enough didactism to make me think I'm learning something-- and the bad guy always gets it in the end.

I'll go to erotica sometimes-- that's an even more personal choice that's difficult to suggest for. I've even read Rice's offerings on this, Anais Nin and a few others. Start with Nin's "Delta of Venus", a collection of short stories, and go from there, if this is the kind of diversion your looking for. Rice is for particular-- and peculiar-- tastes.

Comedy is good, and I think "Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams is one of those "can't go wrong books", even if the humour seems dark at times-- I always found the black humour to be a catharsis for my own sometimes twilight moods.

A revisit with "Lord of the Rings" might be in order, what with the movie about to be released shortly.

I thought it would be interesting to read a murder mystery writen by a forensic pathologist.

It wasn't bad (though I have no basis for comparison) except there was that annoying product placement phenomenon that was started by Stephen King as a way to make the reader suspend their disbelief more willingly.

I wonder now if authors are paid by the products they mention?

I've read two by Riechs. I liked when she was explaining forensic details, but the at times idiotic coincidences used to move the plot are a little too hard to take, particularly in her second book.

For a long time, actually since I was a teenager, I planned on starting with Edith's Diary. Edith is a housewife of the 50s and the story unfolds through her diary entries as she slowly descends into madness.

I loved Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. I even read most of Agatha Christie on certain summers and train rides. I've never read P. D. James, though.

Detective novels and she is very funny. A book where you giggle. All her novels start with a number from 1 to??? as Sue Grafton does with letters.

"A book to make novelists and sociologists jealous."

If you like Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams , you would also like Tom Holt. Especially 'Flying Dutch', a wonderful analysis of economic theory.