NEWSLETTER

DRUGS

The Speed Queen, by Stewart O’Nan
The best drug books are usually nonfiction (Basketball Diaries, Permanent Midnight, David Crosby’s autobiography, etc.), but this is an exception. A woman sitting on death row moments before her execution tells her story. It’s a methamphetamine romance, complete with Big Gulps from 7-Eleven, drive-thru burger-joint massacres, and racing through the night with your boyfriend like you are the last two people on Earth. All these things in real life are just considered trashy, but if you’re a sucker for novels that idealize the druggy lifestyle, and you secretly fantasize about never sleeping, drinking Diet Pepsi for breakfast and chain-smoking your way through giving birth, then you’ll like this fast-paced crystal-meth fairytale—a nice change from the all the sleepy junkie novels.

The Story of Junk, by Linda Yablonsky
Fiction but not really, this is a thinly-disguised memoir of a punk-era New York lesbian hipster who hung out with and dealt drugs to other punk-era New York hipsters. It’s not hard to figure out that “Honey Cone” is really Cookie Mueller, and “Ginger Snaps” is Nan Goldin. I mean, duh. But this just makes it all an even juicier page-turner. There are no junkies like punk-era New York junkies.

Also: Go Ask Alice by Anonymous (again, not sure if it’s fiction but noteworthy as the book that made every teenage girl want to do drugs), Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson, Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh


CLASSICS

Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger
If The Royal Tenenbaums is your favorite movie and you think Wes Anderson is an original genius, please read Franny and Zooey. You are in for a rude awakening. O R you?

Lord of the Flies by William Golding
What doesn’t this novel have? Gang fights, tropical island breeze, naked boys fighting, naked boys touching each other, naked boys beating each other up, naked boys trying to kill each other. Yummy! You can always fall back on a Lord of the Flies fantasy when you’re in a masturbation rut. Sorry Miss Esslinger! We know we’re supposed to be writing about how this terrifying tale is an archetype for society and its failings and all the symbolism with Piggy and survival of the fittest and blah blah blah. It’s great for all that, but damn, this is one sexy piece of literature.

Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
Yet another gloomy look at Hollywood. This book is focused around a few sad-sack characters all struggling to get by in the movie biz. Their weak vaudevillian acts depress us so much that it makes us wonder why people flock to L.A. at all. And then we’re reminded: People go there to die. Think Barton Fink meets Less Than Zero.

Watership Down by Richard Adams
Come join the bunny brigade! There’s Fiver and Blackberry and Big Wig and Hazel and Strawberry and Pipkin and Silver and Buckthorn and Acorn and Snowdrop and Holly and Haystack and Clover! This allegory for fascist society and World War II is as cute as can be! All joking aside, this book is actually really dark and creepy and sad, so whenever you see a bunny rabbit cross your path, make sure you realize that it’s not just a bunny—it’s a symbol for everything you fear. Aw! We’re watership-down with this book.

Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino
Dudes, check it out: Marco Polo and Kublai Khan sit in a garden while the young explorer regales the aging emperor with tales of all the magical, fantastical cities he has visited. Happy cities, sad cities, cities built on spider webs, on water, underground, full of spiral staircases and linked by ladders. But the one thing that links all these cities together is that it’s all the same city. Chills much? This book is poetic, surreal and so, so nerdy. This is what it’s like to have an imagination, I guess.

Also: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wiseblood by Flannery O’Connor, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes


GUILTY PLEASURES

[NOTE: We don’t really believe in the term “guilty pleasure” anymore (why should we feel guilty about anything we love?), but some of the books in this category might make the more insecure of us feel slightly ashamed. So if you have a cool homemade book cover, this is your chance to show it off.]

The Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling
You didn’t think we would leave this out, did you? Gavin dismissed these books as something some poor welfare mom told her kids because they had daddy issues, but what he didn’t mention was that some poor welfare mom created the first ever series of books that had people waiting in lines at midnight to buy the day it was released. The first ever. It’s a book! The fact that so many people are reading makes us fiction-lovers jump for joy. Reading isn’t always about escapism—it’s about learning how the world works. How would we know empathy if it weren’t for Steinbeck? How would we know about suppressing emotions if it weren’t for Hemingway? Sure he was a little Drunky Brewster, but look at Woody Allen. We learned about relationships from him, and he married his daughter! The Harry Potter books touch on themes that might seem obvious to us adult readers—you know, the basic plight of good vs. evil (there’s also a bit of union organizing in the fourth book)—but for younger readers it is crucial that they learn these things maybe just a few years before they delve into Dante’s Inferno. Let us grown-up nerds enjoy Dumbledore’s magic for just a few hours before we have to listen to Barbara Ehrenreich gripe about how little we get paid. Dumbledore’s dead now anyway. Happy?

His Dark Materials, by Phillip Pullman
This Phillip Pullman trilogy will have you indoors for weeks, devouring every sentence and wishing you were drinking meade instead of Orangina. You know how people often ponder the existence of a parallel universe? Well, what this books suggests is, maybe it’s true? Peel away your judgments as if you were peeling away the skin to another dimension, one with cute talking elephant creatures that have wheels for feet, and go on, peel it again. You might just find yourself with a little pet that only talks to you and changes into a permanent animal-form after puberty and even shares your soul! Come on, you know you’ve always wanted one of those. These were written way before Harry Potter even dreamed of having a scar shaped like a lightening bolt. Voldemort was in PJs when these books were written. They are the original gangsters of sci-fi fantasy trilogy and they are pure fucking gold.

Also: Lord of the Rings, The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, anything by Anne Rice, V.C. Andrews, Poppy Z. Brite, Agatha Christie, Douglas Adams, Douglas Coupland, or Tom Robbins


BONUS SECTION: BOOKS THAT EVERYONE LOVES BUT THAT REALLY SUCK

-The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, By Haruki Murakami

-Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran-Foer

-The Devil Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger

-White Teeth by Zadie Smith

-A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers

-A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey (even before the whole thing)


LESLEY ARFIN AND AMY KELLNER


AMY AND LESLEY’S GUIDE TO FICTION | 1 | 2 |

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