{"id":708,"date":"2012-04-12T13:58:57","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T11:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=708"},"modified":"2012-11-09T09:34:04","modified_gmt":"2012-11-09T08:34:04","slug":"5-novels-you-should-read-cause-i-said-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=708","title":{"rendered":"5 Novels You Should Read Cause I Said So"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sometime<\/a>This is a list of masterpieces that may have slipped under your radar.\u00a0 It was born at about 2 a.m. this morning as I couldn\u2019t sleep due to the following conversation had earlier in the day with students.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know Cormac McCarthy?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMcCarthy, I think so\u2026Is he on Facebook?\u201d<\/p>\n

So, I decided to make a bold social statement and write about books. Yes, for the day I am avoiding Czechs, my cat and even pizza. This list is obviously incomplete and welcomes, nay, demands additions. Please judge, agree, disagree and comment.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

5. Watership Down by Richard Adams<\/p>\n

Synopsis: After a physic vision, a rabbit convinces several of his furry friends to leave their current warren to find another home. They do so and adventures ensue aplenty. These include meeting a passively aggressive evil band of rabbits, men, trains and fighting a monstrous rabbit named Woundwort who is a mix between Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Teddy Ruxpin.<\/p>\n

Why read it? A book about rabbits, you say? It sounds like a book that should be read only by those in primary school. But, reading it goes like this:<\/p>\n

Page 1: I can\u2019t believe I am reading a book about rabbits.<\/p>\n

Page 2: Please don\u2019t die, rabbits!<\/p>\n

And this continues until you put the book down 474 pages and two days later.<\/p>\n

Drawback: You will never eat rabbit again.<\/p>\n

4. A Dirty Job by Chris Moore<\/p>\n

Synopsis: A normal schmuck (a \u201cbeta male\u201d) finds out that he is Death. Well, he\u2019s one of many Deaths who do the actual Grim Reaper\u2019s dirty work. This book features a giant black man named Minty Fresh, an army of anthropomorphized woodland animals and crocodiles, and a dating website called UGLY.com (Ukrainian Girls Love You).<\/p>\n

Why read it? If you\u2019re anything like me, you never skip a chance to read a story in which animals talk and fight crime. Throw in the Ukrainian girls (great site actually) and you have the great American novel. Also, A Dirty Job is a perfect example of Moore\u2019s specialty of mixing a \u2018conflicted every man\u2019 story with his exceptional brand of humor.<\/p>\n

Drawback: You will definitely start looking up girls on UGLY.com<\/p>\n

3. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy<\/p>\n

Synopsis: This is an incredibly gritty tale of the old west. The story follows the main character (simply called \u2018The Kid\u2019) and a band of scalp hunters wreaking havoc and blazing a trail of murder and violence through California, Arizona and Mexico.<\/p>\n

Why read it? This book is so beautiful that it\u2019s on Harold Bloom\u2019s best books of the 20th<\/sup> Century list, but he had trouble reading it because it was the most violent book he had ever read.<\/p>\n

Anyone who can pull off writing this well with violence of this magnitude should be awarded something, like a couch made of cat\u2019s belly hair. Everything gets killed in this book in remarkably violent manners \u2013 cats, dogs, children, Comanche, soldiers, doctors, and renegades. There is an attack by Comanche who kill men and sodomize them as they\u2019re dying. There are people getting killed as they are killed. I believe in one scene a man gets killed and gets resuscitated just so they can kill him again. But it\u2019s so well-written that you crave the blood and bits of brain that will cling to your thumbnails as you read.<\/p>\n

Also, this book has a monumental description of a grizzly bear attack and introduces the word \u2018thrapple,\u2019 which is a body part that gets cut in half by an ax.<\/p>\n

Drawback: You will never ever not know the word thrapple or what an ax does to it.<\/p>\n

2. The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis<\/p>\n

Synopsis: This book essentially retells the familiar story of Christ\u2019s last days, but acts as an alternate history of sorts by pulling him off the cross and allowing him to live a full life.<\/p>\n

Why read it? This book, while telling a fantastic story, is ingenious in its ability to break down and rebuild historical characters already known to the reader. Job is a goofball hermit with fish bones in his hair, Pontius Pilot is a reasonable gentleman (who looks like David Bowie), and the apostle Peter is a waffling, spineless wimp. Plus, Jesus gets to have sex in this book and I think that\u2019s just swell.<\/p>\n

Besides, anything that has pissed off so many Catholics in this world has got to be entertaining. See: Ozzie Osborne, The Who and anything written by Oscar Wilde.<\/p>\n

Drawback: You will forever fear little girls. Trust me.<\/p>\n

1. A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin<\/p>\n

Synopsis: This World War I epic is the story of Italian lawyer Alessandro Giuliani and the remarkable events which he encounters in the war. Also, there\u2019s a deranged midget running the war from a villa in Rome.<\/p>\n

Why read it? I was reading this book while on a trip to Ostrava, which is a traditionally industrial town in Moravia. I stopped in a pub for a beer and I don\u2019t think I impressed the miners much by drinking and weeping into a book.<\/p>\n

Like no other writer, Helprin has the ability to trick you into loving his characters and then torture you as they get into highly desperate and unusual situations. More remarkable is the fact that he somehow creates an even more unusual manner of dealing with the situation. This book is exemplary of that as Giuliani is imprisoned in a hard labor camp and joins the Bulgarian front with a general who happens to be a pacifist.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Helprin writes like my grandmom cooks and Jennifer Aniston looks.<\/p>\n

Drawback: You will cry in public places.<\/p>\n

This is my list. Please add to it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a list of masterpieces that may have slipped under your radar.\u00a0 It was born at about 2 a.m. this morning as I couldn\u2019t sleep due to the following conversation had earlier in the day with students. \u201cDo you know Cormac McCarthy?\u201d \u201cMcCarthy, I think so\u2026Is he on Facebook?\u201d So, I decided to make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-bq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1131,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions\/1131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}