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The Holy Innocents by Gilbert Adair.

Anything by Limp Bizkit. Example - "Rollin": "People in the house put them hands in the air Cuz if you don't care, then we don't care 1 2 3 times two to the six Jolts in for your fix with the limp bizkit mix" :blink:

The Parker series (written as Richard Stark) are my favourites by Westlake. I much prefer his hard-boiled books to his more comedic ones. I don't find his comedic ones to be particularly funny, to be honest. At the start of his career, Westlake also published some good hard-boiled novels...

I second the Richard Stark recommendation. Great series of books about a professional thief named Parker. Start with the first book The Hunter (aka Point Blank or Payback, the name changes are due to the two movies based on the book). The finest books in the series are in its original run...

^ Dick did write some books which are pretty shaky, but it's unfair to judge him on those books alone. His best books contain some excellent writing - in particular A Scanner Darkly, Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Confessions of a Crap Artist and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said.

When I browse just a book chapter, it tends to be non-fiction. My go-to browser book is Eddie Muller's Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. Muller is both very knowledgeable about film noir, and has great humour in his writing - a combination unfortunately often not found in books on the...

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon." - James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss "When the phone rang...

We were allowed to use any books (fiction or non-fiction) for our reports, which made it even odder to me that some in the class thought 9 books was a lot to read. The teacher had a box of books available in case anyone wanted them, but it wasn't required to use them.

My favourite CDs of '07: Interpol - Our Love to Admire Explosions in the Sky - All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone The Cinematics - A Strange Education Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City Afghan Whigs - Unbreakable: A Retrospective Twilight Singers - A Stitch in Time EP The Killers - Sawdust...

I'm 30. When I was a kid, my parents were always reading, so I picked up the habit from them. To me, doing some reading each day seems such a natural thing, but I remember when I was in high school, one year we had to submit at least 9 book reports as part of the English curriculum, and lots...

If I'm interested in reading a book, I tend to check libraries first, and then buy it if no libraries have it. There are exceptions where I'll just buy the book without checking libraries, though - if it's a favourite author, or if I'm stocking up on holiday reading, or if the library has only...

Joe R. Lansdale writes in various genres, including horror and crime, and many of his books are set in the Southern USA. I've read some of his crime novels, and I'd recommend them: The Hap Collins & Leonard Pine series (a dark comedy/crime series): Savage Season (although it's the first in...

"Domani" is the title of a song by the band The Twilight Singers. I liked the word, so thought it would make a good username. It apparently means "tomorrow" in Italian (thank you Babelfish).

Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination (aka Tiger! Tiger!). Philip K Dick - A Scanner Darkly. Ubik is great too. Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama. Unfortunately, Rama II was terrible, so I didn't continue with the series after that. The first book is still great, though.

Crumley's earlier crime novels (The Last Good Kiss, The Wrong Case and Dancing Bear) are excellent, but his books get erratic later in his career. His most recent, The Right Madness, was muddled and messy. A great author in the noir/hardboiled field that I don't think has been mentioned yet...

Some books that I have re-read a few times are Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and The Last Tycoon. They all have writing style and characters that I love to re-visit. There are some other books that I keep intending to re-read, but I always find...

I've only recently started reading Irving; I began with The World According to Garp. The early section focusing on Jenny Fields is the best part of the book - an excellent black comedy. Once the focus switches to Garp, the story is more patchy, though it manages to gather momentum again later...

I'm surprised there's so much Great Gatsby dislike in this thread. I think the story is very good, and beautifully written. I didn't have the book as a set text in any school classes, though, and instead read it voluntarily a few years after I had finished school - that could be why I enjoyed...

If I'm reading around my place, I usually play CDs. I don't like listening to the radio or TV while reading, though, as the ads tend to break my concentration. If reading on a bus, I'll sometimes listen to my mp3 player. Other times, clanky bus sounds are the (unwanted) soundtrack :p .