6 Fantastic Books You Probably Haven’t Read

When carrying on a webcam conversation, whether it’s with a friends or a stranger, you don’t have the luxury of a real life distraction, like TV or music. It’s just you and him, looking at each other and hoping someone will say something interesting. Of course, you can play a game, but eventually you’re going to want to talk. I find it’s always helpful to have a topic handy and ready to go. No surprise, my favorite topics is books. And not that Twilight crap. Real, thought provoking literature. Here is my list of books you probably haven’t read, but really should. You can recommend them to your webcam buddy and maybe you just might be lucky to find someone else who has read them.

It’s a crime that We Need To Talk About Kevin isn’t more well known. This has to be the saddest, and yet most beautiful, story I have ever read. I have forced this on numerous friends and family, and I haven’t heard anything other than “genius” yet. The novel centers on a woman who is reliving her life through letters. She was an unwilling mother, and gave birth to a troubled child who inflicts unspeakable horror onto the world. Was it her fault? Does nature or nurture win in the end? Is Kevin truly evil? Is everything she telling us true? You don’t get many answers, just a lot of questions that will keep you up at night.

Dean Koontz gets a bad rep as the less talented Stephen King. And while I haven’t been impressed with the majority of Dean Koontz’s work, The Taking can stand toe to toe with anything from the horror genre. A lot of books can make you cry, not as many can terrify you down to your marrow. The Taking is about a sudden invasion of otherworldly horrors. One minute society is there, the next insanity reigns. A husband and wife are forced into a world where there are no rules anymore. Disembodied heads still talk, mirrors show nothing but gruesome death, faces can be stolen, you can slip through the floor at any moment, and there’s always another monster around the corner. This book is for people who love to be scared.

Flowers In The Attic was famous in the 80’s because of its controversial themes (incest) but has been pretty much forgotten about lately. That’s a shame, since the book has a lot to offer. The highest complement I can pay it is that it makes you feel, which a lot of the commercial novels today fail to do. The story is told through the eyes of a young girl named Cathy who lives an idyllic life with her brothers and sisters until their father dies. Their mother turns to her estranged, religiously fanatical parents for help, and through some plot twists I won’t give away here, Cathy, her older brother Chris, and their young twin siblings Carrie and Cory are imprisoned in an attic. I won’t lie, there are elements to this book that are deeply disturbing, but if you put your own squeamishness aside, you’ll find a tragic story about four children who are betrayed by their mother and struggle to survive.

I know what you’re thinking: “It? Everyone knows about It. Evil clown. Eats children. How is this an unknown book?” Sure, Pennywise the clown is an iconic character and single-handedly proved what we all already knew: clowns are evil. But how many of you have actually read it? I thought so. For those of you who don’t know, It is about a group of adults from a small town who must reunite to kill an ancient evil they thought they defeated long ago. The book doesn’t focus on the lives of the adults, but the children they used to be. The best part of It isn’t the horror, but the story of a group of kids living in a small town in the 50’s. The book is an honest account of children not as adults wish them to be, but what they actually are: Smart, aware, rude, occasionally cruel, and occasionally brilliant. It can inspire nostalgia in anyone who has had a childhood. And yes, kids being dragged into the sewers and eaten is wonderfully scary.

John Dies At The End isn’t for everyone. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was written for a minority of weird people. I’m not even sure what genre to classify it as. Science fiction books usually has some element of science to them. There aren’t enough elves or quests to call it fantasy. Horror wouldn’t work because the book doesn’t take itself seriously enough, but comedy doesn’t capture its spirit either. Lets just call John Dies At The End strange. The plot is completely non linear, and can be hard to keep up with. Basically, we follow two monster hunters and their dog as they defend humanity from evil outside our dimension. The monster hunters are guys who hold down crappy jobs and are devoid of ambition. So, your average twenty-something. There are monsters made of meat, time erasing, gore, a drug called soy, hilarious tangents, shape shifters, and a big ass eye. I guarantee you, John Dies At The End is like nothing you’ve ever read before.

Let me get this on the table: I don’t like Margaret Atwood. I find her stories dry and her male characters laughably two dimensional. But still, if she has a masterpiece, it’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Since she finds the term science fiction derogatory (oh, Atwood) lets just call the book speculative fiction. Some vague tragedy has befallen the world and society has been reduced to a fascist state. Men rule everything while women are mostly stripped of their rights. The vague tragedy (seriously, someone please explain to me what happened) has left most women infertile. The handmaids are the few women left who can conceive, and they are owned and raped by important men. The main character, Offred, is one of these handmaids. This is not a gentle story, but it is a good one.

So there is my list of books you should read. Tell me in the comment section what books you think are great and underrated. And, as always, stay away from the sewers.