Favorite Books

I’d initially embarked on some descriptions of these books and why I like them, but found myself getting a bit carried away. Besides, I’m sure you can find out about all these gems at your local bookstore, on the Internet, or even a library. I’ll probably add/subtract from the list in the future as whim dictates. If you have any reading suggestions, feel free to e-mail me at isaac@billychaka.com.

Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami	The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro by Joe McGinniss
Et Tu, Babe by Mark Leyner	The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy	American Skin by Don DeGrazia
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan	Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler	Time's Arrow by Martin Amis
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger	Tokyo Underworld by Robert Whiting
The Trial by Franz Kafka	Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
The Stranger by Albert Camus	Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby	Savage Night by Jim Thompson
My Dark Places by James Ellroy	Generation X by Douglas Coupland
The Salaryman's Wife by Sujata Massey	Cathedral by Raymond Carver
Pest Control by Bill Fitzhugh	Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O’Toole
Libra by Don DeLillo	Tne Enormous Radio and other stories by John Cheever
Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore	King of the World by David Remnick
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro	Skin Tight by Carl Hiassen
Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson	Shinju by Laura Joh Rowland
Like a Hole in the Head by Jen Banbury	Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov	Wiseblood by Flannery O’Conner
The Long Hard Road Out of Hell by Marilyn Manson	Speed Tribes by Karl Taro Greenfeld

NEW reccomendations (updated 09-03-02)

The Horned Man by James Lasdun -- a freaky, surreal, paranoid little book about a professor who thinks a deranged man is living under his desk and trying to frame him for a series of brutal killings.

Japanese Tales of Mystery and the Imagination by Edogawa Rampo-- a very strange collection of horror stories from Japan's answer to Edgar Allan Poe (Edogawa Rampo, get it?) Some of them may be unintentional humorous for modern Western readers, but they're always interesting and a few are genuinely creepy.

after the quake by Haruki Murakami -- if you like Murakami, you'll dig his new short story collection. Breaks no real new ground for the author (aside from its use of third person perspective), but offers his usual compelling mix of the fantastic and the mundane in these six stories all set between the Kobe earthquake and the Aum subway gas attacks. All of these stories have appeared in the US before (in Harper's, New Yorker, Granta, etc.), but they seem to work better in this collection than they did individually. (If that makes any sense...)

Uzumaki vol. 1 and 2 by Junji Ito -- I don't read many manga but after picking up a copy of PULP magazine I became addicted to Uzumaki and had to buy the books. Uzamaki is the bizarre story of a town cursed by spirals. The art is captivating, gory, and incredibly detailed. (I heard there was a movie made of this, but I haven't seen it.)
Other cool stuff I'd reccomend (updated 12-25-01)

Samurai Boogie by Peter Tasker -- Detective Mori stars in this moody, noirish thriller set in a rain drenched Tokyo. If this had been available when I first started writing the Billy Chaka books, I might not have bothered

The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills -- very dark, very funny and very short. You can read it in an afternoon and still have time left over to start All Quiet on the Orient Express, by the same author. Both feature deceptively simple but incredibly hypnotic prose.

On Parole by Akira Yoshimoto - the inspiration for Shohei Imamura's "The Eel". Not nearly as lighthearted and goodnatured as the movie, though. A tougher, sadder story. Shipwrecks, by the same author, is also worth checking out.

A Pale View of the Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro - really creepy in a very subtle way. Ishiguro is the master of the unreliable narrator. Though this was his first, I think it's among his best and he hasn't written a bad one yet.

Ghost Town by Robert Coover -- an elliptical, hallucinatory and hilarious story that has great fun warping the archetypes and cliches of the Western genre. Picture a funnier version of William S. Burroughs writing a Western and you kinda get the idea. But only kinda.

Jam by Alan Goldsher -- This one will be out in February, but I was lucky enough to get an advanced look at it. Here's what I had to say: ""In his engaging jazz novel 'JAM', Goldsher shares details you won't find on VH1's 'Behind the Music', and he does it with pitch perfect humor--managing to thoroughly skewer the record industry without once resorting to cynicism or self-righteousness. Should be required reading for aspiring rock stars, and anyone else interested in the sacrifices made for love, for music--and for money." And I meant it, too.

Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs by John Bowe, et. al -- Ever wondered what is was like to work in a meatpacking plant or as a pornstar or maybe a cleaning products salesperson? In this amazing book, you get from-the-horses mouth accounts of nearly every job imaginable. But you get a lot more than that -- you get a great overview of what it means to be alive in 21st century America.