Built a library but missing the books!

useless4

So I went to Ikea and loaded up on book shelves for the new house, came home and set them up.

As I was putting up my books (as opposed to the wife's) I realized : I AM MISSING A MAJORITY OF MY BOOKS!

They didn't make it over in the move and I have a bad bad bad feeling they went out in the trash.

So now I must buy new books to fulfill my lifelong desire to have a library.

So please PA recommend some good books.

Here are the books I like :
Social musings and life stories (David Sedaris, Chuck Kloserman, Augsten Burroughs)
Non-Fiction about "something" and not history etc. (Fast Food Nation, Stiff - I have to check out more books by Mary Roach... this is a priority, Working, Nickel and Diming)
Contemporary Fiction (No idea what this means... not fantasy or science fiction - just books about normal every day people)
Books about showbiz particularly the business side of it (The Late Shift)

Fiction authors I like include older Stephen King, Neil Gaiman (I have read Anastazi Boys and American Gods) and Joe Meno (Who wrote my current favorite book - The Boy Detective Fails)

I am also going to try to pick up the series I loved as a kid (Like Piers Anthony's Xanth, Warbots... fluff)

So what should I read?

Mike Danger

It sounds like you should look into Bill Bryson (nonfiction/social musings) and China Mieville (somewhat similar to Neil Gaiman). I also like John Berendt's books, which are novel-y accounts of real events (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The City of Falling Angels), although some others don't.

Esh

I love noir. Particularly anything by Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Dashiell Hammett, Chester Himes, and Raymond Chandler.

Esh

Also, if you're looking for the Xanth books, check your local Goodwill. The one I go to looking for books always has TONS of Piers Anthony.

Napalm Donkey

Malcom Gladwell's books Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers are interesting non-fiction reads.

Barcardi

The Monster of Florance - one of the few nonfiction books that i LOVE


Silence of the Lambs / Red Dragon / Hannibal NOT the newest one

Rhino

Hey, a fellow bibliophile

One of my favorite things to do is to go down to the two local thrift stores and sort though their books. Also most public libraries also have "used book day". Lots of books can be had for really cheap.

I've gotten a lot of "classic" novels this way, most are in great condition and most had under a dollar or two.

If you find a good spot you can ussually get more books then you can physically carry for like $20 or so. Anyways good luck.

TychoCelchuuu

Catch-22, Moby Dick, All The King's Men, Invisible Man, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, The Sun Also Rises, Sometimes a Great Notion, 1984, Absurdistan, A Confederacy of Dunces, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Brave New World, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Spook Country, Love in the Time of Cholera, Pattern Recognition, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Cryptonomicon, The Demon Haunted World, Lolita, Everything is Illuminated, On the Road.

PracticalProblemSolver

botany of desire

JebusUD

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

1984, Absurdistan, Brave New World,

Farenheit 451. Plebs.

For non-fiction about something, I read "Predictably Irrational" a few months ago. It was really good.

AresProphet

Everyting Jon Krakauer has ever written.

There's 5 excellent non-fiction books for you.

RubberAC

Napalm Donkey wrote: »

Malcom Gladwell's books Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers are interesting non-fiction reads.

i have not read blink or outliers
but tipping point was pretty stupid

Armored Gorilla

Non-Fiction (Astronomy)

Death From the Skies by Phil Plait
Death by Black Hole by Neil Degrasse Tyson
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan

Life Stories

If Chins Could Kill by Bruce Campbell (doubles as showbiz!)
The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Sixx (same!)
Ball Four by Jim Bouton (ostensibly about baseball, but really about a baseball player's life, pretty engaging)

General Fiction
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Princess Bride by William Goldman (the book is just as excellent as the movie)
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Lo Kuan-chung [translated by C.H. Brewitt-Taylor] (THICK reading, but all the stories are so wonderfully over-the-top; there are other translations though)

RubberAC

Also to be helpful, I suggest picking up Catch-22
not really because it fits any of your genres there
but because everyone ive recommended it to, be they history buffs or anime kids, have loved it and given me so many high fives about it

admanb

Wind-Up Bird Chronicles/Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami.

Lateration

Rhino wrote: »

One of my favorite things to do is to go down to the two local thrift stores and sort though their books. Also most public libraries also have "used book day". Lots of books can be had for really cheap.

I've gotten a lot of "classic" novels this way, most are in great condition and most had under a dollar or two.

Cannot recommend this enough. Also, if you ever feel guilty about going overboard at these sales remember that any books not sold are almost always thrown away rather than donated to charity or kept in the collection.

Cyvros

Armored Gorilla wrote: »

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Also, the Dirk Gently series: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and the final section of The Salmon of Doubt (a 'reconstruction' of Adams' drafts before he died).

Non-fiction-wise, I often hear good things about Last Chance to See, a collaboration between Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine about endangered species. There was a companion radio documentary, and a companion TV series will soon be broadcast.

useless4

Cyvros wrote: »

Armored Gorilla wrote: »

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Also, the Dirk Gently series: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and the final section of The Salmon of Doubt (a 'reconstruction' of Adams' drafts before he died).

Non-fiction-wise, I often hear good things about Last Chance to See, a collaboration between Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine about endangered species. There was a companion radio documentary, and a companion TV series will soon be broadcast.

Salmon of Doubt is one of my highly recommended books, luckily I still have it and Mostly Harmless and one of the Dirk books... got to see which one. I did lose my More than Complete Guide collection.

Thanks for all the great ideas! going to hit up various places over the next few weeks to rebuild.

Does anyone know authors similar to Chuck Klosterman... like "slacker" non/fiction.

Æthelred

Do you want to buy books to read, or are you trying to build up a library? 'cause that's two different things.

Kris

useless4 wrote: »

Books about showbiz particularly the business side of it (The Late Shift)

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

Fabulous book.

useless4

Æthelred wrote: »

Do you want to buy books to read, or are you trying to build up a library? 'cause that's two different things.

There should be very little difference. Why keep books you wouldn't want to read?

My goal with any form of art is to find what I like and share it with others.

Æthelred

Well, if you've got an entire separate room that's a library, you're probably not going to be able to fill it entirely with books you know you want to read. That doesn't seem to be your case though, so ignore me. I'm just thinking about how to fill the enormous library in the stately manor I would like to own. :P

DragonPup

'Siddhartha'

Tam

When you've got your list: half.com is worth a try. Very cheap books.

Kealoha

Non-fiction: Joan Didion. Everything.
Fiction: Vonnegut. Sirens of Titan, Slaughterhouse 5, Breakfast of Champions, Bluebeard, Cat's Cradle, Jailbird

useless4

Æthelred wrote: »

Well, if you've got an entire separate room that's a library, you're probably not going to be able to fill it entirely with books you know you want to read. That doesn't seem to be your case though, so ignore me. I'm just thinking about how to fill the enormous library in the stately manor I would like to own. :P

Don't have a stately manor but I do have townhouse with a "formal living room".

It's going to be a library.

Here are three of the shelves, if I remember right we are putting 7-8 in here along with two comfortable reading chairs and a small table or some such thing.

I am eventually going to purchase the other shelves, the extensions (Billy bookcases from Ikea - the standard "cheap" way to go!) and secure them so they appear as "built in" as possible.

Rhino

Lateration wrote: »

Rhino wrote: »

One of my favorite things to do is to go down to the two local thrift stores and sort though their books. Also most public libraries also have "used book day". Lots of books can be had for really cheap.

I've gotten a lot of "classic" novels this way, most are in great condition and most had under a dollar or two.

Cannot recommend this enough. Also, if you ever feel guilty about going overboard at these sales remember that any books not sold are almost always thrown away rather than donated to charity or kept in the collection.

Even if you do go over board, it's like what, $20 for a bag full of books?

A bag full of books will give you more entrainment value then say, $20 worth of movies or eating out.

strakha_7

My advice is to go to a used book store, and buy a box full of books from the philosophy section. Seriously.

Those places are gold mines for classic, essential books like that.

elfdude

Most of the books recommended by colbert report and daily show are very good reads though their accuracy might leave something to desire (I stay away from the economics ones). Keep tabs on the different talk shows because their book reviews generally give you ample opportunity to see a little about the books.

I'd recommend you go to goodwill/thrift stores all over (book thrift stores rock) and simply buying anything that looks interesting if you have the money. I regularly pick up a couple hundred from the local thrift store (sells books for 20cents each) every couple of weeks for more reading materials. Of course my house is starting to look like R.O.D's opening scene. There's a lot of books that I start to read and realize they're not for me but if you didn't pay full price for them re-donating them to a different store is no real loss plus the tax write off for donating them is often more than the price for buying them.

Cyvros

By the way, whereabouts do you live? If you're in Australia or New Zealand, Penguin has released the Popular Penguins, a series of 99 popular and classic books. They're 10 AUD each and they're printed almost exactly like the Penguins of the '40s and '50s (except without different colours for different genres).

Also, and I know you said you want to avoid history books, there are two really fantastic ones that aren't just plain history. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a brilliant look at the history of science and so many scientists and contributors to science. The other one is Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World by Niall Ferguson - it is a history of the British Empire, but there are these great sections on the financial/economic aspects of it and the whole business of empires. Until that book, I had exactly zero in economics and the history of it.

Nappuccino

While you might not think Philip K. Dick fits what you're looking for, he original wanted to tell stories of average people in average places up facing terrible society based issues. Strangely that didn't sell well so he transformed the settings into futuristic settings. He's got more brilliant books than most writers.

For starters though, A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, The Man in the High Castle, and Ubik are all fantastic.

Also V. by Pynchon. It's a great introduction to him in that it isn't too weird or experimental while keeping most of the things that people love about him (wide, expansive stories- wonderful wordplay, crazy side stories [one character actually goes to hunt allagators in the sewers of new york and its made plausible]) I highly recommend it.

Hypatia

Non-fiction you could try "Word Freaks" (about Scrabble players) or "Bringing Down The House" is pretty fun (MIT blackjack team working Vegas)

Erios

Can't go wrong with a little Republic, Nichomachean Ethics, Politics and some Marcus Aurelius and Virgil/Homer for fun. At least it will make you look like a wonderfully cultured snob (and we are the best of folk).

Sheep

OP should pick up the biographies/autobiographies of Lester Bangs, Charlies Mingus, Malcolm X, and Miles Davis.

EDIT

The Mingus book, Beneath the Underdog, can satisfy the need for social musings, Non Fiction, AND Contemporary Fiction. :P

uean

Daniel Keyes - "Flowers for Algernon." Can't recommend it enough.
Orson Scott Card - "Ender's Game". I know you don't want sci-fi, but this transcends the realm and is really more social issues than pew-pew in space. IMO anyway. Or you could boycott it if you're into that.

Grid System

useless4 wrote: »

Contemporary Fiction (No idea what this means... not fantasy or science fiction - just books about normal every day people)

• J M Coetzee
• Kazuo Ishiguro
• Tim Winton