Books. I like them. Here are 6 I think you may like.

I like books. I have a fair amount of them. I used to have a lot more, but I don't want to talk about that right now. Anyway, I like books. Every once in a while, people ask me if I have any suggestions for a book they should read. I have a lot of fucking suggestions. A lot. But here's the thing, I don't have time to give you all of my suggestions, neither in print nor in person. So I thought I'd write down six so you can enjoy them at your own pace with your own beverage of choice. Every book on this list pairs well with Woodford Reserve and a crackling fire, in case you're wondering. Now go read a book.

 

'Anna Karenina' by Leo Tolstoy

Complex, robust, perfect. Russian high-society provides for a novel that goes beyond art.  This may make you change how feel about things, especially morality and your place in the world. 

 

'In Cold Blood' by Truman Capote 

Capote wrote a book unlike he'd ever written one centered on the brutal murder of a family in the 1950s. But here's the thing; Capote wrote this without any lead-in, providing a story that allows you and me to interpret justice and crime all by our own damn selves. And that's a little different.

'Into Thin Air' by Jon Krakauer

You're probably not as cool as Krakauer. Let's get that out of the way first. So read how the dude climbed Mount Everest, called it the the biggest mistake of his life, and, along the way, wrote one of the best adventure books of the modern era. Get this in your life, see if it changes it.   

'A Brief History of Time' by Stephen Hawking

Complicated science written so the people can not only understand it, but appreciate it. Hawking doesn't dumb anything down, he just explains it like a good teacher should explain it.  If you're religious, the organized chaos of the world may prove, to you, God. If you're not, the appreciation of the royally-screwed order in our universe is nothing short of magnificently beautiful.

'The Beautiful & Damned' by F. Scott Fitzgerald 

Gatsby was good, but if you really want to see how booze and money can converge in to a social documentary on morality and a decline of a man from wealth to destitution with a Jazz Age backdrop, this is going to be your shit. 

'The Stranger' by Albert Camus

Hold on, because Camus is a little nuts (in magnificent ways). The nominal character, after attending his mother's funeral, kills an Arab man whom he recognizes in French Algiers. The two halves of the story come together to present this existentialist wonderland that questions how one is to find and create meaning in one's own life. Mind-fucked yet? Just wait. 

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