finished 08.25.09
I have always shied away from Chuck Palahniuk’s books. I don’t know why. I’ve heard some of them are really good.. even this book. I wanted to read it for a long time.. when my brother gave it to me it sat around my house for literally years before I read it.
I thought Fight Club was a good book. I’d already seen the movie, so I knew certain elements that probably made the book less enjoyable to read than for someone who never read the book or saw the movie. I still liked it though.
And I made it through a Palahniuk book. Gruesome at times, but done. Now I can read his book Choke
Choke is great, so is Diary and Invisible Monsters. Just don’t read Haunted. I literally had to stop reading it mid-way because the visuals were so incredibly vile.
I enjoyed most of his books, but I recently tried to read “Rant” and couldn’t get through it. He wrote it in an unusual style that I didn’t really like.
“Lullaby” is a good one.
Thanks for the recommendations, Bonnie & Agnes. I think it’s funny that people have told me that Palahniuk is an author that mostly just guys read.. yet the majority of comments on this post are by women!
I didn’t think Fight Club was very gruesome (although I’ve read most everything that Steven King has written so maybe my opinion is skewed), but I really enjoyed it. I should check out some of his other work.
I was curious so I looked at my Amazon history and I ordered it in May of 2008, so no it didn’t sit around your house for years. It must have just seemed like it because you wanted to read it for so long.
hm. Maybe. Maybe also because I just pulled out a bunch of books that HAVE sat around the house for years and this was with them. Either way, thanks for the book!
Choke is already a movie. I watched it on DVD last week…has Angelica Huston and Sam Rockwell…unless I hallucinated the whole thing, which seems rather unlikely…though impressive.
ah, well.. luckily I’ve managed to miss all the preview then, thus not tainting my impression on the book!
Cam and I went to a reading by Palahniuk in Madison, WI about 5 years ago. It was very entertaining to say the least. I think you had to be 18 or with an adult if you were under. Chuck threw out fake severed limbs to the audience for you to keep. He said it would be cool to take them to a dog park and see what kink of reaction you would get when your dog or someone else’s dog brings back the fake limb. He also singed them! Cam did get his picture taken with Chuck, shook hands and he singed his books. It was a good time and there was a pretty big mix of people, Moms, Goths, etc… He also looks not like how you would imagine. He’s shorter and kind of bookish looking but over all a great guy! I have read Choke… Cam has read all them.