I love to read and I usually always have at least a dozen books on my to read pile, but there are those times that I run out of books and I haven’t heard about anything on NPR that I want to read,  nothing jumps out at me from the shelves of my local used bookstore and I just don’t have the time to devote to Booklist, alibris, New York Review of Books and the other places I find out about titles I want to read. That’s why I thought it might be fun to start a new feature called Indie Fixx Book Club and we can share books and authors with each other. It will be my version of the Oprah Book Club, but instead of discussing just one title, we help each other discover new books to read.

I thought a fun way to kick off the Book Club would be to share what’s on my reading pile right now.  Some I’ve read, some are still in the queue.

There’s several titles by Charles Bukowski, who I adore. He is gritty, raw & real and his alter-ego Henry Chinaski is fascinating &  disturbing, but is endearing in some way. He features real people with real problems, but not in phony way, just in a here-it-is kind of way. There’s also a Philip K. Dick book, he is another favorite author.  Some Hunter S. Thompson. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Rum Diary, which is fiction and being made into a movie with Johnny Depp. On the Road, which I haven’t read in ages, so I thought it was time to read it again. A book called This is the Beat Generation, which is non-fiction and about all the beats. Are you seeing a theme, here? I read a lot of beat era books and authors. There’s also American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. I know it’s difficult to believe, but I’ve not actually read any Neil Gaiman…I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Another one of my favorite authors is Jeffrey Eugenides. Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides are brilliant and it really is time for him to come out with another novel. I’m rereading The Virgin Suicides…it’s so lyrical that it’s almost like poetry.  He also had a story in a recent The New Yorker I’ve been meaning to read (it can be found here). I also have one of those Larsson The Girl With… books. People keep telling me that they are good, doesn’t really seem like my my usual thing, but I got it for $1 at the bookstore so I thought I’d give it try.  So, that’s about it. There are a few other books there I picked up at the used bookstore, as well as some non-fiction crafty type books (not-pictured) that I’ve been sent to review and which I will talk about later.

What’s on your reading pile?

What do you recommend to me and other Indie Fixx readers? What don’t you recommend? Who are your favorite authors? I’d love it if you took a picture of your to-read pile or your bookshelves and share it on the Indie Fixx Flickr Group. I think it would be fun to share other peep’s books as well as my own for this feature.

I’d also really like to make this a pretty regular feature. At least once a month, maybe twice a month if it’s popular. I would also like to have some guest bloggers as well, so email me if you are interested. You could do a book review, share your 10 fave authors,  list what books you read on your summer vacation or whatever fits with the book club theme.