Head Readings
& Other Overlooked Books
Magellan's Log Staff Recommendations
Note: Clinking on a title below will take you to the book's page at amazon.com. Tobias Schneebaum, a painter with one of the all-time great names, was on a Fulbright in Lima in the 1950s when he got a hankering to go join the Indians. He flew over the Andes to the edge of the Amazon jungle. At the last outpost there, everyone warned him not to go further. One morning he got up and walked into the jungle, and kept walking. "Keep the River on Your Right" is the story of what happened next. Gary Jennings: Aztec. Place whatever derogatory labels you wish on it--potboiler history, genre novel, exotic bodice ripper--Aztec is still a great read. Jennings seamlessly incorporated vast research in his vivid re-creation of the Middle-American world just before and during the Spanish conquest. Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness. Still prescient after all these years, as Coppola understood... but who remembers now? Stephen Fry: The Liar; Hippopotamus Hippopotamus; Making History; Moab Is My Washpot. Our own Oscar Wilde, and not a moment too soon. If possible, read the books in order. So arch your teeth will ache, so funny your sides will ache, so true your heart will ache. Norman O. Brown: Life Against Death. In spite of Freud's feet of clay, LAD is still one of the definitive--and defining--books of the century. The "Excremental Vision" chapter alone is worth the price of admission, making clear so much about our economic behavior that you'll never get in an MBA class. George Büchner: Danton's Death. Revolutionaries and would-be revolutionaries of every stripe, whether secular or sacred, ignore Büchner's profound political insights at their own risk... but who remembers now? Joseph Kanon: Los Alamos; The Prodigal Spy. If Graham Greene had married John Le Carré and they had had an American child, he would have been Joseph Kanon. Well, you get the idea. Both books are murder mysteries, but quite a bit more too. Los Alamos is set there, with a vivid re-creation of the scene as the first bomb was built. The Prodigal Spy re-visits the McCarthy red-scare era with equally engrossing results. Jane Roberts: Seth Speaks. Just because this stuff--like UFOs--doesn't fit our present, "successful" Descartes-Newton Cartel mind-set doesn't mean the really smart set shouldn't check it out. One quote says it all: "The present is the point of power." Doris Lessing: The Four-gated City. Lessing has forgotten more than most writers on the various 100-best lists ever knew in the first place. Frank Wedekind: Spring Awakening. At the cusp of childhood and adolescence, Wedekind glimpsed a bit of truth. Thomas Mann: Death in Venice. If repression produces works like this, what can you say except, long live repression! Peter De Vries: The Mackerel Plaza; Comfort Me with Apples (out of print). Laughing all the way. Flannery O'Conner. Wise Blood. Out of the mouths of Southern women... |