[spinningfetus]

Hmmm... to start with the books I'm reading now: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand; I'm liking it the more I read it, but it took about the first 500 pages or so to really get into. Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy; all I can say is I still haven't figured out why I read Russian Lit. I guess I'm just a masochist. As for recommended reads: They came Before Columbus by Ivan van Sertima; a historical account of travel between Africa and South America that predates the Vikings by about a thousand years. Island by Aldus Huxley; my favorite of his and one of the best of the utopian genre. Anything by Thomas Pynchon is good but beware I don't care how fast of a reader you are, his plot lines are so convoluted that these take forever and make Vonnegut look like Dr Seuss. Tom Robbins is another author that I have been getting into. I place him sort of between Vonnegut and Pynchon. The Literary Mind by Mark Turner; came out as a theory of mind/language in about 1997, the rest of the world will learn about it in a couple of years, I have no doubt so be the first on your block. Its a little on the technical side but really readable. As far as poetry goes read Saul Williams if it is the last (or only) book of poetry you ever read (this goes for any one of them you can get your hands on). In the sci fi realm Octavia Butler is really good and writes in a manner different from most of the rest.