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Recommendations based on The Average American Maleby Chad Kultgen
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Choke
by Chuck Palahniuk
A darkly humorous story of a man's journey to self-awareness through disruption and chaos.
Choke follows Victor Mancini and his friend Denny through a few months of their lives with frequent flashbacks to the days when Victor was a child. , Victor had grown up moving from one foster home ... (Wikipedia)
All Families are Psychotic
by Douglas Coupland
A dysfunctional family's story of love, loss and redemption.
The novel is the tale of the Drummond family from Vancouver gathering together to watch Sarah Drummond's space shuttle blast off at the Kennedy Space Center . The Drummonds are a group of misfits ... (Wikipedia)
Under the Dome
by Stephen King
Small town experiences a sudden and mysterious isolation, leading to chaos and terror.
At 11:44 a.m. on October 21, 2017, the small Maine town of Chester's Mill is abruptly and gruesomely separated from the outside world by an invisible, semipermeable barrier of unknown origin. The ... (Wikipedia)
Girlfriend in a Coma
by Douglas Coupland
A group of friends must grapple with a mysterious coma, while reflecting on their lives and relationships.
The first part of the book covers the 17 years in the lives of this group of friends after Karen's lapse into a coma. Richard has to cope with losing Karen but gaining a daughter, Megan, as ... (Wikipedia)
Snuff
by Chuck Palahniuk
A porn star's final film, shot on a private island, becomes a grotesque spectacle of sex and violence.
Snuff follows three men who are waiting to immortalize themselves into pornography history as they wait to bed Cassie Wright, a former porn queen who has fallen into harder times. Each chapter ... (Wikipedia)
One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories
by B.J. Novak
Collection of short stories, exploring the quirks of life with wit and humor.
New York Times Bestseller , A startlingly original debut from the actor, writer, director, and executive producer hailed as “a gifted observer of the human condition and a very funny writer capable ... (Barnes & Noble)
Out
by Natsuo Kirino
Exploration of the dark side of modern society through the story of four female factory workers.
The novel tells the tales of four women, working the graveyard shift at a Japanese bento factory. All four women live hard lives. Masako, the leader of the four women, feels completely alienated from ... (Wikipedia)
The Running Man
by Richard Bachman
A man's journey fighting for his life in a deadly game, facing impossible odds.
In 2025, the world's economy is in shambles and America has become a totalitarian dystopia. 28-year-old Ben Richards, an impoverished resident of the fictional Co-Op City, is unable to find work, ... (Wikipedia)
Rant
by Chuck Palahniuk
A darkly humorous and surreal look into a world of chaos, taking on societal norms and conventions.
Buster Casey is born in the rural town of Middleton with the senses of smell and taste far more advanced than any other human. He acquires the nickname "Rant" from a childhood prank involving animal ... (Wikipedia)
Neuromancer
by William Gibson
A hacker's journey through a dystopian cyberpunk world, searching for a way to survive.
Henry Dorsett Case is a low-level hustler in the dystopian underworld of Chiba City , Japan. Once a talented computer hacker , Case was caught stealing from his employer. As punishment for his theft, ... (Wikipedia)
Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
A woman's journey of self-discovery, liberation and empowerment.
Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person – no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three ... (Goodreads)
Lock In
by John Scalzi
A sci-fi thriller involving a global pandemic and a world of augmented reality.
The world is exposed to a highly contagious virus. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu -like symptoms. For 1%, the virus causes the victims to be fully awake, but unable to move or ... (Wikipedia)
The Most Dangerous Game
by Richard Connell
A hunter's game of survival and strategy, as he pursues and is pursued by his prey.
Big-game hunter Sanger Rainsford and his friend, Whitney, are traveling to the Amazon rainforest for a jaguar hunt. After a discussion about how they are "the hunters" instead of "the hunted," ... (Wikipedia)
Less Than Zero
by Bret Easton Ellis
A young man returns to his hometown of Los Angeles and becomes disillusioned with the empty and hedonistic lifestyle of his wealthy friends.
The novel follows the life of Clay, a rich, young college student who has returned to his hometown of Los Angeles , California for winter break circa 1984. Through first-person narration , Clay ... (Wikipedia)
Bird Box
by Josh Malerman
A family's fight for survival in a post-apocalyptic world, where creatures lurk in the shadows.
Something is out there, something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse of it, and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from. Five years after it ... (Goodreads)
Horns
by Joe Hill
A young man is accused of a heinous crime, and attempts to uncover the truth by embracing his newly-acquired supernatural powers.
The novel consists of fifty chapters grouped into five sections of ten chapters each, named as follows: Twenty-six-year-old Ignatius "Ig" Perrish wakes up one morning after a drunken night (in the ... (Wikipedia)
The Rum Diary
by Hunter S. Thompson
A man's journey to find himself and meaningful work, set in a tropical paradise.
Begun in 1959 by a twenty-two-year-old Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary is a tangled love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto ... (Goodreads)
A Drink Before the War
by Dennis Lehane
Private detectives investigate a kidnapping case, uncovering dark secrets of the city.
Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro receive a job from three state politicians, Sterling Mulkern, Jim Vurnan and Brian Paulson, to recover documents from a former cleaning ... (Wikipedia)
The Beach
by Alex Garland
A young backpacker discovers a hidden beach paradise in Thailand, but the utopia is not as perfect as it seems.
In a cheap hotel on Khao San Road in Bangkok , Richard, a young British backpacker, meets a mentally disturbed Scot going by the alias of Daffy Duck , who gives him a hand-drawn map with directions ... (Wikipedia)
The Vegetarian
by Han Kang
A woman's radical decision to pursue a vegetarian lifestyle, leading to unexpected and far-reaching consequences.
The Vegetarian tells the story of Yeong-hye, a home-maker who, one day, suddenly decides to stop eating meat after a series of dreams involving images of animal slaughter. This abstention leads her ... (Wikipedia)
Poirot Investigates
by Agatha Christie
Detective Hercule Poirot solves a series of intricate and puzzling crimes with his sharp mind and attention to detail.
Librarian's note: this entry is for the collection of stories, "Poirot Investigates." Entries for the individual short stories can be found elsewhere. The very first collection of superb short ... (Goodreads)
Bag of Bones
by Stephen King
A grieving novelist's haunted journey to uncover the secrets of a small New England town.
The narrator, Mike Noonan, a bestselling novelist, suffers severe writer's block after his pregnant wife Jo suddenly dies due to a brain aneurysm. Four years later, Mike, still grieving, is plagued ... (Wikipedia)
Something Wicked This Way Comes
by Ray Bradbury
A dark fantasy tale of two boys confronting a mysterious and sinister carnival.
One of Ray Bradbury’s best-known and most popular novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes , now featuring a new introduction and material about its longstanding influence on culture and genre. For ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Girl with All the Gifts
by M.R. Carey
A post-apocalyptic world where a young girl holds the key to humanity's survival.
Twenty years ago humanity was infected by a variant of the fungus native to South America called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which led to the Breakdown - the end of civilization as it was before. ... (Wikipedia)
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
by Max Brooks
A collection of interviews recounting tales of the zombie apocalypse.
It has been nearly twenty years since the start of the apocalyptic worldwide pandemic known as the Zombie War, and about ten years since the war has ended in humanity's victory. The framing device ... (Wikipedia)
A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World
by C.A. Fletcher
A post-apocalyptic tale of a boy's journey to find his stolen dog in a world with few humans left.
A "suspenseful, atmospheric tale. . .punctured by a gut-punch twist" (,Entertainment Weekly,),, A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World, is a story of survival, courage and hope amid the ruins of ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Passage
by Justin Cronin
A post-apocalyptic tale of survival, as the fate of humanity hangs in the balance.
The novel is broken into 11 parts of varying lengths. The story itself is broken into two sections: the first and shorter section covers the origins of the virus and its outbreak, while the second is ... (Wikipedia)
Gravity's Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon
A surreal exploration of war and technology, and their impact on the human spirit.
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its ... (Goodreads)
I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You
by Courtney Maum
A struggling artist tries to win back his wife after cheating on her. Set in Paris, it explores love, art, and the complexities of relationships.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette meets Beautiful Ruins in this reverse love story set in Paris and London about a failed monogamist's attempts to answer the question: Is it really possible to fall back in ... (Goodreads)
Surviving Raine
by Shay Savage
A plane crash survivor and a hardened sailor are stranded on a deserted island, forced to rely on each other for survival.
As the captain of a schooner catering to the elite on the Caribbean Seas, Sebastian Stark does his best to avoid any human encounters. Interacting with people isn’t his thing, and he prefers the ... (Goodreads)
