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Recommendations based on The Roomby Hubert Selby Jr.
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Last Exit to Brooklyn
by Hubert Selby Jr.
A gritty, dark exploration of post-WWII life in Brooklyn and its inhabitants.
Few novels have caused as much debate as Hubert Selby Jr.'s notorious masterpiece, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Irvine Welsh, author of ... (Goodreads)
Requiem for a Dream
by Hubert Selby Jr.
A tale of four characters and their struggles with addiction, leading to a devastating climax.
This story follows the lives of Sara Goldfarb, her son Harry, his girlfriend Marion Silver, and his best friend Tyrone C. Love, who are all searching for the key to their dreams in their own ways. In ... (Wikipedia)
Junky
by William S. Burroughs
A gritty, autobiographical account of a man's descent into the underworld of addiction.
Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch , an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junky , his first novel. It is a candid eye-witness account of times and places that are now long gone, an ... (Goodreads)
Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs
Surrealist exploration of addiction, delusions, and reality.
Naked Lunch is a non-linear narrative without a clear plot. The following is a summary of some of the events in the book that could be considered the most relevant. The book begins with the ... (Wikipedia)
Women
by Charles Bukowski
A collection of stories exploring the lives of various women and their relationships with men.
Women focuses on the many dissatisfactions Chinaski faced with each new woman he encountered. One of the women featured in the book is a character named Lydia Vance; she is based on Bukowski's ... (Wikipedia)
Skeleton Crew
by Stephen King
Collection of short stories that explore horror and the supernatural.
From the Flap: The Master at his scarifying best! From heart-pounding terror to the eeriest of whimsy–tales from the outer limits of one of the greatest imaginations of our time! Evil that breathes ... (Goodreads)
The Trial
by Franz Kafka
A man is arrested and put on trial for a crime that remains unclear throughout the novel.
On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K., the chief cashier of a bank, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. Josef is not ... (Wikipedia)
Journey to the End of the Night
by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
A darkly comic, nihilistic journey of self-discovery, following a man into the heart of an absurd world.
Céline’s masterpiece—colloquial, polemic, hyper-realistic, boiling over with black humor Céline’s masterpiece—colloquial, polemic, hyper realistic—boils over with bitter humor and revulsion at ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Complete Poems
by Anne Sexton
A collection of powerful, confessional pieces exploring the beauty, tragedy, and pain of human experience.
From the joy and anguish of her own experience, Sexton fashioned poems that told truths about the inner lives of men and women. This book comprises Sexton's ten volumes of verse, including the ... (Barnes & Noble)
Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange
by Stanley Kubrick
A dystopian tale of a violent gang leader who undergoes a controversial psychological experiment to cure him of his criminal tendencies.
In a futuristic Britain, Alex DeLarge is the leader of a gang of "droogs": Georgie, Dim and Pete. One night, after getting intoxicated on drug-laden "milk-plus", they engage in an evening of ... (Wikipedia)
Crash
by J.G. Ballard
A dystopian novel exploring the surreal and chaotic landscape of a near-future Los Angeles.
The story is told through the eyes of narrator James Ballard, named after the author himself, but it centers on the sinister figure of Dr. Robert Vaughan, a "former TV-scientist, turned nightmare ... (Wikipedia)
Queer
by William S. Burroughs
A semi-autobiographical novel exploring the underground gay culture of 1950s America, with a focus on drug use and criminality.
Originally written in 1952 but not published till 1985, Queer is an enigma - both an unflinching autobiographical self-portrait and a coruscatingly political novel, Burroughs' only realist love story ... (Goodreads)
The Haunting of Hill House
by Shirley Jackson
A group of people investigating a mysterious and haunted house, uncovering its secrets.
It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, the lighthearted ... (Goodreads)
Story of O
by Pauline Réage
A woman's journey of sexual awakening and exploration, set against a backdrop of domination.
The Story of O relates the progressive willful debasement of a young and beautiful Parisian fashion photographer, O, who wants nothing more than to be a slave to her lover, René. The test is ... (Goodreads)
Delta of Venus
by Anaïs Nin
Exploration of female sexuality and intimate relationships in a changing world.
Fifteen short stories by Anaïs Nin published posthumously in 1977 - though largely written in the 1940s as erotica for a private collector. In Delta of Venus Anaïs Nin penned a lush, magical world ... (Goodreads)
Venus in Furs
by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
A man becomes obsessed with a woman who treats him as her slave, leading to a twisted and erotic exploration of power dynamics.
The framing story concerns a man who dreams of speaking to Venus about love while she wears furs. The unnamed narrator tells his dreams to a friend, Severin, who tells him how to break himself of his ... (Wikipedia)
American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis
A corporate psychopath's descent into homicidal madness, exposing the dark side of 1980s New York.
Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s, American Psycho follows the life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, in his mid-20s when the story begins, ... (Wikipedia)
VALIS
by Philip K. Dick
A man's quest to uncover the meaning behind a series of mystical visions.
VALIS is the first book in Philip K. Dick's incomparable final trio of novels (the others being The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer ). This disorienting and bleakly funny ... (Goodreads)
On the Road: the Original Scroll
by Jack Kerouac
A semi-autobiographical novel about the travels of Kerouac and his friends across America, exploring themes of freedom and self-discovery.
The legendary 1951 scroll draft of, On the Road, published word for word as Kerouac originally composed it Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early ... (Goodreads)
No Country for Old Men
by Cormac McCarthy
A gripping tale of violence and pursuit in Texas' desolate landscape.
The plot follows the interweaving paths of the three central characters (Llewelyn Moss, Anton Chigurh , and Ed Tom Bell) set in motion by events related to a drug deal gone bad near the ... (Wikipedia)
A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole
A satirical tale of an eccentric slacker's misadventures in New Orleans.
Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found, here, "A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles ... (Goodreads)
The Collector
by John Fowles
A man's obsession with a young woman leads to a deadly game of cat-and-mouse.
The novel is about a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who works as a clerk in a city hall and collects butterflies in his spare time. The first part of the novel tells the story from his point of ... (Wikipedia)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
by Hunter S. Thompson
A wild and hallucinatory journey through the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas.
The basic synopsis revolves around journalist Raoul Duke ( Hunter S. Thompson ) and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo ( Oscar Zeta Acosta ), as they arrive in Las Vegas in 1971 to report on the Mint 400 ... (Wikipedia)
Red Harvest
by Dashiell Hammett
A private detective infiltrates a corrupt town to clean up the crime and corruption.
The Continental Op is called to Personville (known as "Poisonville" to the locals) by the newspaper publisher Donald Willsson, who is murdered before the Op has a chance to meet with him. The Op ... (Wikipedia)
'Salem's Lot
by Stephen King
A small town's battle against an ancient evil that threatens to consume its inhabitants.
Ben Mears, a writer who spent part of his childhood in Jerusalem's Lot , Maine , has returned after 25 years. He quickly becomes friends with high-school teacher Matt Burke and strikes up a ... (Wikipedia)
Darkness at Noon
by Arthur Koestler
A political prisoner is interrogated during a totalitarian regime and struggles with his loyalty to the party.
Darkness at Noon is divided into four parts: The First Hearing, The Second Hearing, The Third Hearing, and The Grammatical Fiction. In the original English translation, Koestler′s word that Hardy ... (Wikipedia)
Invisible Cities
by Italo Calvino
A fantastical exploration of the cities of the imagination and the possibilities of life.
"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young ... (Goodreads)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
by D.H. Lawrence
A working-class man's affair with an aristocratic woman, and their coming to terms with the strictures of society.
Lawrence's frank portrayal of an extramarital affair and the explicit sexual explorations of its central characters caused this controversial book, now considered a masterpiece, to be banned as ... (Goodreads)
Uzumaki: Spiral into Horror, Vol. 1
by Junji Ito
A small town is plagued by a supernatural force that causes events to take strange and terrifying turns.
Uzumaki follows a high-school teenager, Kirie Goshima (,五島桐絵,) ; her boyfriend, Shuichi Saito (,斎藤秀一,) ; and the citizens of the small, quiet Japanese town of Kurouzu-cho (,黒渦町,, Black Vortex Town,) ... (Wikipedia)
Pet Sematary
by Stephen King
A family's terrifying journey of life and death, as the line between the living and the dead blurs.
Louis Creed, a doctor from Chicago , is appointed director of the University of Maine 's campus health service. He moves to a large house near the small town of Ludlow with his wife Rachel, their two ... (Wikipedia)
