I’ve never been a big fan of Stephen King. No reason, really, other than much of it is horror and generally don’t read genre fiction. Anyway, aside from The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption I haven’t read a lot of his stuff.

My problem, however, is my serious addiction to reading. I must read any time I’m not actually speaking or listening. The other day I was desperately looking for a book in the house, having read every magazine, newspaper and cereal box I could find. I went through my wife’s pile and came across a book called The Stand so I started reading it.

I don’t know if any of you folks have ever read this or not but I’m three hundred pages into it and I really like it. Except for the fact that every time anyone around me coughs I break into a panic. Every time someone sneezes my spine straightens and I start sweating.

Last night I had a dream that everyone around me was dropping dead from this virus or whatever the hell it is. Very realistic. I woke up in the middle of the night and was looking for duct tape to try and seal off the windows and doors to my house.

It's amazing how I got on in life without ever having read this book, what with my track record of swallowing novels by the boxload.

Last night I ried to watch the Masterpiece Theater version of Dicken's Bleak House but I had to turn it off after a few minutes. Having read the book a couple of times I couldn't reconcile the screen version wth what my mind had already generated over the years.

I understand there's a mini-series or something based on The Stand. Is it any good?

I’m going to do you folks a favor. I know it won’t be recognized as such, seeing as how I’m still the interloper around here. The red-headed stepchild. The poor relation. The fucking “Cousin Eddy” of National Lampoon fame.

Nonetheless, I’m forging ahead because frankly, I think the shoe is on the other foot. I’m quite sure you people could stand to read a great book or two that hasn’t been recommended by some lard-assed, tenured dickhole.

Once a month I’ll recommend a book or two that may dramatically change your life. Or not.

Post Office, by Charles Bukowski.

This book actually did change my life. After years of reading classic literature (and loving it) I stumbled upon this book and read it in a single afternoon. It was like leaving a church picnic to go get drunk and fuck. The raw characters, simple sentence construction and brutal honesty reach out and slap your face.

It’s the largely autobiographical story of Bukowski himself (best known as the real-life model for Barfly) under the guise of Henry Chinaski, a ne’er do well who takes a temporary job as a mail carrier over the holidays. It’s a walking route filled with untold pitfalls like steep hills, mean dogs and people who belong in the madhouse. Things progress at a rapid pace from there. This book pretty much launched Bukowski’s career.

This is a quick read and is absolutely hilarious.

Journey to the End of the Night, by Louis-Ferdinand Celine.

This book is somewhat harder to describe. Just as funny (almost) as Post Office, but there are some fairly dark spots.

From the editorial review:

When it was published in 1932, this then-shocking and revolutionary first fiction redefined the art of the novel with its black humor, its nihilism, and its irreverent, explosive writing style, and made Louis-Ferdinand Celine one of France's--and literature's--most important 20th-Century writers. The picaresque adventures of Bardamu, the sarcastic and brilliant antihero of Journey to the End of the Night move from the battlefields of World War I (complete with buffoonish officers and cowardly soldiers), to French West Africa, the United States, and back to France in a style of prose that's lyrical, hallucinatory, and hilariously scathing toward nearly everybody and everything. Yet, beneath it all one can detect a gentle core of idealism.

I’ve been recommending these books for years and I can’t tell you how many people of thanked me profusely. Trust your Cousin Eddy. I know you’re reading this.