Be Like Michael: Books I tell people Ive read.
Discover the must-read books Michael recommends—classics and hidden gems he tells people he's read. Get inspired by his curated reading list today!
Book
Geek Love
by Katherine Dunn
National Book Award Finalist • Here is the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities—with the help of amphetamines, arsenic, and radioisotopes. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious—and dangerous—asset. As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.
Book
In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The most famous true crime novel of all time "chills the blood and exercises the intelligence" (The New York Review of Books)—and haunted its author long after he finished writing it. On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. In one of the first non-fiction novels ever written, Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, generating both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.
Item Not Found
ID: 014131141X
(Type: books)
Book
The Best of Roald Dahl
by Roald Dahl
Includes the story "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar" now an ACADEMY AWARD®-winning short film from Wes Anderson on Netflix A collection of the best short stories from a writer with "an ingenious imagination, a fascination with odd and ordinary detail, and a lust for its thorough exploitation" (The New York Times Book Review). If Stephen King could write with murderous concision, he might have come up with "The Landlady," the story of a boarding house with an oddly talented proprietress and a small but permanent clientele. If Clive Barker had a sense of humor, he might have written "Pig," a brutally funny look at cooks and vegetarianism. And a more bloodthirsty Jorge Luis Borges might have imagined the fanatical little gambler in "Man From the South," who does his betting with a hammer, nails, and a butcher knife. But all these stories in this volume were written by Roald Dahl, whose genius for the horrific and grotesque is unparalleled and entirely his own.
Book
The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger
The "brilliant, funny, meaningful novel" (The New Yorker) that established J. D. Salinger as a leading voice in American literature--and that has instilled in millions of readers around the world a lifelong love of books. "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caufield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days.
Book
Breakfast at Tiffany's
by Truman Capote
Holly Golightly knows that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany's. In this seductive, wistful masterpiece, Capote created a woman whose name has entered the American idiom and whose style is a part of the literary landscape—her poignancy, wit, and naïveté continue to charm. This volume also includes three of Capote's best-known stories, “House of Flowers,” “A Diamond Guitar,” and “A Christmas Memory,” which the Saturday Review called “one of the most moving stories in our language.” It is a tale of two innocents—a small boy and the old woman who is his best friend—whose sweetness contains a hard, sharp kernel of truth.
Item Not Found
ID: 0670059544
(Type: books)
Book
The Killer Inside Me
by Jim Thompson
In a small town in Texas there is a sheriff's deputy named Lou Ford, a man so dull that he lives in cliches, so good-natured that he doesn't even lay a finger on the drunks who come into his custody. But then, that would be too easy, for Lou's sickness requires other victims. . . . A nightmarish book of psychopathic evil.
Book
Pop. 1280
by Jim Thompson
Sheriff Nick Corey of Potts County, is a simple man, but when he is pushed to far he becomes a killer or makes other people do his killings.
Item Not Found
ID: 0679732535
(Type: books)
Book
Matilda
by Roald Dahl
For most kids, aThe Trunchbulla is pure terror, but for Matilda, sheas a sitting duck.
Book
The Westing Game
by Ellen Raskin
NEWBERY MEDAL WINNER • Ellen Raskin's unforgettable, timeless classic continues to be cherished by young readers of each new generation. "Great fun for those who enjoy illusion, word play, or sleight of hand." —The New York Times Book Review A highly inventive mystery begins when sixteen unlikely people gather for the reading of the very strange will of the very rich Samuel W. Westing. They could become millionaires, depending on how they play a game. All they have to do is find the answer—but the answer to what? The Westing game is tricky and dangerous, but the heirs play on—through blizzards, burglaries, and bombings. Sam Westing may be dead ... but that won't stop him from playing one last game! Ellen Raskin has created a remarkable cast of characters in a puzzle-knotted, word-twisting plot filled with humor, intrigue, and suspense. Winner of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award • An ALA Notable Book • A School Library Journal One Hundred Books That Shaped the Century
Item Not Found
ID: 0394800788
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0140329455
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 039480077X
(Type: books)
Book
Harriet the Spy
by Louise Fitzhugh
It's no secret that Harriet the Spy is a timeless classic that kids will love! Every day can be an adventure if you just look carefully enough! Harriet M. Welsch is a spy. In her notebook, she writes down everything she knows about everyone, even her classmates and her best friends. Then Harriet loses track of her notebook, and it ends up in the wrong hands. Before she can stop them, her friends have read the always truthful, sometimes awful things she’s written about each of them. Will Harriet find a way to put her life and her friendships back together? "What the novel showed me as a child is that words have the power to hurt, but they can also heal, and that it’s much better in the long run to use this power for good than for evil."—New York Times bestselling author Meg Cabot