Books Id Like to Buy Doug Watson (Hi Doug!)
Discover Doug Watson's curated must-read list—from Cormac McCarthy's *Child of God* and Annie Proulx's *Brokeback Mountain* to Craig Thompson's *Blankets*. Explore a diverse mix of fiction, history, and graphic novels in this essential books-to-buy collection.
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Bats Out of Hell
by Barry Hannah
Three works from one of the most original and universally praised American writers of this century. Love and torment, lunacy and desire, tenderness and war--these stories provide a brilliant, dazzling odyssey into American life. No one but Barry Hannah could create these vivid worlds with such poetic detail.
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Child of God
by Cormac McCarthy
From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road • In this taut, chilling story, Lester Ballard—a violent, dispossessed man falsely accused of rape—haunts the hill country of East Tennessee when he is released from jail. While telling his story, Cormac McCarthy depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humor, and characteristic lyrical brilliance. "Like the novelists he admires-Melville, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner-Cormac McCarthy has created an imaginative oeuvre greater and deeper than any single book. Such writers wrestle with the gods themselves." —Washington Post
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Brokeback Mountain
by Annie Proulx
The friendship between Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two cowboys, evolves into an intimate relationship while they are working together as a herder and camp tender, sharing a bond that spans many years and frequent separations.
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Hitler's Pope
by John Cornwell
Draws on secret archives to present a record of the career of Pope Pius XII, showing his collaboration with the Nazis and his anti-Semitism, and discusses his continuing influence.
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The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
by Breece D'J Pancake
Breece D'J Pancake cut short a promising career when he took his own life at the age twenty-six. Published posthumously, this is a collection of stories that depict the world of Pancake's native rural West Virginia.
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The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test
by Tom Wolfe
Wolfe details his wild cross-country ride with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, offering a vivid portrayal of the hippy subculture in its own joyful, psychedelic, excessive, and terrifying colors.
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Cathedral
by Raymond Carver
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • Twelve short stories that mark a turning point in the work of “one of the true American masters" (The New York Review of Books). “A writer of astonishing compassion and honesty … His eye is so clear, it almost breaks your heart.” —The Washington Post Book World A remarkable collection that includes the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the very different world of another. These twelve stories “overflow with the danger, excitement, mystery and possibility of life.” —The Washington Post Book World
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Blankets
by Craig Thompson
This is a highly charged, personal story, crammed with pain, discovery, family and first love.