Reddit mentions: The best biographical fiction books

You probably already know that before 1910, the movie industry was mostly based in New York City and New Jersey, where Thomas Edison's company was headquartered. There were also some filmmakers in Chicago and elsewhere, but metro New York was by far North America's largest film center.

The usual answer you will get to this question is that filmmakers moved out to L.A. to escape the "Edison Trust", i.e. the Motion Picture Patents Company, a corporate entity set up by Edison and some of his largest pre-1910 competitors to control filmmaking patents. But this isn't true. In fact, two of the first three movie producers to move out to L.A. were Selig Polyscope and Biograph, both of whom were members of the Edison Trust. They both had built facilities in L.A. by the end of 1909.

Three more Trust member producers--Vitagraph, Essanay, and Kalem--had all started production in the L.A. area by 1911.

Independent producers, in fact, didn't move to L.A. to get away from the Edison Trust. They followed them out there!

The guy who played the biggest role in initiating the film industry's move to Los Angeles was the head of Selig Polyscope, William Selig. His production company was based in Chicago, but he sent a film crew out to Colorado a few months every year to make Westerns (before the term "Western" had been coined). Selig was a firm believer in using natural locations in order for his films to look more believable. He was on to something, because Polyscope was the second most profitable film producer in the U.S. before 1910.

These Westerns were so successful that, in 1906, Selig started exploring the possibility of setting up a permanent West Coast operation. This led to him sending out a film crew to L.A. in March 1909. Polyscope rented out the backyard of Sing Kee's Chinese laundry for three months, located at 751 S. Olive Street in downtown Los Angeles, and began shooting films.

The film crew reported back to Selig that filming conditions in L.A. were ideal, and the available talent and filmmaking materials were passable. So when the Sing Kee lease was up, the film crew traveled up the Pacific Coast making more Westerns, while William Selig had a representative find a suitable lot in L.A. to purchase.

Located at 1845 Allesandro Street, Selig Polyscope bought the first movie lot in Los Angeles history on August 26, 1909. By the end of the year, Polyscope had produced fifty one-reel shorts in Los Angeles. They issued a press release indicating that Polyscope would now permanently be producing two one-reel films every single week--one at their Chicago studio, and one at their Los Angeles studio. By the end of the next year, Polyscope had finished building a permanent indoor studio on their L.A. property to go with their outdoor lot.

Shortly after the initial purchase, in September 1909, William Selig was overseas in London meeting with European film distributors interested in his library of films. While there, he gave an interview with the Kinematograph & Lantern Weekly which was reprinted in New York's The Film Index that same month. In the interview, Selig explained that the move to Los Angeles was for the realism the natural landscape and scenery of the area offered:

> "Our studios and stables in Chicago extend over five acres, and we have another five acres in Los Angeles, where we get our best scenic effects from. We believe in giving the public the most realistic picture we can get, and we're spending a lot of money on it, too. But it will come back."

Selig was followed out there almost immediately by other companies. By the end of the year, an upstart independent company called the New York Motion Picture Company bought a lot right down the street from Polyscope, which was weird since it was on a dirt road three miles outside of downtown L.A.

Why would a non-Trust movie producer move so close to one of the Trust members? MGM director Robert Leonard later offered up an explanation. He had been an actor for Polyscope that came out with the first crew in 1909. In a 1939 Chicago Tribune interview, he explained that in those days, when he wasn't acting, he was tasked with "patrolling the film location armed with a loaded gun to 'scare, if not shoot' cameramen from independent companies attempting to surreptitiously film the Selig production and pass it off as their own."

"Bison Pictures" was the imprint that the New York Motion Picture Company used for their Westerns. Funny they should open up right down the street from Polyscope, the premiere Western producer in the world at that time.

Biograph, another member of the Edison Trust, arrived in L.A. in January 1910. They came partially for the same reason--to shoot Westerns in cooperative weather--but that wasn't the only reason. By 1910, the big Eastern film companies were big enough that they needed to expand their studio space in order to have multiple film crews operating year-round. Real estate was expensive in New York and Chicago. But in L.A., even though real estate was booming, a whole ranch or farm could still be bought at an excusable price.

Thus, the Moving Picture World reported in their January 29, 1910, issue, about Biograph's move:

> "Having exhausted all the facilities of their cramped but well utilized studio on Fourteenth Street [in New York City] they realized that they were handicapped in futher progress, therefore another site was looked for. After careful study of the advantages of several locations a plot of land in the Bronx was selected as the ideal spot...
>
> "But this is not all. Acute minds perceived that the march of progress must not await the new habitation; the rural settings around [metro New York] had been well nigh exhausted: the inclemency of the season made journeys into the country a severe task. So on Wednesday, January 19, [1910,] the entire Biograph stock company, with [D.W.] Griffith, director-in-chief, was dispatched on fast trains to the sunny and picturesque lands of Southern California. With headquarters in Los Angeles, where a developing plant has already been installed, with a careful selection of scenarios suitable for that region and with the inspiring influence which a delightful climate must exert on the artistic temperament, we may look forward to seeing on the screen, pictures that will yet more and more maintain the Biograph name for quality."

Other East Coast companies, who had done seasonal shooting in previous years in places like Florida, quickly saw the advantages. Movies were already big business, so any move out West was met by small town governments in Southern California clamoring to give these businesses favorable tax and real estate deals.

In 1914, Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Pictures, took an ad out in the L.A. Times, offering to move his studio to whichever Southern California town gave him the most favorable financial terms. This led to Laemmle buying more than six hundred acres of land on the edge of L.A., which he renamed "Universal City" when it opened later that year. If Los Angeles wasn't already synonymous with the movie industry before that, it was then.

The term "Hollywood" and the Hollywood section of L.A. specifically being synonymous with the movie industry came a little bit later, in the 1920s.

Over the years, many legends have grown up around the start of the film industry in L.A., with several different people claiming responsibility. These include the aforementioned D.W. Griffith as well as Cecille B. De Mille. Misinformation surrounding the Edison Trust's role in the move to L.A. has circulated since the 1930s. A lot of the above information comes from the meticulously researched book Col. William N. Selig: The Man Who Invented Hollywood by Andrew A. Erish. The author gives a rundown of how this Ediston Trust misinformation got its start:

>In his 1931 History of the Movies, Benjamin B. Hampton recognized Selig for having "discovered Los Angeles," but incorrectly identified him as an independent filmmaker whose motivation was to "produce pictures in places so remote that [Edison] subpoena-servers and confiscators of cameras would have trouble finding his troupes." Hampton claimed that other independents "investigated Selig's operations, and unhesitatingly settled in and near Los Angeles because it was close to the Mexican border." The widely regarded 1938 History of Motion Pictures, written by Frenchmen Maurice Bardeche and Robert Brasillach, elaborated on Hampton, asserting that "if [MPPC] detectives turned up, [the independents] could pile actors, scenery and cameras into a car and disappear across the border for a few days." Both Kenneth Macgowan's 1965 History and Jeanne Thomas Allen's chapter in Tino Balio's influential American Film Industry, published in 1976, repeat earlier claims about Selig as a former independent leading other outlaw filmmakers to Los Angeles, while admitting ambivalence about the obvious contradictions. The claim about Mexico's proximity to Los Angeles is especially ludicrous; L.A. is approximately 150 miles from the border, and in 1909 was reachable only by railroad or dirt roads traveled by horse and wagon, negating any fast getaways, not that there was ever any need for them...
>
>"In the parlance of 1911, William Selig had become a 'moving picture magnate.' The Selig Polyscope Company was second only to Vitagraph as the most profitable American motion picture firm. Because Selig went to Los Angeles, others followed."

(...To be continued...)

You have to keep in mind that those books were incredibly "popular" during the 40's and 50's -- and that Roddenberry in many ways specifically "cribbed" a lot of ideas for Kirk (as a version of Forester's Hornblower "Man alone") as well as Spock (i.e. akin to the Lt Bush character).

And I agree wholeheartedly that something like that would be a GREAT concept -- albeit it would probably be problematic in that you'd need to start with a YOUNG actor, and most likely at some point along the way, they (along with probably a lot of the production staff, esp. writers, etc) would "balk" at spending their entire career essentially playing just the one character (and at least initially, possibly not even the MAIN character in terms of action, even if it were the "common thread" linking all the iterations together).

No to mention that it's rather unlikely that every iteration of it would be equally well received -- and so whatever producing entity (much as with the HH show series) would probably stop at some point along the way.

---

Little side note is that the lead/star of those Hornblower shows -- Ioan Gruffudd -- really wanted to continue... and [has apparently made several attempts (or one long continuing attempt) to gain the rights and/or get production rolling on the rest of the series, to wit:

>>“We have only scratched the surface of what we could do,” says Gruffudd, noting that the eight movies only cover three of Forester’s 11 Hornblower books, which chronicle the sailor’s rise from midshipman to admiral. “I began doing those films when I was 23, and I think it would be amazing for one actor to visit the same part over the course of his career, playing the character’s whole span of life. If Ringer is a success, and my star continues to rise, I might be in a position to put this together. I would really love to do it.”.

But alas it doesn't seem to be happening.

---

Also, while some fans of HH might already be aware of the following, for those who are not, I cannot possibly give too high of a recommendation for the following additional "Hornblower" things:

• The Hornblower Companion which has not only maps & notes on each voyage/book, but really interesting and rather funny text from C.S. Forester on the evolution of the writing of that series, how and why he came up with the character, what he was trying to achieve via it, etc. (including the fact that he never set out to write it as a series, and in the end they weren't really written "in order" but rather were done somewhat randomly, with a lot of the later books "filling in the gaps" in HH's career).
  
  
• The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower -- written by a man (C. Northcote Parkinson) who is almost as amazing & interesting an author as Forester -- this "authorized biography" of the [fictional] HH character, well it does a thoroughly enjoyable job (including reading very much like a REAL biography, complete with "uncertainties" and a few remaining "gaps", etc) fills in virtually ALL OF THE REST of HH's life (i.e. childhood, post navy career, etc) -- and is just a great romp for anyone who loves the HH series (but beware, one should only read it AFTER having completely read -- at least once -- all of Forester's novels, lest you "spoil" the fun of reading them).

• Seconding White Oleander....never saw the movie, but the book hit me hard.
  
• I'm really curious about Foster Boy, which just came out this month.
  
  Lots of animated movies. Off the top of my head....
  
  
• When Marnie Was There - It's kind of trippy, but worth it. And the girl's anxieties about being a foster kid felt so true (like worrying that her FP was in it for the money), it made me wonder whether some feelings are just part of the foster care experience even when it occurs in a vastly different country and culture.
  
• Approved for Adoption, which is also a series of graphic novels. It's more about adoption than foster care, but a lot of the themes and issues are the same. And it's another movie that shows what those experiences are like outside the US.
  
• The Prince of Egypt is technically from before foster care existed (it's the story of Moses from the Bible) but that's more or less what it is: His mother, a slave, is unable to raise him; for his own safety he's brought up by another family. The focus is on Moses' conflicting loyalties to his adoptive family and his biological siblings, there's also a lot of subtext about class and privilege. I always found his identity issues so relatable. Growing up, I had a hard time understanding I wasn't born to the people I lived with.
  
• Peripherally Lilo and Stitch does: it's very sympathetic toward the sort of families whose kids end up in the system as well as the circumstances they find themselves in. >!Though Lilo avoids it in the end,!< foster care is the big threat hanging over the whole movie. It's a Disney cartoon about an alien, sure, but I think there's also some interesting commentary in there on child welfare/CPS.
  
  I can't recommend much on TV, mostly because I don't watch enough.
  
  
• This is Us though, for sure. By far some of the most realistic depictions of system life I've seen in any media. That shit was triggering. I missed the last season though, so idk how it holds up. Adoption's a really big part of the show too.
  
• I couldn't get into The Fosters, I can't put my finger on why, but I know other FFY who like it a lot. And it's probably the media on foster kids that "outsiders" are most familiar with.
  
  Books:
  
  
• Non-fiction stuff on historical foster care: Into the Arms of Strangers, Other People's Houses (both about the Kindertransports); Twice Orphaned (about Japanese-American foster kids in the internment camps).

Will start by throwing a few into the ring:

The Beach by Alex Garland - While its plot is certainly limited with regard to imitability, it offers a very interesting perspective on the types of people you meet in the more interesting places you'll travel.

Vagabonding by Rolf Potts - A quintessential nonfiction guide for anyone who's considering traveling long term. It's preachy in places, but it'll fire you up to get moving.

Off the Rails in Phnom Penh by Amit Gilboa - You'll see this one being sold by street children in Phnom Penh often, but it's not too hard to find a copy anywhere else. A really great, enjoyable view of expat life in Phnom Penh.

Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac - On the Road is, of course, the standard American road novel, and Jack's most famous, but the Dharma Bums offers a really unique perspective on travel - that of a spiritual nature.

The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner - Another highly enjoyable read by an author who travels to the world's most purported "happy" countries. Great take on the subject area.

I recommend this book a lot but Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You In All the Confusion by Johan Harstad seems like it would fit. It's a Norwegian novel about a thirty something year old gardener named Mattias who strives to live an average life, content to fly under the radar. The writing style is absolutely beautiful and Harstad uses emotion very well throughout. Additionally, it has one of my favorite first sentences in a book. "The person you love is 72.8% water, and it hasn’t rained for weeks."

http://www.amazon.com/Buzz-Aldrin-What-Happened-Confusion/dp/B00AK42A9A

Girl in a Blue Dress was an interesting book. http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Blue-Dress-Inspired-Marriage/dp/0307463028

"At the end of her life, Catherine, the cast-off wife of Charles Dickens, gave the letters she had received from her husband to their daughter Kate, asking her to donate them to the British Museum, “so the world may know that he loved me once.” The incredible vulnerability and heartache evident beneath the surface of this remark inspired Gaynor Arnold to write Girl in a Blue Dress, a dazzling debut novel inspired by the life of this tragic yet devoted woman. "

Edit - I actually really like Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald as well, speaking of books about women married to famous authors.

This is Erol's hilarious standup-comedy channel, where he exposes corrupt cops, serial-killers, kangaroo courts, "paedophiles," social-workers and all the other "hostile-dependents," including puppet politicians and the slowly-genocidal Zionist Jews, behind it all.

I.e. The evil beasts who hide-in-plain-view; You've almost no time left because of them and are "surrounded" by magical-thinking, evil, deliberately "worth-less," incontinent-assholes, who are "sex-offenders" obsessed with the illusion of "transference," which if they can't get you to "choose" to cause yourself brain-damage, the "cerebral" sex-offender then
becomes "somatic."

So to save "yourself" and your family, in the little time you've got left, allow yourself to be "deprogrammed" by a hilariously-funny profound genius, who simply "reflects" the truth, in times where you're executed for knowing, what Erol selflessly and morally ROARS !!

http://Youtube.com/ErolOnShow

Erol has dedicated the last 20 years of his life, to helping poor families, internationally, work their way out of poverty. All proceeds from his works go to helping fatherless families have a better standard of life. "Knowing" this, the psychopaths who's wages "you" are paying, have tried and are stilly trying to commit every offence you could imagine against him.

This is a link to all of Erol's music, which is free. The 1st 4 albums are taken from his 1st novel, "Veracity Vs Adversity." Which is a musical-picture-book, Erol Christened "The Mook."

http://Youtube.com/ErolOnMusic

This is the link to his novel, "Veracity Vs Adversity." Where the art work and literature make it the greatest "Mook" of all time. The writer, Erol, is the world's leading light on psychopaths and in this deeply moving novel, Erol documents recovery from P.T.S.D., exhibiting his renown for "knowing" the inner workings of the brain of the psychopath, due to his
decades of selfless social-experiments with evil beasts.

http://www.amazon.com/Veracity-Vs-Adversity-Volume-1/dp/1494480212

This is Erol's world-famous wordpress site, where he exposes "top secrets" for free, which the genocidal hair-brained-bunch, don't want you to know, so that the extremely-self-deluded beasts can con-tinue to ameliorate against what they've "become," who simply see you as narcissistic "supply."

They're promoted in socities, when those countries are about to become "reset," as best seen in Dresden, only 7 decades ago. The meritless sex-offenders want to stand before you and get their "hit" from abusing you, especially covertly when you "look up to" them. Even-though they know that means they go-down with the Titanic too.

Erol has selflessly carried out social-experiments where he's exposed entire organised "rings" of sex-offenders, you're supposed to see as authority and he unravels the entire ball of confusion and simplifies it, for those with a "depth" of character and a concentration span longer than a tweet !!

http://Christlikebe.wordpress.com

You can see his art gallery, taken from the same novel, in this fabulous collection. Each work of art can be scaled to "any" size. The originals are all 4'4" tall. Which the literature floats above, on every page of the Mook.

http://imagekind.com/art/stunning/erol-/artwork-on/fine-art-prints

This is Erol's hilarious standup-comedy channel, where he exposes corrupt cops, serial-killers, kangaroo courts, "paedophiles," social-workers and all the other "hostile-dependents," including puppet politicians and the slowly-genocidal
Zionist Jews, behind it all.

I.e. The evil beasts who hide-in-plain-view; You've almost no time left because of them and are "surrounded" by magical-thinking, evil, deliberately "worth-less," incontinent-assholes, who are "sex-offenders" obsessed with the illusion of "transference," which if they can't get you to "choose" to cause yourself brain-damage, the "cerebral" sex-offender then becomes "somatic."

So to save "yourself" and your family, in the little time you've got left, allow yourself to be "deprogrammed" by a hilariously-funny profound genius, who simply "reflects" the truth, in times where you're executed for knowing, what Erol selflessly and morally ROARS !!

http://Youtube.com/ErolOnShow

Erol has dedicated the last 20 years of his life, to helping poor families, internationally, work their way out of poverty. All proceeds from his works go to helping fatherless families have a better standard of life. "Knowing" this, the
psychopaths who's wages "you" are paying, still tried to commit every offence you could imagine against him.

This is a link to all of Erol's music, which is free. The 1st 4 albums are taken from his 1st novel, "Veracity Vs Adversity." Which is a musical picture book, Erol Christened "The Mook."

http://Youtube.com/ErolOnMusic

This is the link to his novel, "Veracity Vs Adversity." Where the art work and literature make it the greatest "Mook" of all time. The writer, Erol, is the world's leading light on psychopaths and in this deeply moving novel, Erol documents recovery from P.T.S.D., exhibiting his renown for "knowing" the inner workings of the brain of the psychopath, due to his decades of selfless social-experiments with evil beasts.

http://www.amazon.com/Veracity-Vs-Adversity-Volume-1/dp/1494480212

This is Erol's world-famous wordpress site, where he exposes "top secrets" for free, which the genocidal hair-brained-bunch, don't want you to know, so that the extremely-self-deluded beasts can con-tinue to ameliorate against what they've
"become," who simply see you as narcissistic "supply."

They're promoted in socities, when those countries are about to become "reset," as best seen in Dresden, only 7 decades ago. The meritless sex-offenders want to stand before you and get their "hit" from abusing you, especially covertly when
you "look up to" them. Even-though they know that means they go-down with the Titanic too.

Erol has selflessly carried out social-experiments where he's exposed entire organised "rings" of sex-offenders, you're supposed to see as authority and he unravels the entire ball of confusion and simplifies it, for those with a "depth" of
character and a concentration span longer than a tweet !!

http://Christlikebe.wordpress.com

You can see his art gallery, taken from the same novel, in this fabulous collection. Each work of art can be scaled to "any" size. The originals are all 4'4" tall. Which the literature floats above, on every page of the Mook.

http://imagekind.com/art/stunning/erol-/artwork-on/fine-art-prints

For anyone who saw and enjoyed the movie, I highly recommend the book. Gibson's film does a surprisingly good job of mirroring the real-life story, with some obvious artistic liberties taken (Doss was drafted; he volunteered in the film, which inevitably created a continuity error as it was never explained in great depth why he chose to join up. There was a brief explanation, but it was more of a showing than a telling).

The battle on Okinawa was visceral and gut-wrenching, while artful - as is Gibson's style. The first act drags a tad but the film roars into its second half and emerges as something totally different. Does it have issues? Sure, but the whole is ultimately greater than the sum of its parts.

You don't need to be a pacifist or a Christian or even a fan of Gibson's films to enjoy it. Just mentally prepare yourself, subsequently accept that no matter what you do you won't be fully prepared, and see it.

Hey! Most of the Dialogue was written by my development partner, Jon Kittaka. The dialogue I worked on was most of the stuff in the Cube King area, Young Town, and pretty much all of the post-game stuff, though most of the rest Jon and I quickly agreed upon (everything that goes into the games we make usually gets sanity checked by the other.)

Jon actually has illustrated a book which is an inspiration for our current in-development game Even the Ocean .
His tumblr has links to his comics he's written and some blog posts - https://twitter.com/jonkittaka .

We share a similar philosophy with dialogue for our games, though. I don't think we did this very well with anodyne (the gameplay is dissonant relative to the way dialogue works), but we like dialogue and writing to be a way of evoking the themes of an area in a more approachable manner. That is, you may convey some ideas about humanity through the music, structure of levels, the gameplay, and the art, but those are less tangible than dialogue that was written with the themes in mind. So we like to use dialogue as something to compliment the less "tangible" aspects of our games.

In Anodyne for example the little stories of the Fields NPCs sort of show their carefree lives, but this is still dissonant from the fact you're killing stuff with a broom...with Even the Ocean, we are approaching NPCs in a similar manner, but we did a lot more planning with the themes and game structure, plus, the themes all have to do with the abstract idea of balance, which is completely core to the gameplay mechanics (check out the demo!) . And so, we think the dialogue will seem more fitting with the gameplay as a result. We'll see!

I have read Zekarias' book (the original German version) and I can highly recommend it.

German version: http://www.amazon.de/Hoffnung-Herzen-Freiheit-Sinn-Aufgeschrieben/dp/340460167X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418221145&sr=8-1&keywords=kebraeb

English version: http://www.amazon.de/Paradise-Denied-survived-Journey-Eritrea-ebook/dp/B00O7X66WC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1418221145&sr=8-2&keywords=kebraeb

I have even met him several times in person and I can only say that I am very impressed; he is very smart and he wants to spend his life on improving the situation for the Eritrean people in Eritrea and in the diaspora.

Sure. If nothing else it's a great story. Ideally I'd recommend the translation by Igor de Rachewiltz, but it's really pricey. Urgunge Onon's is cheaper and, I hear, quite readable. Or if you can stomach King James English Arthur Waley's is even cheaper and Cleaves' is available free online (seriously though those last two translations are a chore – if you're put off by them look into one of the modern, plain English versions rather than giving up).

I've also been putting in long hours between two jobs lately, so I haven't been doing much of anything. I'm *very slowly* making my way through the new season of Stranger Things. It's been pretty good so far, I think I just finished the fourth episode last night? Maybe it was only the third. Show's how much attention I've been paying to it.

I also just ordered the book Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler. It's pretty far out of my normal genre, but something about it sparked my interest. Amazon had it for only $10 (my local brick-and-mortar didn't have it in stock) so I figured why not. It's supposed to be delivered tomorrow, but I'm looking forward to the read. It's also supposed to be released as a series on Starz soon, although I don't get that channel.

Thank you for replying and answering my questions. As a non-childbearing woman myself, let me recommend you some books I've read to help me with understanding our place in this world.

Motherhood: A Novel, by Shelia Heti

Selfish, Shallow, and Self Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids by Meghan Daum

The M Word: Conversations About Motherhood by Kerry Clare

I highly recommend [Ishmael by Daniel Quinn] (https://www.amazon.com/Ishmael-Novel-Daniel-Quinn/dp/0553375407/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505685091&sr=8-1&keywords=ishmael+daniel+quinn) and [Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac] (https://www.amazon.com/Dharma-Bums-Jack-Kerouac/dp/0140042520/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505685168&sr=8-1&keywords=dharma+bums+by+jack+kerouac).

The narrators of both books are looking to understand life, or to put their existence in some sort of context. Over the course of their adventures, they find out how to exist in the world in a way that empowers them and celebrates their uniqueness.

If you're interested in CSI-type stuff, a friend of mine wrote a book that I found to be quite good.
http://www.amazon.com/Bunny-Suits-Death-Tales-ebook/dp/B0084V0U1Q

Article is fluff plus a list of links to mostly public domain books. Focused on Kindle users.

• Wuthering Heights
  
• Great Expectations
  
• Bleak House
  
• Walden
  
• The Three Musketeers
  
• Les Misérables
  
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
  
• Siddhartha
  
• Anna Karenina
  
• Leaves of Grass
  
• Heart of Darkness
  
• Pride and Prejudice
  
• Robinson Crusoe
  
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
  
• The Jungle
  
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
  
• The Invisible Man
  
• The Mysterious Island
  
• From the Earth to the Moon
  
• The Island of Doctor Moreau
  
• Vanity Fair
  
• Roughing It
  
• Ivanhoe
  
• Beyond Good and Evil
  
• The Last of the Mohicans
  
• Accelerando
  
• Little Brother

Try this one - http://www.amazon.ca/Coffee-Isaac-Newton-Michael-White/dp/1844836118

The author creates a fake interview with him in order to portray what he was like. I have one with Newton and one with Einstein. Pretty fun read!

Oh look, he's written a book--

UNDOUBTEDLY The GREATEST Novel of All Time A Work of Art In It's [sic] Own Right

Also the title of a great novel
https://www.amazon.com/Ha-Ha-Novel-Dave-King/dp/0316010715

Mickey Sabbath from Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater is a pretty red pill character, and the book is hilarious. And Hannibal Lecter, also.

"How could he leave? How could he go? Everything he hated was here." Sabbath's Theater

Perfect end to a great book.

You could try out Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, has elements of Buddhism throughout.

"The Dharma Bums was published one year after On the Road made Jack Kerouac a celebrity and a spokesperson for the Beat Generation. Sparked by his contagious zest for life, the novel relates the adventures of an ebullient group of Beatnik seekers in a freewheeling exploration of Buddhism and the search for Truth."

I continue to do the same with Dharma Bums. There's something about not getting the book back that's I secretly enjoy.

The Dharma Bums Jack Kerouac

much better