Suggested reading lists.

Compiled by Bill Meyers of III Publishing.

I've read thousands of books, written a few, and published over a dozen. Most of the books in this list are pretty well known, but maybe you missed some of them, or just want to know what I think.

Ten favorite works of fiction, overall (limit one per author):

Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
The Four-Gated City by Dorris Lessing
The Hamlet by William Faulkner
The Carreta by B. Traven
1984 by George Orwell
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
Babbit by Sinclair Lewis
Germinal by Emile Zola
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
A Measure of Time by Rosa Guy

Ten favorite works of non-fiction, overall

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
History of the Great American Fortunes by Gustavus Myers
On the Nature of Things by Lucretius
The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico by Bernal Diaz del Castillo
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
The First Casualty by Philip Knightley
Living My Life by Emma Goldman
The Anti-Federalist Papers
History by Herodotus
The Panda's Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould

Ten favorite science fiction books (limit one per author)

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
The Black Hole Travel Agency by Jack McKinney
Illuminatus by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Dawn by Octavia Butler
The World of Null-A by A. E. Van Vogt
The Dosadi Experiment Frank Herbert
Pyrexia by Michel Mery
Proteus in the Underworld by Charles Sheffield

Ten best underground/small press/overlooked books since 1985

The Last Days of Christ the Vampire by J.G. Eccarius
Pyrexia by Michel Mery
The Confession of Jack Straw by Simone Zelitch
A Crystal Diary by Frankie Hucklebroich
Hellflower by Eluki Bes Shahar
Far From the Angels by Ben Tarver

The real problem with any such list is the commercial system we have for new books (censorship by control of distribution) and the preserved-only-if-academicians-like-it system that most of us use to find out about old books.

Consider the following paradigm:

1. The best books written today are among the unpublished and unpublishable manuscripts.
2. The best books published today are published by small and vanity presses, or self-published.
3. The next-best tier of books are published by mid-list publishers.
4. The worst books tend to be published by the biggest companies, with the biggest marketing budget.

It is the opposite of what most ordinary readers think, but it is probably nearer the truth than the dominant paradigm.

Why is it independent (self-publishing) film makers are glorified, but self-publishing a book consigns it to ridicule, without ever having been read?

Click on the Amazon.com graphic below and use their search services to buy any of the above books.