Strange Dreams - Collected Stories & Drawings by Brian Andreas
The pictures in this book remind me of something my father might draw if he drew like this. It's a collection of tiny stories with bizarre pictures that are a cross between a school child's and what someone who had been trapped on a deserted island since birth, but had things he'd never seen explained to him might draw. I told him if he kept being mean to his brother he might come back as a rodent in his next life & he shrugged & said that's the chance he'd have to take.
Jenny and the Jaws of Life by Jincy Willett
This is a dark little short story collection. I don't normally read short story collections. I prefer novels, but I loved this one. She's like a modern Flannery O'Conner without all the religion or deformity.
A Widow for One Year by John Irving
John Irving writes long books that eventually get turned into movies. When they're put on screen large parts of them usually have to be sacrificed. The very beginning of this book was turned into a movie with Jeff Bridges and Nicole Kidman called the Door in the Floor. There's a whole other portion of the book where the little girl grows up and some prostitutes are killed and it's just a really really amazing book. Especially the bits explaining how one of the main characters came up with the idea for a children's book called the Door in the Floor.
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
The world is wiped out one day and the only people left in existence are stranded on a deserted island in the Galapagos and all they have with them is this high tech machine they think is a communications device or super smart computer, but really just contains a huge library of quotes, so over the years they ask it questions and every answer it gives is a different quote. Eventually their descendents grow flippers and become a different species. Most people who read Vonnegut will recommend Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five. Try Galapagos instead.
Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or, There Must Be More to Life by Maurice Sendak
Jennie the dog thinks there must be more to life than having everything, so she leaves home only to discover she has everything except for experience. She carries a sandwich board and becomes a nurse for a baby who refuses to eat. Then she narrowly avoids being eaten by a lion in the basement.
Bitter With Baggage Seeks Same: The Life and Times of Some Chickens by Sloane Tanen
Sloane Tanen is an artist who creates little dioramas with chickens. She compiled the best ones into a book. They're hilarious. I loved them so much I even bought the calender.
Holes by Louis Sachar
I love children's literature when it's written well. The story's set in the present and the past. A kid named Stanley Yelnats is accused of stealing some shoes and gets sent to a camp out in the desert for juvenile delinquents where he has to dig holes all day. And the desert used to be this lake. So there are these flashbacks to the past when the desert was still a lake and what happened to make it turn into a desert.
I love Louis Sachar.
Five Children and It by E. Nesbit
An old fashioned story about five children who go to the beach and discover a creature who grants wishes.
The Elephant and the Bad Baby by Elfrida Vipont
A bad baby rides around town on the back of an elephant and steals things until eventually all the people he stole things from are chasing him. After a while the elephant stops running and the baby gets in trouble and they all eat pancakes. (For serious.)
The Dog is Not a Toy by Darby Conley
Get Fuzzy is hilarious. Not many comics consistently make me laugh, but Satchel and Bucky Katt tickle my funny bone.