I don't know if it's strange, but I love the way I ended up with every Vonnegut novel. I already owned about half of them when I walked into my local used book store one day. As I was perusing the shelves, I noticed the Vonnegut section was large. I pulled all the ones I didn't already own and went to buy them. The clerk told me someone had just sold them hundreds of books including all the Vonneguts. After I got home I was able to confirm that I now had all of the novels!

oh awesome! That's definitely good timing. Did you get the book Bagombo Snuff Box?

When I was in college a friend of mine stole (yes, I know!) an old Everyman copy of Lord Dunsany’s Book of Wonder from the library: it was a 1920’s oxblood leather-bound copy, beautiful and exciting.

I always coveted that book and remembered it.

20 years later I was telling a friend in another city about it. She managed to score a copy of it for my birthday, and gave it to me.

Less than a week later my college friend, whom I hadn’t spoken to in a decade or more, sent me the stolen copy in the mail. It was packaged carefully with a note saying he remembered how much I loved the book, saying he’d tried to give it back to the college library but they didn’t really want it as they’d moved to mostly digital systems and weren’t currently expanding their fiction collection.

So now I have two copies: they’re both my favorite.

It actually reminds me of one of my experiences in college that I totally forgot about. Same thing, one of my friends stole a book. But looking back on it, the book that he stole was extremely rare. There was a rare book shop near the campus, and for some reason he just walked in and swiped it off a shelf. But it was odd because I wasn't even a very close friend of his, he felt the need to give it to me, which was random. Eventually I ended up losing that book and then years later I remembered that experience and I tried looking for that book to buy a copy of it, that's when I realized how rare it was, I finally bought it but it was pricey, since then it's doubled in value which is nice though.

Hmm.. Lord Dunsany.. I'm not familiar with him.. Sounds interesting I'll have to read about him. Great story, thanks!

So, I have a thing against short stories (it's a flaw, I know). Vonnegut is a rare exception where I have read some of his short stories, but certainly not all. I own some of his short story collections, but I don't own that one.

Well, I think you definitely got lucky with your Vonnegut collection because I always try to find his books at the used bookstore and only very rarely do I find any by him. The last one I found was that Snuff Box book, I've been meaning to get around to it, I haven't gotten into it yet but it seems promising.

Not really strange but I saw an advertisement for a book called Daemon in IIRC a Wired magazine. The synopsis sounded like something I would like, so I grabbed the book... Ended up really loving it and Daniel Suarez became my favorite author. I have enjoyed every single book he has written, though I liked his latest story (about mining asteroids) far less than any other book he has written.

Someone left a copy of Verity by Colleen Hoover on my doorstep lmao. To this day I have no idea who left it or why. I still haven't read it though.

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Last year I got excited about the idea of reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces. One day I just found it among piles of books in my home. It felt like Campbell's work had materialized from nowhere... No one has ever admitted to giving it to me. And my memory isn't so bad to forget how I bought this book. Omg. :-)

When I was a teenager my dad came home and gave me a nice hard copy of Deathly Hallows he said he found on the side of a highway. It was in great condition lol

My best story is: I was living in Sweden at the time, and was visiting my bf in my own country. We went to a second hand shop we had never been before and I was obviously soon browsing the book section. I saw this little red book with big letters "I love you" on it. I jokingly told my bf he had to buy me that book because he loves me. He bought it. After buying it we saw that the book was actually in Swedish, even though Swedish is not a major language where I am from.

I still cant believe I found a Swedish book on my visit home while I was living in Sweden.

I went for a walk in the park and found a copy of the goldfinch in a little box library thing. Turned out to be one of my favorites ever.

My family moved in 1983 when I was 12. My parents temporarily stacked their books on the attic stairs to be boxed up later. I was instructed not to read any until I was older. The following summer, the pile were still there, so I took one to read privately. Scared the beejesus out of me, but I couldn't talk to anyone about it without getting busted. It was the perfect age and time to read 1984

Was working in a grocery store w a typical small book section next to the magazines. One day I found a strange bookmark on the floor w an ad for a book called "Severed". I dont recall the author's name, but I thought it was odd bc we didn't have any bookmarks on display, let alone ones w ads on them. A week later I found laying on a shelf a copy of that book. It wasn't in our sales system, which meant it had no reason to be in our store. I put a dollar sticker on it and bought it for shits n giggles, but then when I read it a major part of the main character's backstory is when he is in college: the same college I was currently attending, talking about classes in buildings that I was taking at that same moment. Odd all around

When I was a teen and still speaking to my spermdonor, I'd run out of books to read. We were about to go on a 4 hour car ride back to mum, he'd refused to let me stock up in the thrift store earlier, the divorce was going ugly - so out of spite I grabbed the biggest book from his personal shelf and shoved it into my backpack, without a look at the cover or description.
It was "The Swarm" by Frank Schätzing and it became my favourite book. He will never get it back, no matter that by now I own the ebook, the Hardcover and the new Limited Edition of the 20 year anniversary.

I don't have many interesting stories like that, but the closest is probably when I was staying at a hostel in Germany years ago. A random stranger staying in the same room at the hostel gifted me a copy of Carlos Castaneda's A Separate Reality (which they had received from someone else in turn, read and enjoyed and wanted to pass it on). I'm not sure it would be as much my thing these days, but for where I was at mentally at the time I really ended up enjoying the book a lot.

I still have it and have wanted to pass it on to someone else in a similar context to keep the chain going, but haven't really found myself in a similar situation since. Maybe one day though! Maybe I'll put it in one of those Little Free Libraries with a note or something.

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The two strangest ones I can think of were fairly recent.

One was in 2019 when I was working at a local museum; one of my tasks was to sit in the ticket booth, which was generally pretty quiet and afforded the opportunity to listen to the radio or read when no one was around. One day I came to work and had forgotten my book, but was happy to find that an anonymous coworker had left a battered old paperback in the break room. I borrowed it for my shift and then returned it, but no one ever came back to claim it and no other coworker I asked knew who it belonged to, so eventually I just took it home. As it happened, it was The Way of Kings (which I had never heard of) and I really enjoyed it, but you can imagine my surprise when all of my friends started reading it and raving about it in 2022 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The second story was when I was living and working in France in the summer of that same year. I had brought a few English books with me, but quickly worked my way through them and was down to borrowing books from my friends or searching for English-language books in the local stores. The residence where we were staying had a number of mail lockers downstairs, which our group didn't use but which we had to pass by in order to leave the building. One day I was on my way out when I happened to glance at the row of lockers and noticed a book sitting on the top - it seemed like it had been left on the floor and some passerby had stuck it up there to keep it from being stepped on. I pulled it down out of curiosity and realized it was an English-language copy of Good Omens, my favourite book of all time - and it was the edition I owned, the 90s edition with the black cover. The serendipity of finding an English-language copy of my favourite book in my favourite edition in the locker room of a university residence in small-town France was too good to pass up, so I took it with me and it kept me company for the rest of my travels!

My house flooded in a landmark storm. After being forced to evacuate we came back to our house a few days later and sitting outside our front door was a book titled “Anything Can Happen” it’s a vintage 1940’s copy. I’ve never even heard of this book. So I dried it out, and framed it and it’s the first piece of artwork you see when you walk into my house now.

I was out fishing on the Kenai River. A storm blew in, forcing me to race back to the cabin. I was soaked through, and the place was cold and empty. Decided to go drinking, so I drove out to Sterling, the closest town about two hours away. The humidity from my clothes steamed up the windows, so I could barely see when I got to town. Pulled into a big gravel parking lot to wipe the windscreen and noticed a thrift shop nearby. I went in to look for junk, and found a box full of paperbacks for $5. I bought it, and took it back to the cabin. Among the books were something like a dozen Louis Lamour novels. I actually enjoyed them.

I found a book in a hotel lobby. It was autographed by the author. Wilbur Smith. Good read to.

My wife and I were staying at a hotel that had a bookshelf in the lobby where you could borrow a book. I saw a book called "Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis. This was at least 25 years ago so I had not read any of his books yet. I liked it so much that having read half of it while we were there, I asked the hotel clerk if I could take the book when we left so I could finish it, and they graciously said yes. I have since read almost all of his books.

Browsing ordinals.com, I see what appears to be the first book hosted on Bitcoin. At the "content" link is Mindfulness in Plain English:

https://ordinals.com/inscription/537e0c847e09c282cb1501d782255b358e90b27eb7695ca428515507145b58b1i0

I was having dinner with a girlfriend, Anne, in the mid-1980s, and we started talking about the mutual friends we had. Anne asked if I'd ever heard of these gruesome murders back in Utah about 10 years ago, I said no and she told me that a couple we both knew were related to one of the families who lost loved ones in the crime and a book was written about the murders. This was long before the Internet and I can't recall how in the world I found a copy of the book when I didn't know the title, but I did--Victim by Gary Kinder, which has become one of my favorite true-crime books. There was an updated version after the execution of the killers. If my friend had never mentioned the crime or book to me, I never would have known.

When I was a kid I was furniture shopping with my dad, and I noticed one of the display books that they use to decorate bookshelves and such was actually a book that I had been wanting to read. While my dad walked around the store, I sat on a couch and read a bit of the book. When it was time to leave, I noticed the book actually had a price sticker on there, probably left over from when these stores buy books in bulk. So we took it up to the register and convinced the cashier to let us buy it by ringing up an item that was a similar price. When I got home, I realized that the book had actually been signed by the author too!

I recently finished A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick

Towards the end of the book, a main character named Donna is described as having a lucky rabbit's foot attached to her purse. The rabbit's foot is only mentioned in one place in the novel.

I went on a hike directly after reading the passage mentioning the rabbit's foot. And on the middle of the trail I found, for the first time in my life, a severed rabbit's foot. A rabbit must have had a struggle with a fox or bird of prey in that exact spot.

Not exactly what you're talking about, OP, but a very notable synchronicity that I wanted to mention

A guy next to me on an airplane finished the book he was reading - Consider Phlebas. He didn't say a word to me, just put on some headphones. I didn't know what to do other than to start reading.

Now I've read a bunch of Iain Banks books. Someday I hope to do the same thing that guy did - finish a book and just hand it to some stranger.

There was this one guy I was going on a date with so did a quick google search ( safety and all that jazz). I found the book from his goodreads list lol

Domestic terrorism

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One recent strange book experience concerns my one-eyed ambition to purchase an Anthology of Chinese Literature. It was unbelievably expensive brand new...so I haunted 2nd hand book websites for months looking for an affordable copy. Even so it appeared that if the book was affordable it was also pretty trashed. One fine day a copy magically appeared in my search - it was in reputedly in excellent condition, at a ridiculously low price. It is a hefty tome so I knew that the cost of shipping was going to be considerable. It almost doubled the price, but I was determined to have this book so i swallowed the costs and bought it.

Once the book arrived I was delighted with its virtually new condition, and secretly quite gruntled that I had coughed up the money for it. I was even more delighted when I started leafing through the book and discovered a stash of 10 and 20 US dollar notes lying fresh and crisp throughout the pages. It precisely covered the total cost of the book. I really was meant to have it!

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Went to old guys hotel room because he was late for our ride to the airport and picked up Skin Tight from his room. Favorite book ever.

What was the book?

When I was around 18, a mentor of mine was talking about the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma when I was assistant teaching for her in Pennsylvania. Over the next year or so I kept thinking about that book occasionally, but totally forgot the title, so I couldn’t buy it for myself.

Eventually, I was on a trip in Maine and went into a tiny bookstore to see if I could find something interesting to read during my stay. There were no other customers in the bookstore, it was very quiet, and the one employee was just sitting at the register.

I slowly started making my way around the perimeter of the bookstore, carefully looking at all of the titles that were sitting at eye level for me, not touching anything. About 10 minutes into my browsing, a book simply fell from an upper shelf onto my head. To this day I have no idea what could have possibly caused it to fall.

The book was The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I bought it immediately. I love it. I’ve read it several times in the many years since. Thank you, bookstore ghost!

My favorite vonnegut short story, Thanasphere, is in that collection! I highly recommend. Not every story is as quirky and memorable, but that one story makes it worth it.

I haven't had good luck with short stories. I feel like they always end right when they're getting interesting... the ideas I really want to hear about are glossed over because there's no room to explore them.

Hmm.. Yea that's confusing.

I've read that book off and on over the years, I remember it does have a foreboding, ominous feeling to it. Did it lead you to learn more about George Orwell eventually?

Was it a good book? You mean it was ironic because the title was in English? That seems like such a neat story though.

Sounds like something from the twilight zone. Very strange, but interesting.

I just pulled that book off the shelf and started reading that story. It's masterful. Hadn't read it before you mentioned it. It has a range of emotions in it but still manages to make me laugh. Typical Vonnegut. It's interesting when I bought this book of his short stories I didn't think much of it, and wasn't planning to read it anytime soon, but it's a lot better than I expected. Thanks.

Hmm.. I understand what you're saying.. I think short stories can still be great though. But I have felt that way before too. It happens to me sometimes with movies, in which the movie is so great I don't want it to end.

ah, how was it? I haven't read any Harry Potter yet.

Oh yes, serendipity is another good word to describe these unlikely discoveries. What great experiences. Even just to find a book titled Good Omens by itself seems awesome, but that it meant something to you personally is even more special.

That's so interesting, what an amazing contrast. I found some information for this book you're referring to. Back then it was reviewed by a writer for the New York Times who wrote, "It is a book that bubbles with laughter and high spirits, that glows with gentleness and affection, that sings with joy in life itself." What incredible luck. I'm surprised you were able to dry it out, was it a paperback or hardback? Sounds like it was something that cheered you up either way.

It wasnt a novel, but a book with quotes, lyrics and pictures about love, its quite nice and turned out to be a great way to practice some Swedish.

It was just so random finding a Swedish book in a random small second hand shop in the Netherlands, during the time I actually lived in Sweden.

Random finds like that is why I love going to second hand shops.

Ohhh.. I get it.. I was trying to understand at first where the book shop was. I thought at first you meant the book shop was in Sweden. But it was in Netherlands. Ah, makes much more sense now. Yes. Used bookstores are amazing. I wish I had the opportunity to visit more shops but I don't travel much. Sounds like it was definitely a good book, even if it wasn't a novel.

That is so amazing. Hmm... Certainly makes me wonder.

I still haven't read that book but I love all of his work.
Did the book live up to your expectations?

I found one walking one day. It was an old book on the secrets of metaphysics, missing it's front cover.

Cool book. Written in 1953.

That is actually a great story, very interesting in my opinion.

I stumbled across that book also. I have it in front of me now. The cover on my edition has an orb of light in the place of a man's face. I'm not sure if that's the same version you have, but wow, it may not seem like much to you but I'm blown away by your story.

If you feel that you want to pass the book along you can definitely try to leave it in one of those free libraries. That book will definitely make someone's day. I have it out in front of me because I've been meaning to read it again soon.

Magic :Р

Honestly, I am still preparing to read this book because it's... so monumental. And I keep looking for my Secret Santa. :-)

When I was 14, there was a bit of an issue in Beaconhous Margalla Campus, the school I went to. Specifically, that if it rained, the streets would get flooded and it would be difficult for cars to get there. So of course, one day it flooded.

I went to the IB block to avoid the rain and sat down on a chair, waiting for it to subside. And on the chair next to me was a book. Someone must have left it there for it was half way open. It was called Scorpia, of the Alex Rider series. I waited a bit, picked it up and just started reading straight from it where it had been left off.

I immediately got introduced to Julia, the main villain of the book, a smart femme fatale who I immediately got the hots for. That ignited the way to Young Adult fiction for when I was a teenager and began to read more stuff like that. The tension and subtle action left me very interested.

I finished the book, then opened it back to its halfway point. Being the good boy I was, I left it there the way I found it and went home.

My pleasure! I’m so, so glad you enjoyed!

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

My friend and I stumbled upon the creepy Animal Farm cartoon, so I had to read the book, and later we named our Biology lab fetal pig Napoleon.

Well because we flooded we had dehumidifiers all over our house to remove moisture so I set it out in our house near one to dry out. Once it was dry I compressed it under something heavy to help it lie flat. It’s a linen bound hardback? Maybe not linen exactly but some sort of fabric hard cover?

We took it as a sign, because we were obviously devastated that we lost everything, so for that to be laying there clean and it such good condition was crazy.

Definitely worth it to finish the series if you ever start!!! 🤌

One of my first date question is “what is your favorite book” and this guy did such a horrible job explaining it I had to read it for myself just so I summarize it better.

It was the Dresden Files. I love the whole series

Please don't bother, they're massively overrated. There's much better "magical boarding school" fantasy out there. The world-building and writing in HP are really shoddy. A lot of the characters represent unexamined stereotypes about Jewish people, POC, and fat people. Not to mention the author is a virulent transphobe who is using her wealth and power to actively lobby for harmful policies. If you missed the Harry Potter nostalgia train, don't buy a ticket now.

I see, I think I understand what you're saying.

I've only ever watched the movies. Well, thanks for your story.

Oh yes, I've heard that helps, keeping it under something heavy. A few years ago I got stuck in a rain storm and I had a book of poetry with me, I tried to dry it out as best as I could without really knowing what I was doing. Unfortunately the pages have a rippled texture now. Anyway, such a great story how you found that book.

That's definitely unexpected. A bit dramatic, but I suppose that could potentially make someone's day if you ever manage to pass a book along to someone else like that. Made me laugh, thanks.

I understand that feeling. It kind of happened to me with Being and Nothingness, it felt so special how I found it that I suppose I may have put it on a pedestal a bit, and still preparing to read it. But yes, magic, that seems like a possible explanation!

Ah, I definitely know what you mean. Something similar like that happened to me. One of my first assignments in school was to write a poem. I didn't want to write a poem so I tried to fake it, but then eventually I ended up really enjoying writing poetry for real. Anyway, that sounds like such a memorable experience.

Oh, I'm not familiar with him but I'm reading his biography right now and seems interesting. So my understanding is you never went drinking that day? Was there any of his books you liked the most?

What an incredible story! And hilarious too. Simply unbelievable. Was it a heavy book?

😅 it’s over 400 pages but it was a nice soft paperback. I was mostly startled, and then blown away that it was the one it was. It certainly didn’t hurt me enough to keep me from buying it. 😂

Hm, I haven't heard of him. Reading his biography now. I especially like a quote by him about writing books, it says: "Until it is written a book is merely smoke on the wind." Do you remember which book of his it was?

I'm not familiar with him but reading through his biography, it's interesting he was able to pivot from being an art historian to a writer. Well, they must be great books if some of them became movies. I know I've heard of the movie Big Short at least.

Awesome. Did that book meet your expectations when you read it finally?

Hm, yea that seems mysterious. Did you think the book was better than the movie?

Well I guess that counts. You found the book randomly and liked it. Nice.

Ah, yea I see, kind of an odd discovery.

What book was it?

The oddest place I purchased a book from was a garden nursery we'd gone to for dog food. We were in the UK for my sister's wedding, and were staying with the groom's parents for a few nights to get to know them. It was the only place they could get the large bag of the kind of food they bought, I think.

Anyway, there were other things sold there, which was strange to me. I found a book on researching family history online, and since I was volunteering in church archives at the time, I bought it. This was nearly 10 years ago, so it's probably wildly out of date by now, lol.

My neighborhood has several Little Free Libraries that has prompted me to read books that I probably wouldn’t have chosen from a wider selection: Push by Sapphire, It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover, Wonder by RJ Palacio and the sequel. I returned most of the books to the library when I finished, and have added some of my own books over time. Little Free Libraries are awesome and I encourage anyone to open them in their neighbor or contribute to preexisting ones!

Ah let me not forget all the text books I found there that really helped me out as a college student 😵‍💫

This happened about 40 years ago. I think I went to a restaurant instead of a bar. I don't remember the book titles. I remember the box, though. It was a real score.

‘All the light we cannot see’ by Anthony Doerr.

The Eye of The Tiger.

Oh what a bummer. I think the dehumidifier made a big difference. Thanks!

When I was in high school, friends recommended that I listen to Circa Survive, and The Fall of Troy, amongst others. Delving into the meaning of some of their songs like The H[]ly Tape, You Got a Death Wish Johnny Truant, I found that both artists had songs about the book House of Leaves, bought it and fell in love with it.

I believe he also did a stint as an investment banker somewhere in there.

It wasn't really strange, but one slow rainy night, I found a copy of Crime and Punishment in the break room at a place where I worked overnights when I was in my early 20s. I had always thought of that book as a big hard classic, but I was bored and started reading it. It was so good! That really started my love for classics as I hadn't read anything outside of school assignments in a while at that point. I never found out whose book it was (small workplace), and I left it in the break room for the next person.

That's impressive. Did you enjoy the anthology? Some books can be quite heavy, but you really lucked out it seems. I rarely ever find money in books.

Ohh... It reminds me of the way I lost a book. I was dating someone a long time ago and I let them borrow a signed first edition of a Rupert Sheldrake book, because we were trading books. For some reason she kept the book and I kept the dust jacket. Years later I found the dust jacket and I really wanted that book back but I had lost contact with her. Finally I was able to talk to her again and I asked for the book but never could get it back. Hmm.. Well that's certainly one way to find a book.

Did he ask for the book back?

Oh, interesting.. Do you remember the author? Sounds like such an intriguing discovery.

Ha, what a story. Did you think someone was going to come back to claim the book while you were reading it?

That's great, those mini libraries can be really useful sometimes.

Hmm.. the title certainly seems interesting.

Maybe he was nervous? Definitely an unexpected way to find a book though, almost sounds like something from a comedy sketch.

That is definitely kind of unexpected. Yea, usually those places don't sell books. Was that book useful to you?

It was, actually, a few times! I still have it, since I imagine a lot of the websites still exist. Just not all of them. But government ones, like military ones, for sure.

Right, definitely, I wish there were those mini standalone libraries in my neighborhood, but unfortunately they're all randomly placed in other parts of the city. If I lived near one I would walk to them all the time. You're quite lucky in that regard. But thankfully the local bookstore never lets me down, so I can't complain too much. I totally agree. They're also sometimes called "Take a Book, Leave a Book" in which you can only take a book if you leave one in its place. But I suppose it's okay to take one without leaving anything, I'm sure plenty of people do that.

Hmm.. Well, it seems like it was something that left an impression on you. That's great, I'll have to look into that, thanks.

I definitely know what you mean, sometimes the longer a book is, the more intimidating it can seem. I remember reading parts of that book a long time ago, and I also enjoyed his book Diary of a Writer. What other classics did you enjoy?

I can't recall. It was the first hint I would get as an adult that the universe listens and hints to us all the time. It was strange to find that book on the sidewalk.

It had a very particular black and white vortex logo too.
I'll have to find it in storage and return to this thread when I do.

I want to say it was something like "the hidden structure of the universe"

I have really enjoyed reading it. It's more than 1200 pages long, so plenty to dip into, plenty to contemplate, and plenty to savour. Definitely worth the effort I put into finding it.

No, I just knew it wasn't mine so it felt like stealing.

I think Crime and Punishment intimidated me because I had heard Dostoyevsky was hard to read AND it was long, but honestly it wasn't that long, and I don't find him hard to read at all. That was a page-turner to me. After that I decided to explore classics more and not to let "hard" reputations intimidate me. The most difficult books I've read have been Ulysses by James Joyce (needed a lot of support for that one in the form of online analyses and stuff), Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, War and Peace by Tolstoy, and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. I still have Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon yet to tackle. :) I am not be reading these at the comprehension level of an English professor, but the good thing about the classics is their many layers and how you can get so much out of them the more in-depth you dive. Honestly I hope I live long enough to have time to re-read and re-read these.

Some favorites are:

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, Moby Dick and House of the Seven Gables by Herman Melville, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion by Jane Austen, Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Notes From Underground by Dostoyevsky, Howard's End and Maurice by E.M. Forster, He Knew He was Right by Anthony Trollope, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas...

For more modern classics, anything William Faulkner although my favorites are The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absaolm, the Unvanquished, and Flags in the Dust, James Baldwin (Another Country, Giovanni's Room, and If Beale Street Could Talk are my faves), Toni Morrison (can't pick a fave, everything of hers I've read has been amazing), Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Native Son and The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright...

I could go on and on (actually I guess I DID go on and on) but those are some top picks. I'm currently reading Jazz by Toni Morrison and I was up super late last night because I just couldn't put it down.

No. I think he intentionally left it for someone else to read.