I’d have to agree. In the years I’ve gone, I’ve learned about two particularly fascinating novels out there, the post-apocalyptic, post-literate narrative Riddley Walker and the miraculous Cloud Atlas (soon to be adapted to the screen by Tom Twykler of “Run Lola Run”… that’ll be interesting to see. Said movie will also be produced by the Wachowski Brothers, who reportedly assigned the book as required reading to the cast of “V For Vendetta”). So I almost had to kick myself for not thinking of it myself.

Well, check it out for yourself. In all honesty, there’s some books in here I feel you’re better off avoiding – anything, for instance, with the number “2012″ in it. To be sure, there’s a lot of New Age hokum/magical thinking nonsense mixed with some paranoid libertarian/survivalist manifestos to delve through here, not to mention a lot of mainstream bestsellers that all of us are aware of. And I kinda wished there were a few more obscure discoveries, as many of the titles here will be familiar to most bookreaders. Still, it’s an appropriate cross-section of the playa psyche, and what’s running through it circa 2009. And need I say that you can purchase it all at the Bookloft, your friendly online independent bookstore?

Well, too bad. I said it anyway.

So here you go:

-Neuromancer by William Gibson
-The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
-Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans
-T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone (Autonomedia New Autonomy Series) by Hakim Bey
-The Queen’s Gambit: A Novel by Walter Tevis
-Kes by Lawrence Till and Barry Hines
-She Came to Stay by Simone de Beauvoir
-The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan W. Watts
-Conversations with God : An Uncommon Dialogue (Book 1) by Neale Donald Walsch (This link is to a newer edition, entitled “The New Revelations)”
-Feel the Fear . . . and Do It Anyway (r) by Susan Jeffers
-Any book by Andrew Weil M.D.
-The Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I, Genius Of The Golden Age by Christopher Hibbert
-Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
-The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapille
-Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life by Maxwell Maltz
-A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
-Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda
-The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence by Deepak Chopra
-Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy by Joel Kotkin
-Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism by Daniel Pinchbeck
-2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck
-The Phantom Toolbooth by Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer
-The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
-The Secret of Light by Walter Russell
-Myths To Live By by Joseph Campbell
-The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
-THE BIG BOOK OF JOKES & RIDDLES by kidsbooks
-The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz
-Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
-Any title by William Gibson
-Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer
-Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, -Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness by Daniel G. Amen
-My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor
-Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World by Bill Plotkin
-1776 by David McCullough
-The Monster Who Ate Stars by Souther Salazar (out of print)
-A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
-Illusions by Richard Bach
-Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins
-Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time by Krishna Dharma
-Undaunted Courage : Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose
-Good Dog, Carl by Alexandra Day
-The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World by Lynne McTaggart
-The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby
-Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution by Terence McKenna
-Shantaram: A Novel by Gregory David Roberts
-The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter
-The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge
-The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
-Switch Bitch by Roald Dahl
-Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse by James Wesley Rawles
-The World According to Garp by John Irving
-The Milagro Beanfield War: A Novel by John Nichols
-Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
-Lord of the Flies by William Golding
-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
-The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Patricia Reilly Giff
-The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
-The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
-The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
-A Friend of The Earth by T.C. Boyle
-Drop City by T.C. Boyle
-The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq and Gavin Bowd
-Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
-Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach
-Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn
-Any Title by Charles Bukowski
-The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
-House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
-The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
-His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman and Nicholas Wright
-A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
-The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot
-The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
-Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
-Lust for Life by Irving Stone
-You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay
-The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
-Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
-I, Monty by Marcus Bach
-A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
-The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
-The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
-Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
-Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese
-The Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins
-Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith

Oh, and while I’m at it, here’s two I figured to throw in, to serve as a palliative to all the sweetness and light on the list:
-Childhood: The Biography of a Place by Harry Crews
-Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Lot of water and exposure under the bridge since then: Kylie Minogue, Johnny Cash, The X-Files… kinda puts a crimp in your literary career. So it doesn’t surprise me that it’s taken so long for Nick to deliver a follow up. But it’s coming. It’s called “The Death Of Bunny Munro,” and we can expect it in September, thanks to Faber & Faber.

The plot, according to the publisher’s website, deals with a widowed traveling salesman (the titular Bunny) and his son, the imaginatively named Bunny, Jr., and their impressionistic romp throughout England. Like Willy Loman trapped in Macbeth’s castle, Bunny is besieged by ghosts and beset upon by demons both real and imagined. I sure as hell hope he sends a copy to Oprah.

Would that I could embed this 4-minute snippet of Nick Cave reading from Chapter 12, but the right bastids at the Guardian website won’t let me. A friend of mine has wondered about Cave’s new moustache. Kinda looks like it’s crawling out of both nostrils, I think.

And while you’re at it, check out the official website. You’ll be greeted by a creepy-looking furry who is apparently damned. The kids tell me it’s irony, so it must be that I refuse to get it.