Well, I read 2 books at once. I just started a biography of John Wayne and it's terrific. And I read every crime novel by Michael Connelly, who I think is the best. And a brilliant book I just finished was One Summer. It detailed life in America in 1927. It's an amazing read, One Summer.
Johnny Carson
1984
Confession of an Economic Hitman
Kicking Through the Ashes
Feed The Beast
The Chitlin' Circuit
Callus On My Soul
Cheat: A Man's Guide to Infidelity
Among the Thugs
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Westies
Sweet Child of Mine: How I Lost My Son to Guns N' Roses
My Appetite for Destruction: Sex & Drugs & Guns N' Roses
Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN
Becoming Richard Pryor
The Bible
Flag of Our Fathers
The Marx Brothers book is a great book. Before that, I read another book about comedy — I think I’m doing this because it gives me that feeling I’m missing, of being around. When you’re in comedy, you’re like a tropical fish in an aquarium, or at least I am. That’s my life. If you said to a tropical fish, Would you like to go anyplace else, he’s going to go: You know what, I think I’d like to just stay here, I like the aquarium. So I am a tropical fish in an aquarium. And since I can’t go onstage and hang around other comedians, I read about them. So there’s this other book I just found on my bookshelf — I bought it, and never read it — it’s called “Seriously Funny,” by Gerald Nachman. This ...
Oh, my favorite book?
AJ Jacobs - anything by him I really find fun, and easy to ready. I also really like - what's his name - Mitch Albom, anything by him I really like. He wrote a book called FOR ONE MORE DAY, I read it on a plane, and it really stuck with me, and I thought it was a really beautiful book - it starts out with him trying to commit suicide, and he ends up reliving a perfect day with his mom, and I've always loved that book. It was the first book that had a really significant impact on me. I got off the phone, called my mom and said "I love you."
It's a really great book.
The best non-fiction I've read is anything by Joseph Campbell. And probably the best fiction I've ever read was a Pulitzer Prize winning book called INDEPENDENCE DAY by Richard Ford.
The Nixon Tapes: 1973 Ed. by Douglas Brinkley & Luke Nichter
I watched the Watergate hearings while I was a boy in Canada. They said Nixon was the ultimate politician, but no: He was stiff, he’d sweat, he was human, a tragic figure who got caught up in his own insecurities. My favorite part [in these tapes] is the banality: Nixon talks about his mother-in-law making this pie he f—–g hates, and all these guys going, “Yessir!”
Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell
I love oral histories. Mitchell was a New Yorker writer who’d go around a city and write about interesting people he’d met, from the mayor to the lowest bum. He was probably the first to do New Journalism, [before] Gay Talese. Hi...
I am currently reading almost everything I can - loving Spider-Man and Silver Surfer by Slott; bummed Fables is coming to an end; stuff by Jason Aaron is great, just read Ant-Man by Nick Spencer right before this started, and it really had that Superior Foes of Spider-Man feel. Currently re-reading Hickman's FF, which is so complex and well-thought-out, it frightens me from ever attempting something similar.
Right now, I'm reading a book called THE PEACE TO END ALL PEACE, by David Fromkin, which is a very thick book, about how the Middle East came to be, and why the Middle East is the way it is today. It's a very, very good and important piece of historical work.
Another very important book to read, which I'm re-reading, is called WHY NATIONS FAIL.
There are two books everyone should read: one is GUNS, GERMS & STEEL and the other is the rebuttal to that book, which is WHY NATIONS FAIL. Which will give you an understanding of why some nations are prosperous, while others are not. It's a very important book.
The Waste Lands. Blaine is a PAIN! That being said the entire series is an awe inspiring work of glory. At points it's like Stephen King had some kind of cosmic meltdown and left this mystical radiation all over the series.
The first adult novel I read, and this is a favorite memory of mine, resulted from my grandfather — who was a voracious reader — taking me to Novel Idea in Tulsa, Okla., to pick up a book for school. As we headed to the checkout line he said, ‘Why don’t you pick out something to read for pleasure?’ I went to the Young Adult section, and he stopped me: ‘No, no. Go to the Fiction section.’ I was 12, and this was a big deal. The Fiction section is where all the books with sex and bad language lived. I self-consciously browsed the aisles, careful to avoid unwittingly picking up Fear of Flying or something, until I came to a paperback with a spooky cover. The title: Salem’s Lot. Description: Vamp...
Man's Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl
Grist For The Mill by Ram Dass
Shambhalla the Sacred Path Of The Warrior by Trungpa
The Shining!! by Stephen King
Lord Amberson Volt's amazing "Home Surgery Guide"
Fragments of a Journal by Eugene Ionesco Nietzche (bio by Walter Kaufman is a great bible for Nietzche) Socrates (books about him and Plato's works) I'm reading a lot of psychology, some by Koestler I read comic theory, THE HUMOR CODE is a good read, as is Koestler's act of creation and I've been reading a lot of The Far Side and R. Crumb stuff too.
Scott Aukerman