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Once upon a time, behind the water heater in my dad's workshop, I found a shelf full of weathered paperbacks. Dad Books. Think The Hunt for Red October, A Time to Kill, The Pillars of the Earth, The Frontiersmen, Shogun. Exactly what you'd expect from a suburban insurance salesman and father of two in or around 1987. I read them. Most were fine. A few were straight-up bangers. My favorite one, even today, is John D. MacDonald's One Monday We Killed Them All. It was this edition:  John MacDonald wrote detective stories, and is best known for his Travis McGee novels and for The Executioners, which was adapted as both versions of the movie Cape Fear. But One Monday is a flat-out ripper, written like Steinbeck finally got the stick out of his butt. One Monday posted:Brook City is in the middle of dying country. It’s just dying a little slower than the hill country around it. They came a long time ago and pulled the guts up out of the earth and took what they wanted and went away, leaving the slag and the tipples and the sidings that are rusting away. There’s nothing left in the hills but the scrabbly farms and the empty faces and the hard violent ways of living. So post your favorite Dad Book. Tell us why it's you favorite. We all know that Stephen King is the American Charles Dickens but you can tell us to read Carrie anyway.
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Mar 5, 2021 21:37
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For me it was Star of Ill-Omen, by Dennis Wheatley. His most famous book today is probably The Devil Rides Out, because of its film adaptation of the same name, and TBH The Devil Rides Out is a far better read than Star of Ill-Omen - but SoI-O was the book of his I found first. There are a lot of things to like about Dennis Wheatley. For a start, he gives value for money. A short-story dilettante like Somerset Maugham might devote a whole novel to the theme of Satanic worship, or an author of limited scope, like John Steinbeck, focus wholly on the effects of totalitarianism. Mr. Wheatley frequently boldly combines the two: for example in They Used Dark Forces, a bit of Satanic Nazi weirdness from which I have yet to fully recover. In Star of Ill-Omen, the twin themes are Martians and espionage. That's value. Wheatley is severely workmanlike as a writer, but as a plotter, he's...actually pretty solid? In SoI-O, someone asassinates someone else by pointing a lead tube with a chunk of radium in it at them, over many weeks, as they sleep. Rather horribly, the Russian Mafia among others have actually used almost this very method, but I bet Wheatley thought of it first. So: Star of Ill-Omen. I was fourteen and very naive. My grandparents moved house and among the things they chucked out was a dog-eared copy of this book. The most subversive thing I'd read was probably Gray's Anatomy, which completely satisfied all the curiosity I'd had about sex, and then some. All my life I'd been on a sort of reading trajectory; I was good at reading and there was always something slightly harder and worthier (and approved) to move on to. I knew that there that there were books considered by most adults to be very hard, and other books so hard that very few people read them at all. I had thought that you simply carried on reading trickier and trickier books, until eventually you knew the mind of God, or died, or possibly both at once. Having read SoI-O, I experienced a blinding revelation that this wasn't actually the case: people read crap. For fun. And sometimes , the crap is good. Dennis Wheatley, I salute you. May your velvet smoking-jacket never fade. Carnival of Shrews has a new favorite as of 23:11 on Mar 5, 2021 |
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Mar 5, 2021 23:07
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Dad books is a pretty vague genre, but the first things that comes to mind when I think of books from my dad is a Nathanael West collection he had that I read when I was young for the simple reason that the blurb on the back went impossibly hard. I took it with me when I left the country and this inspired me to dig it out and read it again That's the essence of dad book, right there, though it's going to be real hard to beat "One Monday We Killed Them All" for a title
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Mar 5, 2021 23:15
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some plague rats posted:Dad books is a pretty vague genre[...] Yeah. When my students brought up Dad Rock last year their examples of it ranged from CCR to Snoop Dogg(!) to LCD Soundsystem(!!). some plague rats posted:[...] but the first things that comes to mind when I think of books from my dad is a Nathanael West collection he had that I read when I was young for the simple reason that the blurb on the back went impossibly hard. I took it with me when I left the country and this inspired me to dig it out and read it again Locust is actually pretty funny and I think the origin of the name "Homer Simpson." It's also where I learned about cockfighting. Last I checked, the only place to find it was in that two-novel collection and the four-novel L of A edition I bought maybe twenty years ago. Looks like there's a paperback reissue from New Directions, though. Maybe it's having a moment.
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Mar 5, 2021 23:59
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Carnival of Shrews posted:
My small-town public library, which had to request The Haunting of Hill House from across the state, apparently has both this book and Willard and His Bowling Trophies on the shelf. Therein hangs a tale.
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Mar 6, 2021 00:09
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Brainworm posted:
It's absolutely criminal how totally he's been left out of the canon, his work is way funnier and lighter to read than the ballistic blurb makes it sound. Lonelyhearts is bleak as hell but never leaden and more importantly never in a way that sucks to read
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Mar 6, 2021 00:32
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Brainworm posted:Yeah. When my students brought up Dad Rock last year their examples of it ranged from CCR to Snoop Dogg(!) to LCD Soundsystem(!!). Snoop Dogg is an actual grandfather. His music is 100% dad music.
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Mar 6, 2021 00:48
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Alhazred posted:Snoop Dogg is an actual grandfather. His music is 100% dad music. Rock, though?
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Mar 6, 2021 01:20
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I equate comedy books to Dad books. George Carlin is a revolutionary and a pretty funny dude, but your Dad was the one who bought "Brain Droppings." Your Dad also thought Tim Allen was funny enough to buy "Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man." Your Dad has Dave Barry books. They're over on that little shelf next to his recliner or, if he's a next level Dad, he has them in his bathroom. That's where Dad goes for 30 minutes to get away from everyone. Your Dad bought a Jeff Foxworthy book. If there's a copy of "Sein Language" in your parents' house, you know who bought it, right? Your Dad. If he was a Dad from the decade before Allen's and Foxworthy's peaks, there might be a Lewis Grizzard book in there. Bonus points if it's the golf one.
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Mar 6, 2021 03:43
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RC and Moon Pie posted:I equate comedy books to Dad books. Add in Howard Stern and Dennis Miller, too. 88-94 were great years for bad comedy making it in bookstores.
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Mar 6, 2021 03:47
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RC and Moon Pie posted:I equate comedy books to Dad books. My childhood friend's dad, a true Next Level Dad, had a basket of these books in the guest bathroom and in easy reach of the toilet. But the crown jewel was this bad boy:  This was, like, an order of magnitude better than Dave Barry repeatedly observing that a "two-by-four isn't two anythings by four anythings." What was your favorite one of these? Or which one was least bad?
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Mar 6, 2021 13:20
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My Dad only ever read one book and it was "Interview with the Vampire", which is kind of a bop. My Mum doesn't understand how anyone could enjoy reading. I got a degree in English literature to spite them.
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Mar 6, 2021 14:13
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This is the most memorable book from my childhood spent strip-mining the bookcases. Sat alongside sensible books in a cover meant to grab your attention across a departure lounge was this crime against decency. It's a fish out of water story except our fish is pure-strain British aristocracy and with the brute righteousness instinctive to that class, simply raises up the sea. There's no room for sympathy as the cast succumb in one thumping setpiece after another, each one a familiar character whose flaws are savagely laid bare in their gruesome demise. From the gold-digger denied her inheritance by the taxidermised corpse of her husband to the eligible bachelor cheese-grating a bleach filled condom off his chap, this is a book that'll make you laugh until you squirt coffee out of your nose at the terrified man in the window seat. What I like about this one over Tom Sharpe's more famous Wilt and Porterhouse stories is the way it doesn't so much snipe at British society as cut loose with a bren gun. 14 year old me was nowhere near equipped to deal with this massacre of middle England authority figures and I can only think that I was given it to read by my tired parents in a momentary lapse of judgement. Anything to keep the kids quiet.
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Mar 6, 2021 14:18
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The Throwback was honestly one of the most vile books I've ever read. I could maybe, maybe excuse the horrible things that happen if it was terrible people getting their comeuppance. But the man has bleach poured onto his penis for the crime of sleeping with a prostitute while the man who rapes and impregnates his daughter dies in his bed at the age of 90. So its just horrible for the sake of horrible.
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Mar 6, 2021 14:36
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FightingMongoose posted:The Throwback was honestly one of the most vile books I've ever read. I could maybe, maybe excuse the horrible things that happen if it was terrible people getting their comeuppance. But the man has bleach poured onto his penis for the crime of sleeping with a prostitute while the man who rapes and impregnates his daughter dies in his bed at the age of 90. So its just horrible for the sake of horrible. I'ma submit this as proof that no book -- no matter its origin, subject matter, obscurity, or limited print run -- has been read by only one Goon. Bring up Bear, Willard and His Bowling Trophies, Stoner, City of Miscegenation, or whatever, and readers crawl out of the woodwork.
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Mar 7, 2021 17:03
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I agree that comedy books feel like dad books. Anyone described as a "humorist" is dad-adjacent. When I was a kid I became obsessed with my dad's Calvin Trillin essay compilations. I didn't understand the political essays, but I liked the ones about food, and I liked how Trillin always achieved the trick of writing a last line that was neatly but unexpectedly tied to something he'd brought up earlier. It's hard to give examples of that -- you kind of have to read a whole essay to see what I mean. Also, I witnessed a dad book spat a couple of years ago: my uncle wrote an email referencing Stranger in a Strange Land, I can't remember in what context, and my dad sent back a curt one-sentence reply saying he'd always hated that book because it's so sexist.
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Mar 7, 2021 18:13
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i dont think my dad's got a single tom clancy book on his shelf. its primarily filled with civil war poo poo and packers bios. hes got a well-worn copy of helter skelter, and alive by piers paul read, which he told 10 year old me to read, because "its about penguins."
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Mar 7, 2021 18:14
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Back when he was kicking, my old man's shelves were Tom Clancy, W.E.B Griffin, Stephen Ambrose, and Clive Cussler, with a few John LeCarres and Frederick Forsyths tossed in. So while this isn't a recommendation for a specific book, I feel like the run of work from these authors pretty well represents the "military fiction & non-fiction/spy/action adventure" Dad Library spread, and while tastes and politics may vary, you could probably do a lot worse. Though maybe those are Grandpa Books now. I'm of dad age (but not one myself) and over here it's Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, some old Foxfire books, and some textbooks I haven't opened in fifteen years that weren't worth selling back to the student bookstore, but which I can't force myself to throw away. And Project Management for Dummies, which might very well be the lamest dad book there ever was.
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Mar 7, 2021 18:59
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My father buys books by the kilogram. He just goes to a charity shop, buys every bit of fiction he hasn't read before that's got cowboy, spy, aeroplane, Dan Brown, etc poo poo on the cover then donates it back and moves onto the next place. The Frederick Forsyth books are good I thought, bit of casual racism aside.
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Mar 8, 2021 08:49
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I don't share all of my dad's tastes, but he was into Hunter Thompson, Dune, and Lord of the Rings, which are all pretty solid, if pretty standard "nerd in the 60s/70s" faire. He got really into James Fenimore Cooper a couple years ago. I think he just likes books that are long as poo poo.
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Mar 9, 2021 21:50
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"Dad Books" are books on economic theory and essays about why you shouldn't care about anything to me. Yes my dad is a libertarian how could you tell? Noted Dad Books I have been sent: Rich Dad, Poor Dad Atlas Shrugged The Wisdom of Insecurity Awareness Noted Dad Books I have read:
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Mar 10, 2021 01:42
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My dad loves "British mysteries" and he claims to like science fiction but I've never been able to get him to read anything more recent than Asimov.
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Mar 10, 2021 04:58
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My old man owned the complete works of Louis L'Amour and if that doesn't make for a Dad-rear end library I don't know what does.
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Mar 10, 2021 06:08
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CapitanGarlic posted:My old man owned the complete works of Louis L'Amour and if that doesn't make for a Dad-rear end library I don't know what does. My dad had those for sure. In my head, the standard issue Dad library is like 300 westerns, including that series whose titles were just state names with exclamation marks: Idaho! Colorado!. Very Sufjan Stevens.
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Mar 10, 2021 15:05
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Fiction, off the top of my head: Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories, by Isaac Bashevis Singer The Odessa File, by Frederick Forsyth Run Silent, Run Deep, by Edward L. Beach, Jr. Flight of the Intruder, by Stephen Coonts Das Boot, by Lothar-Günther Buchheim (also his favorite movie). No Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum. He tried to read a Clancy book once (Patriot Games, I think) but had to quit because of how stupid it was.
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Mar 10, 2021 22:11
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Pocket Billiards posted:My father buys books by the kilogram. He just goes to a charity shop, buys every bit of fiction he hasn't read before that's got cowboy, spy, aeroplane, Dan Brown, etc poo poo on the cover then donates it back and moves onto the next place. This is pretty common. I've heard it's why they always have big shelves of romance novels, because older women come in, buy as many as they can carry and then donate them back a couple of weeks later.
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Mar 10, 2021 22:42
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Fiction, off the top of my head: What could possibly be stupid in a book that culminates in Jack Ryan and Prince Charles commandeering a US Navy vessel to chase terrorists?
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Mar 10, 2021 23:14
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Thanks for confirming that I remembered the right book; he mentioned that Princess Diana and Prince Charles were in it.
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Mar 11, 2021 00:15
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my dad had an attic full of drizzt forgotten realms novels and a basement containing the collected works of stephen king all things considered, i got off easy
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Mar 11, 2021 00:20
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My list of Dad Books: Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe [The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe Swann's Way, Marcel Proust (and absolutely no other volume of In Search of Lost Time) The Hunt For Red October, Tom Clancy The 9/11 Commission Report M*A*S*H, Richard Hooker Moby-Dick, Herman Melville Billy Budd, Herman Meliville The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper (complete with Dad Joke: "You know, one time this book slipped when I was getting it down from the shelf and I ended up with a Bumppo on the head!"  )Ulysses, James Joyce (unread, but it's one of those books you're supposed to have) Various DIY/Home Repair books
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Mar 11, 2021 04:50
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Pretty sure my dad has never read a book in his entire life OP
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Mar 11, 2021 06:21
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My dad mostly has books about fighter planes from the 60’s and 70’s. Also a lot of naval history and popular science stuff. I’ve never seen him read a fiction book in my life.
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Mar 19, 2021 11:03
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My Dad used to collect old books the way he still collects vinyl, with the intent of selling the rare stuff at a huge mark-up. The house was full of random records and Dad books. Most of the books were unread but there were Dad Book classics like James Clavell's Noble House and Tai Pan, Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. And of course, C S Forester's Horatio Hornblower novels in anthology. I read those and enjoyed them as a teenager but it is to my everlasting shame that my teen habit of reading Tom Clancy transferred to him.
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Mar 19, 2021 12:01
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Here is a scan of a newspaper photo of my dad with a Terry Brooks book next to him. Therefor Terry Brooks is a dad book. 
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Apr 8, 2021 18:38
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None of your Dads were into sci-fi? My dad had a very small bookshelf for his books but about half of them were the first 3 or so Dune novels. I remember always being curious about them and finally reading them when I was old enough, loved the first book but not the follow ups very much.
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Jun 5, 2022 13:43
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what do dads love? military history. what is one of the best military history books of recent years? (and there are a loving lot of them) shattered sword  let me quote the entire wiki page quote:Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway is a 2005 book dealing with the battle of Midway in June 1942.[1][2][3][4] It won the 2005 John Lyman Book Award from the North American Society for Oceanic History for the category "U.S. Naval History".[5] more than just the 2005 john lyman book award from the north american society for oceanic history in the category "us naval history", this book loving slaps. written by two non-professional historians, it details the key points of the battle of midway in a fashion both technically complete but narratively gripping. most importantly, it deflates popular but incorrect claims around the battle of midway, such as if nagumo's counterstrike was caught spotting on the decks when enterprise's vb-6 and vs-6 began their fatal dive bombing run no http://shatteredswordbook.com/ if you like middle aged white men in suits talking about the obscure technical details of military operations without getting bogged down in unnecessary poo poo, get this book. as a demonstration of their explanatory power, please find attached this speech from one of the authors basically recapping the thesis of the book live on stage at the national ww2 museum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sqt4-ux9jU
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Jun 6, 2022 05:06
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It might be niche, but Patrick F McManus, and outdoor humorist, published a bunch of his short stories in book format and my dad had them all. They were hilarious and not too of-the-time to be off putting. I kept them and now read them to my daughter, so the cycle continues. He writes about his childhood (slightly exaggerated, characters usually an amalgam of multiple people) but the humor is family friendly and is usually pretty great. His best book collections is probably The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw, although all his early stuff is great.
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Jun 6, 2022 14:39
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:what do dads love? military history. what is one of the best military history books of recent years? (and there are a loving lot of them) Can't recommend this book enough, there were tons of recommendations for it over in one of the Let's Play threads and it still exceeded my expectations. I think theres even a section about how the slow speed of aircraft elevators on board Japanese carriers contributed to their defeat. That's exactly the kind of ridiculously dumb detail I want to hear.
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Jun 7, 2022 00:56
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Lakedaimon posted:Can't recommend this book enough, there were tons of recommendations for it over in one of the Let's Play threads and it still exceeded my expectations. I think theres even a section about how the slow speed of aircraft elevators on board Japanese carriers contributed to their defeat. That's exactly the kind of ridiculously dumb detail I want to hear. It's simultaneously cool and scary how some regular nerds could completely overturn the history of one of the major battles of the 20th century. "Hey, that primary source you've been relying on for decades; you know what he says is physically impossible, right?" And nobody did. Wild.
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Jun 7, 2022 03:27
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My parents has a true mishmash with no real unifying theme. There were quite a few thrillers but aside from Clancy there'd never be more that one or maybe two books from any one author. The books we actually read came from the library. -The Hobbit, the paperback edition with Smaug puffing away on his pile on the front. It was on it's last legs even when we were quite young. - 1989? world book encyclopedia missing a couple of major letters and 3/4 of an earlier Encyclopedia Britannica. Dad got them when they were being thrown out of the school library. - There was a book called The silver sword that dad very clearly wanted to read to us, which he eventually did, one of the last bedtime reading he did. It was about some Polish children on the run from the Germans in WWII. - Partisans by Alistair MacLean. The version with a crashing car on the cover. I must have read that dozens of times.
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Jun 7, 2022 05:21
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