It’s all too easy to get lost in the mad rush of new releases and cookie-cutter best-sellers when you take a trip to the book store (whether in person or online) but you shouldn’t just settle for the first thing you see. After all, there’s more to a good book than just fancy cover art and an author’s name. Before you read any further, I’ll tell you right now that I don’t like authors who churn out book after book just by sticking the same characters in slightly different situations (Clive Cussler comes to mind here—how many times is Dirk Pitt going to be trapped underwater somewhere with his scuba tank either missing or running low?)

So, if you want to break away from the hustle and bustle, take a step back and look through these older books for a refreshing change of pace. I promise, they’ve stood the test of time and you’ll remember them long after you’ve forgotten the latest Michael Connelly "thriller."

Plus, the beauty of these older books is that they are cheap!

If you’ve never read Gaiman, you don’t know what you’re missing. I’ve never picked up another author who has the sheer raw talent this man has. Some would argue that Stephen King is better but I think he’s just more well-known. Gaiman’s words flow so effortlessly and come off the page so smoothly that you don’t even have to think; you just put your mind on auto-pilot and enjoy the ride. It’s odd too because some of the topics he deals with (okay, most of them) are so farfetched that if anybody else had written about them you wouldn’t even get through page one. I mean, American Gods is about the bastard son of Odin who is walking through a mixed pantheon of modern and forgotten gods while carrying on a running conversation with the decaying corpse of his dead wife.

In AG, readers fallow Shadow, the aforementioned son of Odin as he’s thrust into a power play that’s so far beyond reality that you should dismiss the book outright--but you can’t because the careful prose with which Gaiman threads the story is so tightly knit. While Shadow allies himself with near forgotten gods such as the African trickster/storyteller Anansi and a mysterious stranger named Wednesday against modern gods such as the god of television (yeah, you heard me right) he is pulled against his will into a warped world where cats shape shift into women, the dead come back to life, and gods wink out of existence when their worshippers forget about them.

The story delves into folklore and the very heart of America (both historical and modern) to weave a tale trippy tale of wonder and dark humor beyond reproach.

While the subject matter is farfetched, the story never becomes outlandish; it’s always right in your face.

Get your copy from Amazon.com for $14.99 or less (click the link to above.)

Long is one of those authors that many folks will pass right over without a second thought. While he’s only written 5 books to date (two of which focus on tackling the Himalayas), his debut sci-fi/fantasy/future novel The Descent is by far is most ambitious yet.

It’s the story of a hidden world that lies miles below the surface of the earth, one which has existed from time immemorial and is filled with all sorts of hellish nightmare creatures that have a striking connection with modern man.

The story goes that man, not content to conquer the face of the planet, once descended into its warm, dark bowels but once there the environment changed them, retrograding them into the hideous creatures of fairy tales. These troll-like creatures have existed in a vast underworld kingdom for ages only to be discovered accidentally as a group of climbers stumble upon one of the secret entrances to their underworld lair high in the Himalayas.

Once the proverbial genie has been let out of the bottle, modern man descends upon the creatures to dissect, study, and eventually eradicate through the might of military force.

The story is told through the point of view of several unique characters (one of which I found myself visualizing as Stephen Tyler for some reason) but provides a coherent narrative of an imagined reaction to a challenge to man’s supremacy that’s all too real. We humans never fail to think that the Earth is ours and anything that suggests that it isn’t must be quickly and utterly destroyed.

Despite the grandiose overtones, the story isn’t heavy-handed or preachy and is told with such utter realism that it doesn’t seem farfetched at all.

Get your copy from amazon.com for $7.99 or less (click the link to the above.)

Deeper is Long’s sequel to the Descent and is on my summer reading list.

Honestly, I fell for the trap like most of you. I picked up this book because I saw Vigo Mortenson on the cover and the big emblem in the corner proclaiming that the big was "now a major motion picture." So sue me.

The Road is the tale of a man and his son crossing a post-apocalyptic United States in search of the west coast. Some disaster, manmade or otherwise, has befallen the earth and the world has burned leaving the landscape scarred and black and the sky perpetually gray. With no sunlight, no food, and no structure, humanity descends into a Mad Max-style anarchy with roving gangs taking control of the landscapes, cannibalism running rampant, and the clan of man shattered into microscopic tribes.

In spite of the vast and horrific setting, this novel is about the relationship between a boy and his father. The father is dying of some unknown disease (possible lung cancer) and is struggling with the realization that his son will eventually have to survive in this hellish nightmare by himself. Along the way, the boy grows into a teenager and may actually be more ready to take on this hell than his father believes.

The reader follows the man and the boy through the burned out landscape toward their goal of the Pacific Ocean. However, when they get there, there isn’t anything to see. The ocean is a gray, lifeless mass and reflects no hope, only the dead sky above.

It’s a bleak and horrific tale that grabs you by the gut and pulls you along even though you want to put the book down.

McCarthy was really propelled into the spotlight with the his novel No Country for Old Men was adapted for the big screen and while his writing style takes quite a bit of effort to get used to (no quotation marks and short jumpy paragraphs sometimes with seemingly little connection to those before or after) it’s definitely worth it. The Road is a gut wrenching tale that even brought a tear to my eye at the end.

Get your copy from Amazon.com today for $7.99 or less (click the link to above.)

So there you have it, my summer reading list. Granted the books contained herein aren’t fluff pieces but just think how literate you’ll look with one of these puppies flopped over your face while tanning on the beach!

For more entertainment reviews please visit my blog:  MYEDaR.org

I welcome you comments below and hope you’ll feel free to add your own summer picks.

We’ve all heard the term "Big Brother is watching" but do any of you know where that came from? Picture a society in which civil liberties are being destroyed on a daily basis in the name of national security; one where the population is under constant surveillance from cctvs and audio wire taps; one where the government can spy on its citizens without warrants, hold them without cause for undetermined lengths of time, and send them to trial for seemingly trivial things. Sound familiar?

No I’m not talking about the modern United States but I could very well have been. This is the paranoid futuristic world that George Orwell created in his seminal classic Nineteen Eighty-Four. When I picked dup this book, it was because I had seen the movie adaptation and thought there had to be something more to this story that everybody was making such a fuss about (the movie really wasn’t that good.) I started reading and was blown away by just how many of Orwell’s predictions had come true.

Considering he wrote the book in 1948, it’s eerie how accurate the author’s foresight was.

The story follows an unlikely protagonist, Winston Smith—a minor bureaucrat in the mighty machine that is the modern government—who strikes out against the system and joins a seditious movement when he finds out the "Big Brother" doesn’t have the people’s best interest at heart. It’s a wonderful dystopian tale with ageless hints of ties to the real world and will definitely make all but the most jaded reader think about those traffic cameras that are popping up on top of every streetlight a little differently.

Get this wonderful new edition with foreword by Thomas Pynchon on Amazon.com for less than $11 (click the link to the above.)