As a rule, we prefer to dis books that we’ve never opened, but it’s summer and as a “publication” we’re supposed to suggest books for you to carry around your beach share so you can look smart while you’re trying to score with your housemates. To that end, we’ve compiled a list of books the Guanabee staff has read and thinks you might enjoy. Just like your favorite video store except reading is far more work. Sorry. So check out what your editors are reading after the jump. It’s exciting and in many ways revealing…

From Alejandra:

Kafka on the Shore
By Haruki Murakami

I read Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore because it seemed like something I wouldn’t be embarrassed reading on the subway. It started out promisingly enough, but turned out to be moderately terrible with so many loose ends and dropped story lines that it was pretty apparent Murakami was just sort of making it up as he went along. I felt betrayed. And then bored. And then tired. [Editor’s Note: Oh, did we mention some books on this list we also don’t recommend?]

White Noise
By Don DeLillo

It’s really beautifully written, but repetitive as hell and repetitive. [Ed: This isn’t going exactly as we planned.] But it was a hardcover [Ed: Bonus sex for hardcovers!] and I looked smart lugging it around. Like maybe someone who does New York Times crossword puzzles while eating brunch. Or like someone who eats brunch. [Ed: As if.]

SCUM Manifesto
By Valerie Solanas

I finally got around to reading Valerie Solanas SCUM Manifesto after watching I Shot Andy Warhol. I kind of loved it. [Ed: Third time’s the charm.] It totally made me want to become a butch, Lesbian, prostitute playwright. [Ed: Wait. You’re not?] Her ideas about automated technology were pretty ahead of their time and she often toes the line between brilliant and insane, plus she’s a genuinely funny writer. I’d recommend it to every man I’ve had the urge to kill. [Ed: Some of those are bound to be amongst our readers.]

From Gabriel:

Mexico: Stencil
By Editorial RM (Compiler)

A mind-boggling 10-year research monograph on the use of stencil graffito in the streets of Mexico as a form of popular art and political protest. [Ed: Has anyone ever bought this graffiti as art crap? We personally never have. But whatever, yuppie guilt.] According to Amazon’s editorial review: “[The book] benefits from commentary by the artists themselves, who contribute background information and documentation for this project. Consistent with the spirit of its subject, however, this volume respects the anonymity of the many creators who figure in it, offering instead a vision of the streets as they might be observed by any visually aware pedestrian in contemporary Mexico.” [Ed: Thanks for passing your work off to Amazon, Gabe.]

Miami Manhunt
By Johnny Diaz
[Ed: Wait. Isn’t Johnny Diaz the guy you want to sleep with, Gabriel? Uh huh. Next!]

Miami Manhunt is author Johnny Diaz’s love letter to Miami. The novel celebrates the loyalty of enduring friendships and the love of a tight-knit Cuban family. Diaz wrote this novel to illustrate, in a light-hearted and fun way, the gay Latino experience in Miami, his hometown. The three characters in Miami Manhunt ultimately realize that love is crazy, hearts get broken and mended and the only thing they can count on is their family and each other. Perfect for the beach! [Ed: Johnny Diaz, please have sex with Gabriel.]

The Big Penis Book
[Ed: Say no more!..Oh, alright.]
By Dian Hanson (Editor)

Amazon sez: This hefty volume is profusely illustrated with more than 400 historic photos of spectacular male endowments, including rare photos of the legendary John Holmes. The majority of the photographs are from the 1970s when the sexual revolution first freed photographers to depict nude men. [Ed: Wait. You may have just redeemed the entire ’70s with that one sentence.]

From Cindy:

Bless Me, Ultima
by Rudolfo Anaya

Everyone should read Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya if you never have. It’s one of the few palatable pieces of Chicano literature that goes far beyond being palatable and actually makes you want to physically eat the text and let it live inside you forever and ever. [Ed: We felt that way once, but it was about a Luther Burger.] It’s about a boy growing up in New Mexico in the 1940’s whose grandmother is a curandera. But it’s really about him coming to terms with his manhood trying to decide if he’s going to be a macho vaquero like his dad or a sensitive farmer like his mother’s side. [Ed: Obvs, a vaquero. Who wants to sleep with a farmer?] And there’s magic. [Ed: Yes, if you wear the saddle.]

The Revolt of the Cockroach People
by Oscar Zeta Acosta

The Revolt of the Cockroach People by Oscar Zeta Acosta is a memoir by the guy Benicio Del Toro played in the movie version of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas. Well, the character was based on him. Acosta was a civil rights lawyer for the Brown Berets during the Chicano movement in California as well as being a drug-addled, womanizing/pedophilic pig. [Ed: Charming!] He disappeared in 1971 and his good friend Hunter S. Thompson wrote the forward to the book saying that he was either hiding from or more likely killed by the CIA. [Ed: So he’s probably passed out in Hunter S. Thompson’s bathtub.]

The Journey Is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon
Edited by Kathy Eldon

For creative inspiration, read The Journey Is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon. It’s mostly pictures! They’re really cool collages that this guy, Dan Eldon, compulsively created from the time he was a young child, until he died at the age of 22 when he was stoned to death in Somalia [Ed: That’s with actual stones not hashish, people.] while covering the civil war there for Reuters. He was a photojournalist from the time he was a child, but actually started getting paid for it by the time he was like 19. He grew up in Kenya and he lived more in his short life than most people do in 90 years. I read this book in 1997 and it had a kind of resurgence recently, so you might have heard of it. I pull it out all the time to steal ideas. [Ed: And that’s supposed to be a recommendation, right? We kid!]

From Mark [Ed: Of Marcover fame—yes, he works in the Guanabee office now.]:

The Stranger
By Albert Camus

I just got added to this magically! [Ed: You’re not getting paid any extra.]

Anyway… just finished [Albert] Camus’ The Stranger, cuz you have to at some point. [Ed: Nice that you’ve taken on Camus’ theme of total resignation to the banality of life. When can we expect you to commit a murder at work so that we can plan our Summer Fridays?] Its good to remember that life is absurd. Plus it was good subway reading. [Ed: Translation, someone got felt up on the F Train.]

My Name is Red
by Orhan Pamuk
I also have My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk, which I picked cuz I want to go to Istanbul but can’t afford to. Plus Pamuk is supposedly amazing? I’ll let you know. [Ed: Did we mention we also haven’t read some of the books on this list?]

A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962
By Sir Alistair Horne

A Savage War of the Peace, whenever it arrives, [Ed: Told you.] is about France’s struggle in Algeria from 1954-62 and how much that all sucked. This is not a book I would include on anyone’s reading list. [Ed: Bullshit, this would totally make you seem smart and fuckable.]

Skinny Dip
By Carl Hiaasen

Classic good summer reading [Ed: There’s that word again]: Carl Hiaasen is wonderfully trashy. [Ed: We find that’s a good way to pick friends, too.]

In Cuba I was a German Shephard
by Ana Menendez

I also read In Cuba I was a German Shephard by Ana Menendez last summer, which was a collection of interesting and well written short stories about, well, Cubans. [Ed: We were once a Chihuahua in a San Diego bathhouse, but that’s a short story for another collection…]

And that’s all! [Ed: Thanks! You’re fired.]

From Daniel:

The Boat
By Nam Le

I am reading The Boat by Nam Le. It’s a collection of short stories by the young Vietnamese author. Among them is “Cartagena”: a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. [Ed: God that’s so heterosexual male, we grew a dick just reading about it.]

It’s not News, It’s Fark
By Drew Curtis

I am also reading It’s not News, It’s Fark by Drew Curtis founder of Fark.com about how mass media tries to pass off crap as news. Hope this helps. [Ed: Hahahaha]

Well, there you have it, Guanababies. Please feel free to chime in with your own recommendations, warnings and disagreements. And we’ll expect a 300-word book report on our desk come September.