Books i can only hope to convince you to read.

Here we go.

Still Life with Woodpecker: By Tom Robbins

Consider a certain night in August.  Princess Leigh-Cheri was gazing out of her attic window. . . "Does the moon have a purpose?" she inquired of prince Charming [her pet frog].
     Prince Charming pretended that she had asked a silly question.   Perhaps she had.  The same query put to the Remington SL3 elicited this response:
     Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
     Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.
     Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
     There is only one serious question.  And that is:
     Who knows how to make love stay?

     Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.

House of Leaves: By Mark Z. Danielewski.

"FUCK" was still scratched above it. As I've been doing my best to incorporate most of these amendments, I didn't think it was fair to suddenly exclude this one even if it did mean a pretty radical shift in tone.

This instance in particular proves that beneath all the cool psuedo-academic nonsense lurked a very passionate man who knew how important it was to say "fuck" every now and then, and say it out loud too, relish 

its syllabic sweetness, its immigrant pride, a great American epic word really, starting at the lower lip, often the very front of the lower 

lip, before racing all the way to the back of the throat, where it finishes with a great blast, the concussive force of the K catching up 

then with the hush of the F already on its way, thus loading it with plenty of offense and edge and certainly ambiguity. FUCK. A great by-

the-bootstrap prayer or curse if you prefer, depending on how you look at it, or use it, suited perfectly for hurling at the skies or at the world.

Maybe he just wrote "fuck" because he wasn't saying fuck before when he could fuck and now as he waited in that hole on Whitley he wished he could of lived a little differently. Or then again maybe he just needed a word strong enough to push back his doubts, a word strong enough to obliterate.

You wouldn't believe how much harder it's getting for me to just leave. It's really sad. In fact these days the only thing that gets me outside is when I say: fuck. fuck. fuck. fuck you. fuck me. fuck this. fuck. fuck. fuck.

Now John Pullega, this is the part of the book that I tried to find for you.

House of Leaves: By Mark Z. Danielewski.

Page 131

"I finally hooked up with Ashley.  I went over to her place yesterday morning.  Early.  She lives in Venice.  Her eyebrows look like flakes of sunlight.  Her smile, I'm sure, burnt Rome to the ground.  And for the life of me I didn't know who she was or where we'd met.  Before she even said a word, she held my hand and led me through her house to a patio overgrown with banana trees and rubber plants.  Black, decomposing leaves covered the ground but a large hammock hung above it all.

We sat down together and I wanted to talk. I wanted to ask her who she was, where we'd met, been before, but she just smiled and held my hand as we sat down on the hammock and started to swing above all those dead leaves. She kissed me once then suddenly sneezed, a tiny beautiful sneeze, which made her smile even more and my heart started hurting because I couldn't share her happiness, not knowing what it was or why it was or who for that matter I was--to her. So I lay there hurting, even when she sat on to of me, covering me in the folds of her dress, and her with no underwear and me doing nothing as her hands briefly unbuttoned my jeans and pulled me out of my underwear, placing me where it was rough and dry, until she sank down without a gasp, and then it was wet, and she was wet, and we were wet, rocking together beneath a small patch of overcast sky, brightening fast, her eyes watching the day come, her blonde hair covering her face, her knees tightening around my ribs, until she finally met that calendrical coming without a sound--the only sign--and then even though I had not come, she kissed me for the last time and climbed out of the hammock and went inside.

Before I left she told me our story: where we'd met--Texas--kissed, but never made love and she needed to do it before she got married which was in four months to a man she loved who made a living manufacturing TNT exclusively for a highway construction firm up in Colorado where he frequently went on business trips and one night, drunk, angry and disappointed he had invited a hooker back to his motel room and so on and who cared and what was I doing there anyway? I left, considered jerking off, finally got around to it back at my place though in order to pop I had to think of Thumper. It didn't help. I was still hurting, abandoned, drank three glasses of bourbon and fumed on some weed, then came here, thinking of voices, real and imagined, of ghosts, my ghost, of her, at long last, in this idiotic footnote, when she gently pushed me out of her door and I said quietly "Ashley" causing her to stop pushing me and ask "yes?" her eyes bright with something she saw that I could never see though what she saw was me, and not caring though now at least knowing the truth and telling her the truth: "I've never been to Texas."