Books & Authors : What is your favorite Chuck Palahniuk book?

It sounds strange, but I'm glad that the most culturaly popular option (fight club) is not the highest. While I do love that book, I feel that Invisible Monsters and Rant are so much better. Yay for people that actually read!

I voted Rant. I fooking love that book. Fight Club and Invisible Monsters are wonderful too, but Rant just has something else about it.

@ Brandon - you really don't like Pygmy do you? It was good for a laugh if nothing else. I still maintain that the last three or four are closer to comedy than anything else.

I would say Survivor followed by Invisible Monsters. I rather liked Haunted. Who has read Damned? Is it any good?

As my anonymous vote indicates, I am a big Pygmy fan!! (yes that one vote is mine). I know it may not reach everybody equally but I found it hilarious, sweet, brutal, unique character, unique style, and when I read it first it reminded me of my first year in the US, so how could I not like it (except I'm not a secret agent - I mean, what have you heard?)

Fight Club, Survivor, Lullabye and Haunted really stood out for me. (Voted for Haunted)

I remember liking Choke more before I saw the movie, but I haven't been able to think of it outside that context so I always think, meh.

But I didn't like Rant at all, and I actually never even finished Pygmy, I hated it.

I'm not in a very good position to defend my vote since I haven't read Haunted in a long time. But the reason I voted for Haunted is simple, Haunted is way darker than any book I would voluntarily read, it's got that whole Saw angle going on IIRC and many of the short stories are these gross-out things (I remember very vividly the story involving a pool drain). Haunted was so not my type of book that I tried to stop reading it several times.

But it stayed in my head and I had to finish it and the book is not without its merits.

As for the overall plot. If I were riding in a car driven by M. Night Shymalan and at the end of our journey he jerked the car around at the last second and we ended up being somewhere I had not expected to be I would not be surprised, that is what he does.

With Palahniuk, if he were driving that car, I have the notion that when we arrived at the "inevitable destination" he would immediately shoot the car over an embankment and make it as far into the wilderness as possible for no apparent reason. I'm not complaining, because it is not uninteresting or unenjoyable, but that is the sort of thing you get at the end of one of his books. Something so over the top that it makes the rest of the book feel very strange. I remember feeling that way when the antagonist of Haunted was explained, but I also remember feeling that way at the end of Diary and even Lullabye, I think Lullabye is probably the smoothest non-sequitur ending, but when it gets into that scooby doo stuff there at the end (I hope I remember that right) it again wierds me out.

But that is just the experience you get out of his books, I understand it, he doesn't want a conventional ending.

It is not a flaw, I don't think many authors would have had the balls to blow up those buildings at the end of Fight Club.

-

Rant on the other hand, I'm not sure Rant made sense in the beginning, and so when it went even further over the top it didn't come as a surprise.

@ JR - I found myself thinking and speaking like Pygmy for a while after reading it. It made life more interesting.

I've only read half of them (own them all though) but of the ones I've read I'd have to say Invisible Monsters.

I want to know who picked Pygmy!

Show yourself!

I got a good laugh out of that.

And Brandon, totally agree on Haunted. I was not a fan. Dennis and I had dinner with Chuck one time in Portland and he was telling us about his next book at the time, which was Haunted. He said it was a book of short stories, but that his editor was pushing for him to turn it into a novel. We both begged him not to do it. Obviously, he didn't listen.

I picked Fight Club because it was at the top of the list, but it's tied with Choke as my favorite. But then, the only other books of his that I've read so far are Survivor and Invisible Monsters.

@ Josh: I'm the Pygmy fan!!!!!! Deluded female apprehend book, place time about year and few month ago. After read, wanted propose marriage to operative agent Pygmy.

I chose Invisible Monster. I just really enjoyed how he got from point A to point B without me knowing what was going on. It was the first book that surprised me in a long while.

Very tough call. I went with Survivor by a hair over Choke. I also loved Diary, IM, Lullaby, and Rant. Took me awhile to get back around to FC, after seeing the film, but I still loved it. Snuff I thought was funny. I liked Haunted, too. Couldn't stomach Pygmy or Tell-All. Have Damned, but haven't really given it a chance. STF and F&R were great reads too. So I guess I'd rank them:

Survivor
Choke
Fight Club
Diary
IM
Lullaby
Rant
Haunted
STF
F&R
Snuff
Damned
Tell-All
Pygmy

^it was supposed to be a trilogy, @nkwilczy, so i'd hoped that anything that was left open-ended would be addressed in subsequent books. but i haven't seen this "trilogy" move forward.

I think Fight Club will always be my favorite.  It showed me how much fun reading could be, as opposed to informative and interesting.

Choke is so close a second, it's almost too close to call.  After I read Choke, I realized the things I truly wanted to say could be said.

After FC, I think I read everything Chuck had published at the time, up to Haunted, in about two weeks.

I haven't read Pygmy yet, but I have it.  I tried for a month to read Tell All, I just couldn't do it.

I gave my vote to Survivor. No book has made me laugh out loud in public more than that one.

Yeah, just give up and vote for Haunted. Admit that it was awesome.

I'd do the full rankings something like

Haunted
Fight Club
Lullabye
Survivor
Choke
Diary
Invisible Monsters
Stranger than Fiction

and then I'd stop rating them. Those are the ones I like.

In the entire gamut of human literature, we are all retards. No one has read EVERYTHING....except Phil, he has read stuff that hasn't even been written yet.

Not only am I from the future, but I have an article about Fight Club coming out in about a week right here on LitReactor.

Don't tell me you are going to rip on Fight Club and tell us it sucks.

Phil, Disney stole your story.

I voted Haunted. It was the first  of his books I read and have not come across much that can top that level of nasty.

Didn't get on with Rant at all. Just not my cuppa.