“Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! Third rule of Fight Club: if someone yells “stop!”, goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: the fights are bare knuckle. No shirt, no shoes, no weapons. Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you HAVE to fight.”

Familiar words of a grand old movie? Fight Club never gets old; it is the perfect film that brings you through a roller coaster of emotional and psychological turmoil, confusion, disgust, understanding, and empathy via the story brought by the intense main characters (or character?) played by Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. These rules are famously spoken by Brad Pitt in the 1999 film; however, this revolutionizing story, of course, would not exist without the fabulously twisted mind of Chuck Palahniuk, who originally wrote the book in which it was based in 1996.

Here is where I would like to strongly recommend (actually this is an order) that if you have not seen, read, or *gasp* heard of Fight Club, that you do so immediately.

Now, about the reading. I've read Fight Club, seen the movie, and read a handful of rather disturbing short stories by Chuck Palahniuk. Fight Club was a great read where I genuinely appreciated the style of righting, and Palahniuk's ability to effortlessly create an image in my head. He really gets into your psych in this one too, which personally, I love. You're constantly stopping and processing what just happened, trying to unfold the story yourself before Palahniuk reveals the truths behind everything.

Palahniuk's gift of giving a GREAT description is something that shows up in the short stories I've read by him as well. The author uses painfully detailed imagery to create extremely unsettling, yet believable monsters, characters, situations, and stories in everything he writes. I don't know how else to explain it other than saying that the writings of Chuck Palahniuk are straight up disturbing. Although discomforting, there's something so perplexing and attractive about the things he thinks up, that makes you want to read more...so here I am asking myself why have I not?

In the start to my summer and quest to hoard all of the books I can affordably get my hands on, I decided to devote my season's reading list to Chuck Palahniuk. It's about time! So, on the day of my last exam of the semester and logged on to Amazon and ordered a pretty hefty handful of Palahniuk books off used book accounts and now have myself a healthy stack that includes novels like Beautiful You, Choke, Invisible Monsters, Make Something Up, Diary, Haunted, Lullaby...I know there's more, but that is just a few that I have waiting for my very intrigued mind to read!

So far, I am about 85% done reading "Beautiful You". Again, the detail is amazing and Paluhniuk hooks you from the beginning. I would absolutely recommend this one at this point, even if the last 15% blows, the first portion of the book would totally be worth the read. As long as you don't mind talk and ideas involving sex, particularly in a grotesque, sometimes unnerving fashion...you might really enjoy this book.

Actually, that would be my only warning when adding Paluhniuk to your own reading list. If you are squeamish or easily offended, you miiiight not want to pick up his work. BUT if gross, weird, bizarre is what you find yourself interested in and drawn to a lot of the time (like myself), trust me, you've just found your new favorite author.

You're welcome.

Now go order yourself some books (we all know you're an online shopping addict) or head to Barnes and Noble and pick up some of Chuck's works.

I can assure you, you will not be bored.