 Welcome to Church of the Chair, where sometimes we cosplay as the Kool-Aid Man. Oh, yeah! I'm your host, E, and today we're doing a suggestion from Discord. Because this is a discussion video, it will be lightly edited if edited at all past the intro, but my friend, Nettles over on Discord had put something in the video topic discussion over there. I want to try it today, and that is top 5 random books that you think about a lot. Basically, books that stuck with you that maybe you didn't expect and why they stuck with you at random. Make it books you haven't discussed before. Yeah, let's do it! First up, we have Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall. This is a book that came out of nowhere for me. I got it off of a book of the month club when I was still a member, and this is the first book that I had read from Araminta Hall. I have since read two others, Imperfect Women and Hidden Something. I can't remember, it was one about the Titanic, and I didn't end up reviewing it because I didn't finish it. Not that it was bad, it just wasn't my thing. I'm not big into historical novels, and that was a little too much on the side of what I don't like, but with this one, this one made me think, and it pops up in my head a lot, especially when, this is going to be tricky to word, especially when put in a position to believe women. What I mean by that is, the book is about a stalker, about someone who doesn't initially come off as a stalker, but it just continuously gets worse and worse, and at some point in time in the story, I was on the stalker's side. And the woman in question, it should have been obvious to me right off the bat that wasn't the case, that the man in the situation was a hundred percent in the wrong, but I like books that make me think, even challenge maybe preconceived notions or whatever, also how some of us men come across as creepy as hell when we might not even see it. It opened my eyes to a lot of things, things that I had thought about before, because unfortunately even I have history with this. This is why I snicker when anyone says not all men, I feel like all of us, whether we're willing to admit it or not, has made an ass out of ourselves or has made a creep out of ourselves at some point in time, I was the back rub dude at work, and it had nothing to do with anything sexual in nature, I just like to comfort people. And I had no idea how I came across, and this was in my late teens, early twenties, I had no idea how I came across to those people, because I would give men and women back rubs when they were having neck rubs, not full blown back rubs, but I would rub their shoulders while they were down, especially rough night at the hospital, and it wasn't until one of my coworkers brought to my attention that it bothered and upset some people that I had to reevaluate everything that I had thought before, and this is a book that did the same thing to me, where I had to reevaluate how I came off and how I would react in a situation where I saw someone treating someone like the man in this book treats the main character. The next book is Gun Love, I think by Jennifer Clement. I haven't read anything else by this author, I'm not sure if she has anything else out or not, but this was a wild ride, nothing supernatural, nothing surreal, but it is just a very small story told in a trailer park. The main character is a little girl, there's a swampiness around, I believe it happens in Florida, and Gun Love, the title, you can imagine what it's about, it's literally about what's in the title, and I think about this book a lot. I do not remember a whole lot of the premise, but I do remember the dialogue being amazing, and I remember the alligators, I always get alligators and crocodiles confused, and I know not both of them are in the US, I believe we have alligators, we don't have crocodiles, but either it's an alligator farm or something along those lines, I remember that key plot, and for some odd reason that section of the book is always on my mind, not always on my mind, you get what I'm saying, I think about it a lot, and it pops up at random times, whether I'm watching something alligator related or not, it'll just pop up, I think the last thing that I watched is a Swiss army man, I believe it was, and this popped up, I have no idea why, but if you haven't read this one, I suggest giving it a try, it's one of my lesser known favorites, it's something that I got from Crown Publishing when they were still doing blogging for books, and this one really stuck with me very short, and it holds part inspiration for my novel South of Here, that and another, a documentary called Pervert Park, these two things combined is why South of Here exists. The next one I have is, I'm a big fan of the Beowulf poem, and since this has come out, this same author has retranslated it, although I do not own it yet, I've been looking for it, but it's The Mere Wife by Maria Devana Hedley, if I got any of those wrong, I apologize, but this is a fantastic retelling of the Beowulf mythos, and there's one scene in particular with a train, I believe it is, or it's a monorail or something along that, where you just, I believe it's just going through woods or mountains or whatever, but it painted such a unique picture in my head that whether or not my memory is accurate to the book, that's what I remember the most about this book, is a train weaving through trees and mountain regions and all that stuff. Also the artwork is something I come back to over and over again, I just absolutely love the way it looks, I love the color selection, orange is my favorite color if you didn't know, I have yet to read anything else from Hedley, so it's kind of like gun love in that aspect, where I didn't go and seek out anything else by the author, but I do hold this one near and dear. Of course in the video where I'm trying not to edit all the time, I keep having to clear my throat, so my apologies to those of you out there that didn't sign up for throat clearing ASMR. Next up we have In The Miso Soup by Ryu Mirakami and not Haruki Mirakami, two different authors, obviously. This book is, it's on my list for most disturbing scenes ever written and unfortunately the scene that I find the most disturbing is the scene that sticks in my head the most, I'm not going to spoil it for you, but if you've read the book or if you do read the book look for this section with the ear, I will add a little bit more to that and say that there is an ear that is cut off. It is where the ear is put after being cut off, makes this, puts this, cements it in my top five most disturbing things ever written, mainly because I've never seen anything like it and also how traumatizing something of that nature would be. So yeah, this one pops up quite a bit in my head and the only way I can get things like this out of my head is to write my own story with a scene like that, but I don't want to do it because it bothered me so much and I don't want to do that to anyone else, which is hilarious if you know my work. I do have some lines I will not cross, I do, they exist and what happens in this book is one of them. Lastly is a book, this is the second book I read from this author, both of them I got from Crown Publishing's blogging for books. The first one was called The Fold, which was an amazing sci-fi adventure. I believe time travel in The Fold would be the time travel. There's a bunch of plot holes in it, but I still had a lot of fun with it. You can look up reviews online to see what I'm talking about or if you've read it maybe you understand there's a bunch of inconsistencies as you get with most time travel books, but it was one of the first books that I read after I started subscribing to the idea Let Fiction Be Fiction and I absolutely had a blast with the book. That's not the one we're talking about though, we're talking about the book after that one, it's not a series, but this is the one he released after that. Peter Klein's Paradox Bound. This was absolutely amazing, it's another time travel thing, but the time traveling person honestly reminds me of Doctor Who and while I love Doctor Who and I love the novelizations of some of the episodes and some of the original novels in that series, this is the best Doctor Who book ever written and it doesn't even have Doctor Who in it. It's about a guy that travels through time in the same car and I just remember how cool it was, there's a person who's following on his tracks. I remember how cool it was the first time they got to ride together and that scene really sticks out for me in this book. There's a later scene also, but I can't even really describe it without spoilers because it's in the meat and potatoes of the whole thing and it's a plot twist. But that's another, those two things pop up in my head all the time, especially when I watch like time travel movies or I read a book that's time travel related. Sometimes I'll think about this one when I'm not thinking about anything having to do with time travel. Also, if you haven't read Peter Klein's and you just want a really fun book, I highly recommend anything he's done. I have not read his series, he has a series and I'm slipping my mind what it's called. Let me look it up. I have not read it. Let me flip through here. Oh, it's the X series, EX. It's got X heroes, X patriots, X communication, X purgatory, X isle. He also has one, pardon me if I get this wrong, but Sherlock Holmes versus the werewolf or something. He has something along those lines that is a repurposing of something in the public domain. It's something like that. But yeah, hello fun. I haven't read anything from him in years. I really do need to look him up. But yeah, paradox bound. So those, Nettles, there's your five. I don't know what to ask you guys at the end of this one. I guess just the same thing that I asked myself when I started this, which is, are there any books that just pop randomly into your head that you don't talk about often? And that's what I took from Nettles' post is something that I do know. Well, she said stuff you haven't talked about before. And it was very easy to pick these books because I was just looking around and like, oh yeah, that one, that one, that one. And I could have done a hell of a lot more than five. But I wanted to follow what she said. If you guys want to part two to this video, definitely let me know down there in the doobly-doo. Also, let me know if there's any books that just randomly pop into your head at any giving time, any given day, something that you enjoyed, even maybe something you didn't enjoy. Let me know all that down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I'll hell the chair.