Who Goes There? Points if you know what movie was based on it.
Going After Cacciato is among my top five favorite books and even better, I think, than The Things They Carried.
I think I know the story you’re referring to, but I thought it was a short story rather than a novel? It’s been a very long time since I read it, but I recall I did it all in one go, which I’ve never managed with a full novel. Would James Arness and Kurt Russell be relevant names for the movie tie-in?
Having lurked in The Straight Dope for a long time, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing I’ve ever read that someone here hasn’t also read at some time, but here’s a couple I liked enough to read twice, but would bet that most people have never even heard of: Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann, and The Worm Ouroboros, by E.R. Eddison.
I’m not Chefguy but you’re right. 
I’ve heard of the Mann book and have tried to read the Eddison, but it puts me to sleep. Maybe it’s a morning book.
I think the last time we did a thread like this, my pick was The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. but a bunch of Dopers were familiar with it.
How about The Last of the Just by Andre Schwarz-Bart? That book made an indelible impression on me when I was a teenager. Nightmares even.
Oh! Here’s one! I read it on a plane trip. I’d gone to visit friends in a book group. One of them had lost a book I’d loaned her, and she replaced it with Bighead by Edward Lee. More nightmares. And I really hoped no one on the plane would ask me about the book, or recognize it.
Own it and have read it many times over.
Despite loving both of these, I must insist that you are wrong.
With respect to other books, years ago I read a series of novels centering on the dregs of the Germany army, written by a guy named Sven Hassel. They were coarse, implausible and thoroughly entertaining.
I’ve tried reading The Wor,m Ouroboros, too. It’s one of the fantasy novels that was republished in the wake of The Lord of the Rings to try to cash in on Tolkien’s popularity. I couldn’t finish it, either. It had a stack of sequels, as well.
I know Buddenbrooks, although I never read it. Here in Boston the Paperback Booksmith chain changed its name to Buddenbrooks (there was a big one on Boylston Street, opposite the Prudential Center), so you couldn’t miss it.
As for Who Goes There?, it’s pretty famously the John Campbell short story on which The Thing is based. Although there was a book of that title, it was a collection of Ca,mpbell short stiories. The story’s been anthologized a number of times, as well, including The Best of john W. campbell and in Healy and McComas’ influential anthology Adventures in Time and Space, which Hollywood must have perused, because they also made movies out of Farewell to the Master (which became The Day the Earth Stood Still and the Twonky, and the Raymond F. Jones story in there has almost the same plot as the other Jones story that became the first part of This Island Earth.
Last year my teenage stash of sci-fi/fantasy books turned up (Mom had it in the attic), and The Worm Ouroboros was one of them. I really recalled liking it back then, but trying to reread it a few months ago…meh. Up soon is a book that might be equally obscure, F. Paul Wilson’s Healer.
Blasphemy!
“The Things They Carried” is one of the greatest short stories of the modern era. Going After Cacciato is a good novel.
Why are people posting bestsellers in this thread anyway?
If you want obscure, how about The Collected Adventures of Nick Danger: Third Eye?
It’s absolutely not what you think. (Although the Firesign Theatre are themsleves threatening to slip into obscure territory.) It’s two series of parody adventures of Nick Danger, written by J. R. Reddig and published originally in the Midway Multiplex, the onship newspaper of the U. S. S. Midway. Reddig later mimeographed the typewritten originals and bound them in thicker cover stock. But I bought this in a used bookstore and I’ve seen references to other copies out there (try to find one: just try) so this counts as a book. A truly obscure book.
Two helpful tips for reading The Worm Ouroboros:
1. Find a copy of the book that includes lots and lots of footnotes.
2. Tear out the first dozen or so pages and burn them.
The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy, by Avram Davidson (who is popular enough to support a website, but I can’t recall actually meeting anyone else who has read that book, which I re-read frequently, can’t get enough).
I don’t know anyone else who ever read this book. I know in the town library I had been the only person to check it out in the whole of the 70s. (Who knows if it’s still there) The Baby Whale, Sharp Ears, by John Y Beaty.
Agree that The Things They Carried is one of the greatest short stories of the modern era. Absolutely do not agree that Going After Cacciato is merely a good novel. It’s an hallucinatory, perfectly crafted, 352-page sustained mind-fuck. I can think of few novels as brilliant.
I had a copy, but lost it before I could read it. This is a shame, because I love the Davidson I have read (They loved me in Utica, Big Sam, The golem)
I remember those, about a Waffen-SS unit (I believe) fighting the Russians during WWII. I thought they were awesome too!
In the last 30 years, I’ve only known one other person who had read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and Mother Night. Is anyone here familiar with both works?
Yup. I remember the illustration of the “priest” wearing the toilet on his head.
I read None Dare Call It Treason in a paranoid moment, as well as Masters of Deceit, by none other than J. Edgar himself.
Regards,
Shodan
As others have already noted, you’re correct. I remember (as a kid) taking the book off the shelf and opening to the first story, the first line of which was: “The place stank.” I was hooked.
I don’t expect that I’m the only Doper who’s read Plato’s Republic, but I reckon there’s a very good chance that I’m the only one who has read it in the original Greek. (Jeebus but it was nearly 30 years ago.) I don’t think I read the whole of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, in Latin, but I certainly read large chunks of it.
I got a copy recently. I didn’t read it from cover to cover, but I read enough of it. Afterward I thought about opening a Pit thread called something like “Great, Rorschach has my mailing address.”
I just got Ada as a birthday present, so I’ll be joining your club shortly.