Cult classics
The most influential books ever written
These are the books that people will thrust into your hand and tell you that "You've got to read this - it will change your life!" Some of the titles are controversial, many are inspiring, and some are just flat-out weird. The collection is roughly half fiction and half non-fiction with a couple that are somewhere in between! We've highlighted a few of the cult classics below - click on the link underneath each book to check availability at your local library. Or view the entire cult classics collection.
I am a Woman 
by Ann Bannon
Published in 1959, this novel from the "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction" is the second in the "Beebo Brinker chronicles" and the author's favourite. The massive growth in pulp paperback fiction in the US during the late fifties and early sixties presented an opportunity for writers to be quietly subversive. Presented as cautionary and salacious tales for straight readers, Ann Weldy - writing pseudonymously as Bannon - actually struck a huge chord with an underground lesbian readership. Over 50 years since they were first published LGBT readers and writers continue to hail Bannon's series of interconnected stories as literary lifesavers. I am a Woman features the introduction of Beebo Brinker who Katherine V. Forrest described as "arguably still the most iconic figure in all of lesbian fiction." You may also want to try the first in the series Odd Girl Out.
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Crash
by J. G. Ballard
The main problem with J. G. Ballard and a Cult Classics collection is how do you choose just one of his books? The Atrocity Exhibition is a major contender for inclusion, as is The Drowned World, but in the end Crash won through. Published in 1973 the book is Ballard's jaw-dropping meditation on the human fascination with celebrity, sex, death and automotive fetishism. The novel memorably features a main character - Vaughan - whose main aim is to die in a head-on collision with the actress Elizabeth Taylor. Allegedly turned down by a publisher who scrawled "writer beyond psychiatric help" in the margins of the manuscript, Crash - like so many of Ballard's books - was way ahead of its time.
The Dice Man
by Luke Rhinehart
Published in 1971 The Dice Man tells the story of psychiatrist Luke Reinhart who, disillusioned with life, begins to take all his decisions based on rolls of the dice. The book's dark comedy, cynical worldview and explicit sex and violence rapidly earned it a cult following with some readers even beginning to regard it as a work of nonfiction. It was actually pseudonymously written by George Cockcroft, but his alter ego Luke continues to publish weird and wonderful books, including sequels to The Dice Man. Various columnists and TV presenters have embarked on concentrated periods of "Dice living", and the philosophy has inspired similar titles such as "Yes Man", but the original remains a uniquely compelling read.
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Valley of the Dolls
by Jacqueline Susann
Published in 1966 Valley of the Dolls has gone on to sell over 30 million copies. Jacqueline Susann's career as an actress meant that the novel was widely regarded as a "roman a clef". The emotional rollercoaster story of three women's struggles in Hollywood featured striking portraits of actors and actresses not a million miles away from Dean Martin, Ethel Mermann and Marilyn Monroe, to name but a few. Susann rose above celebrity sniping of her work (Gore Vidal: "She doesn't write, she types") to become one of the world's most high profile authors before her tragic early death in 1972. The camp classic film version - which Susann disliked - helped to cement the book's cult reputation.
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Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
by Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs' reputation as one of the greatest and most influential rock critics of all time remains undiminished, even though it's now over 28 years since his tragic death at the age of 33. Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung is a collection of his ground-breaking reviews and articles covering the period 1971 to 1981 that appeared in Rolling Stone, Creem and NME amongst others. The humour, passion and occasional outrage that Bangs brings to these pieces, is still fresh and entertaining after all these years. Described as a "swaggering, scary, defiant, superhuman piece of writing" by Q, if you love music you need to read Lester Bangs.
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Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
by
Published in 1979 this mesmerising and playful meditation on the nature of human thought and creativity won Hofstadter the Pulitzer Prize in 1980. In the introduction to the 20th anniversary edition Hofstadter states that the book "is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle?". Much beloved by the IT crowd for its cogitations on the nature of Artificial Intelligence, this entrancing and thought-provoking book is a philosophical masterpiece.
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No Logo
by Naomi Klein
Having just celebrated its tenth anniversary No Logo is as relevant now as when it was first published in January 2000. A scathing indictment of the cynical marketing strategies and sweatshop practices employed by Multinational corporations, the Guardian called it "an intelligently written and superbly reported account of a culture that has moved from selling products to hawking brands". Arriving at the same time as the burgeoning anti-globalization movement this book became their bible. Written with fierce intelligence - and having the self-awareness to counter any charges of hypocrisy - this is the perfect political polemic.
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