Searching for similar authors and/or books for my abstract, descriptive,

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Kai

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independent nature.? Greetings,
a few years ago i was told that i should read a Jack Kerouac book, told by a few ppl that it was the kind of reading

i would like since previously i was very enticed by Conrad Aiken's poems, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ginsberg and particularly Oscar Wilde. I also enjoyed reading Catcher in the Rye,The Great Gatsby and have since developed a great passion for the much more recent author Augusten Burroughs books. In the recent past i have read all of his books (which, are not as many as that sounds) but boy, they sure were great. I rented Augusten's audiotapes from my library and while i prefer to not follow the mainstream and read what everyone else is currently reading, i was given a very popular book this past November that, I was truly very surprise with. I ended up liking this book very much, it was called the Glass castle.

Oh so sorry, I am rambling', back to that Kerouac book, as i was saying, recently i read Kerouac for the first time, his book called On the Road, It had various bouts of phenomenal descriptive quotes regarding love, nature, pain, life, loss and the beat generation, all things i am very interested in, but (please don't laugh) while i was trying to read it I struggled so hard to understand its complex wording that got me lost often in trying to comprehend the reading. It does not help that i have multiple learning disabilities that i have had ever since school work Because actual work!. in other words, since 3rd-4the grade, i had a unbelievable difficulty understanding complex vernacular, the kind that Kerouac uses in his books constantly. I tried reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's (the guy who wrote The Great Gatsby) book called This Side of Paradise figuring id like it but it didn't interest me. Until Augusten puts out a new book, i feel so lost because there aren't any books like his that I've liked. The only other author i enjoyed who came close to my adornment for Augustens books was Elizabeth Wurtzel who wrote Prozac Nation. To find books like Augustens, I have tried to enjoy David Sedaris's books. I read two, Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family....etc, in all, I found it not hardly as funny or even as entertaining as i read by its reviews by others. i would very much appreciate recommendations of authors like any of the authors i have named above whose books i covet. or just recommending a book that you truly think i might enjoy that are like any of these that i mentioned i enjoyed.

Thank you so much!
 
If you enjoy Emerson, you might try the other big American Transcendentalists: Henry David Thoreau (Walden, On Civil Disobedience) and Margaret Fuller (The Great Lawsuit). Melville's "Moby Dick" also has Transcendentalist undertones, and while it's a long book I find him easy to read because of his descriptive yet no-nonsense, direct style.

For poetry you should check out Walt Whitman, particularly his collective works in "Leaves of Grass." He can be compared in ways to Emerson (who was his biggest fan) and Oscar Wilde.
 
Hah lots of those books you mentioned are my favorites! I had the same problems with Kerouac too. Burroughs is amazing (have you read "Dry"? That's a really good one.) And Wurtzel's "More, Now, Again" is one of my favorite books.
I would suggest:
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Scattershot by David Lovelace
Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
The Book of Dahlia
The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve (or The Pilot's Wife)
Books by Jodi Picoult
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The World According to Garp by John Irving (very weird book--you either hate it or love it--I loved it.)

For poetry, try:
Philip Larkin
Sylvia Plath
Ann Sexton
Theodore Roethke
Robert Lowell
 
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