Shelfology Book Pairing

by John Wyndham

The beginning of the end seemed harmless enough: a night of mysterious green flashes in the sky. When people woke up blind the next morning, civilization suddenly ground to a halt. And then the triffids began to move in . . . Facing loneliness, confusion, and constant threats from a world gone insane, one man must overcome his fear and discover a way to reestablish a world in the wake of this unexplainable catastrophe.

A Novel -- 20th Anniversary Edition

by David Foster Wallace

This deluxe paperback edition--featuring flaps, new cover art, and a new foreword by Tom Bissell--celebrates the 20th anniversary of the original publication of Infinite Jest. A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human - and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.