I'm going to recommend Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen. Here's some of what Amazon has to say.

"A novel about convent life at the turn of the century? Hardly the makings of a page-turner, yet Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy is a gripping, even life-changing book. For the Sisters of the Crucifixion, each day is a ceaseless round of work, study, and prayer--one hardly separated from the other. ... Into this idyll comes Mariette--young, pretty, devout, but, as her father says, perhaps "too high-strung" for the convent. Prone to "trances, hallucinations, unnatural piety, great extremes of temperament, and, as he put it, 'inner wrenchings,'" Mariette scalds her hands with hot water as penance, threads barbed wire underneath her breasts while she sleeps, and is convinced Jesus speaks to her. Her very glamour disturbs the gentle rhythm of the nuns' lives. But when she begins bleeding from unexplained wounds in her hands, feet, and sides, the convent is thrown into an uproar. ... Mariette in Ecstasy is a brief, precious book, not a single word in excess, not a single word left out."

And Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin. This is the book description.

"...a fresh twist on the classic Jekyll and Hyde story, a novel told from the perspective of Mary Reilly, Dr. Jekyll's dutiful and intelligent housemaid. Faithfully weaving in details from Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, Martin introduces an original and captivating character: Mary is a survivor–scarred but still strong–familiar with evil, yet brimming with devotion and love. As a bond grows between Mary and her tortured employer ... Mary ultimately proves the lengths to which she'll go to protect him. ... this familiar tale is made more terrifying than we remember it, more complex than we imagined possible."

Both books are available on Amazon, although I don't know about local libraries, and both books are available used. And the novel Mary Reilly is, like, light years better than the movie Julia Roberts and John Malkovich tried to make of it.

P-C, you have read Self-Help, I'm guessing?

One more to throw in, because it occurs to me that my other was a little serious. "Louisiana Power and Light" Funny, sort of a bastard child of and Irving novel and Confederacy of Dunces.

Southern Gothic set in small-town Louisiana. Billy Wayne Fontana is the sole survivor of his oddball line of marginal folk, legendary in this backwater for being the most-often-executed and sickest white family in the Delta; and when he acquires a priestly vocation it seems likely he will be the last Fontana. While confessing young Earlene deBastrop, however, he is smitten and marries her; unfaithfulness with Tami Lynne follows, then--miraculously--a second marriage and the birth of two boys, one with a rocky heart, the other a cripple. How perplexed Billy Wayne, intending always the best but fatally impulsive, brings disaster upon himself and his little family is the center of the tale, but it is filled out with a host of ribald walk-on characters.

cut because it gives away too much

I actually think random choosing is the way to go, too. All these books sound interesting and I'm sure if any Buffista likes something enough to want all of us to read it, it's probably pretty good.

There are at least 20 different things that can endear a book to me

Sing it, sister. That's actually more what I care about hearing when people rec a title ... but that'll come up in discussions, too, of course. OK, I'm outta here for a while.

This is just ... neat.

We've got 9 (I think) so far. We wanna chop that down, wait for more and chop them, not chop any and randomize?

I'm okay with compiling all of these recommendations into a list and choosing books in random order from that list. We can add recommendations to the list as they are made.

Unless someone really wants to start with some particular book. Or at any time wants to make the case that some particular book should be read next.

(Maybe we could let Wolfram have the honor of picking the very first book from our suggestions (or one of his own) so that people can get it right away, and then figure out a system to pick books 2 and 3? He had a hard proposal, and got it passed, in the face of much resistance.)

I am really, really flattered that you guys would back this, but I'm hesitant to agree. Although I wrote and polished the proposal, all of the folks who posted in LB, supporters and non-supporters alike, took part in the creation of this thread. And I didn't "get it passed," the Will of the Buffistas did. Besides the fact that the idea wasn't even mine. It was born from Heather, amidst support from a number of Buffistas, and I merely picked it up and showed it to the masses.

However, to help get the ball rolling, if the bullshit consensus wants me to pick the first book, I will happily do so. But not because I've earned it or I'm owed it in any way.

BTW, can someone explain how the randomizing method would work?

If we're throwing out suggestions, I may as well put an Aussie into the mix. I'll shortly start reading Tim Winton's Dirt Music. It was the 2002 winner of the Miles Franklin award. Dust jacket syunopsis:

"Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with a fisherman she doesn't love and two kids who dead mother she can never replace. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. Leached of all confidence, Georgie has lost her way; she barely recognises herself.

"One morning in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from the computer screen to see a shadow lurking on the beach below, and a dangerous new element enters her life. Luther Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast.

"So begins an unlikely alliance. Set in the wild landscape of Western Australia, this is a novel about the odds of breaking with the past, a love story about people stifled by grief or regret, whose dreams are lost, whose hopes have dried up. It's a journey across landscapes within and without, about the music that sometimes arises from the dust.

"In prose as haunting and beautiful as its western setting, Dirt Music confirms Tim Winton's status as the pre-eminent Australian novelist of his generation."

I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep up in this thread... but I'ma gonna give it a try. Is it possible for someone to post something in Press once the title has been chosen?

I'm fine with whatever. I'm just so excited.

So far the recs are:

Remains of the Day
Red Tent
Into the Forest
Who Will RUn the Frog Hospital
My Name is Asher Lev
If Not Now When?
Louisiana Power and Light
Mariette in Ecstasy
Mary Rielly
Dirt Music

ETA suggestion