Welcome back to the October 2015 edition of the Reader's Den! This is our final week  of Just Call Me Superhero by Alina Bronsky. If you missed any of this month's discussions, then you can revisit earlier posts:

Part 1: welcome, book introduction, and author information

Part 2: discussion and reflection (mid-month)

There are not any discussion questions; however, feel free to discuss any points that came to mind as you finished the book. At the end of the post, there is also a list of suggested titles with themes similar to those within Just Call Me Superhero.

If you enjoyed, this novel, then I highly recommend reading Alina Bronsky's previous works, Broken Glass Park (2010) and The Hottest Dishes of Tartar Cuisine ( 2011), which also feature anti-heroes. Though both admittedly sound quite dark and possibly depressing from the descriptions, be assured that they are peppered with dark humor and whit throughout.

Broken Glass Park: Seventeen-year-old Sacha Naimann dreams of writing a novel about her mother and killing the man who murdered her, Sacha's stepfather Vadim, while struggling to care for her younger siblings and leave behind her painful childhood.

Reviews

"Whether it's autobiographical or not, Bronsky writes with a gritty authenticity and unputdownable propulsion, capturing the egotism and need of a girl just beginning to understand her own power." -Vogue 

"Surprising, poetic, extremely well-crafted . . . recalls the narrative art of Zadie Smith."- K÷lner Stadtrevue

"Youthful, fast-paced, at times sad, never sugarcoated. Broken Glass Park tells the story of a marvelous reawakening."-Modern Zeiten

"Playful, audacious and brimming with verve . . . A gripping read."-Book Reporter (Germany)

The Hottest Dishes of Tartar Cuisine: Rosa's schemes to abort her daughter Sulfia's fetus after learning of the pregnancy, take her granddaughter Aminat after the baby's birth, and move the family out of the Soviet Union eventually lead to tragedy.

Reviews

"What begins as a cruel comic romp ends as a surprisingly winning story of hardship and resilience." — The New Yorker

"Bronsky lands another hit with this hilarious, disturbing, and always irreverent blitz." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A rich, funny and unspeakably delicious novel" — Bookslut

"Bronsky's great gift is humor." — Los Angeles Times

Here are some of my personal favorites, which also feature anti-heroes (and are available for checkout at NYPL with your library card):

• Native Son by Richard Wright: Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written—in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what it means to be black in America.
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
• The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger: Holden, Caulfield, knowing he is to be expelled from school, decides to leave early. He spends three days in New York City and tells the story of what he did and suffered there.
• The Watchmen by Alan Moore: It all begins with the paranoid delusions of a half-insane hero called Rorschach—but is he really insane or has he, in fact, uncovered a plot to murder super-heroes and possibly millions of innocent civilians? Following two generations of masked super-heroes from the close of World War II to the icy shadow of the Cold War comes this groundbreaking comic story—the story ofThe Watchmen.
• Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk: The rise of a terrorist organization, led by a waiter who enjoys spitting in people's soup. He starts a fighting club, where men bash each other, and the club quickly gains in popularity. It becomes the springboard for a movement devoted to destruction for destruction's sake. 
• Catch 22 by Joseph Heller: Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never even met keep trying to kill him.
• American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis: In a black satire of the eighties, a decade of naked greed and unparalleled callousness, a successful Wall Street yuppie cannot get enough of anything, including murder. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day, while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess: Told through a central character, Alex, the disturbing novel creates an alarming futuristic vision of violence, high technology, and authoritarianism. A modern classic of youthful violence and social redemption set in a dismal dystopia whereby a juvenile delinquent undergoes state-sponsored psychological rehabilitation for his aberrant behavior.

By no means is this list comprehensive. What are some of your favorites?

Come back to the Reader's Den in November for a discussion on Gone Girl  by Gillian Flynn and Medea by Euripides.

Happy reading!