The Gonzo Papers

I just finished the whole series. It was a great read. It's taken me a while. I started The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time over a year ago. My reading habits seem to have lapsed at some point after this. But I made up for the lapse by finishing the other three in about two weeks. It was almost by accident that I picked up Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s. I was desperate for something to read. Having just moved into my apartment, I was without TV or internet, my two standard pass-times. I took this lack of technology more as an opportunity to read more than any sort of hardship. After finishing volume two, my taste for the Doc's writing was piqued. I quickly moved on to Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream, and finished with Better than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie. Looking back at my reading schedule, I realize that it somewhat mirrors Thompson's writing schedule, on a smaller scale of course. The Great Shark Hunt was published about 10 years before the next three were put out in what can only be called a flurry of publishing. Anyway, I highly recommend all of these books, especially if you read all of them together. There are a lot of themes that carry over from one volume to the next.