Isaac grew up in Prescott but left in 2011 to pursue a degree in Game & Interactive Media Design in the big city. After 5 years in Chicago and 3 in Seattle, he started missing the monsoons and outdoors and decided to settle back into life in his hometown. While working for Peregrine Books, he also writes and edits video essays for the YouTube channel Off Screen (which recently passed 1,000 subscribers!) and is working on his first novel. You can find more details or get in touch through his website: www.isaacafrankel.com |
Why haven't they made this into a movie yet???
The first book assigned in elementary school that I actually enjoyed, kicking off an obsession with survival stories I still have to this day. Gritty and realistic, Hatchet is sort of like Into the Wild for younger readers.
The book that arguably saved the first Star Wars during its writing process; Campbell proposed a common structure shared by all myths and world religions, containing a deeper truth about the human psyche. Required reading for any prospective storytellers or spiritual seekers.
If you’ve read Hero with a Thousand Faces and want more Campbell, this is a great pick. Transcribed from video interviews completed just months before his death, Campbell pours all his passion about mythology and psychology into a wide-ranging conversation about the sacred.
Not just for writers! Part how-to and part autobiography of King’s addiction and car crash-fueled life, this book is written in a style that will entertain any readers. If you’re looking for a peak into the creative life or looking for inspiration for your next project… this is the book for you!
I know it's bold to say so, but this book changed my life. A collection of interviews with the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg from age 18 right up to his death at age 70, here is an entire catalog of one man's artistic and spiritual journeys. Spoken with his usual radical candor, Ginsberg reveals some hard-hitting truths. WARNING! You may find enlightenment in these pages.
The classic sci-fi story that inspired Star Wars and is most often compared to The Lord of the Rings, Dune kicks off a saga of incredible depth and complexity in a simple adventure story about a young boy leaving his water planet to discover his destiny on a strange desert one populated by ferocious, dragon-like sandworms.
More a bridge to Children of Dune than a full sequel, Herbert spends little time in subverting everything he established in the first story. This is usually the make-it-or-break it point for readers. Either you can get on board with Herbert’s vision or this is your exit.
Here is where we get what feels like a true sequel to Dune. A new hero, a new journey, but with higher stakes and plumbing deeper depths of the human psyche and social fabric. It’s everything that Dune was, amped up to 11. Messiah may be a slog, but it’s worth it to get to this story.
Here is where the Dune saga achieves its grand vision. It’s also Dune at its weirdest. A half-man, half-worm living as God-Emperor over multiple universes? Herbert never finished the series, so this is its best “finale,” showing the true scope of Dune’s grand vision… and what it says about our society.
Written in 1953, Bradbury envisions a future in which the reading of books with complex, unregulated ideas is crontolled by a totalitarian government... and firefighters no longer save houses from fires, but burn them down. Although he placed this future in 2053, some parts of this world feel eerily like today.
An academix look at the medium of comic books, this is great for anyone wanting to understand what's special about comics or what it takes to make one! Think comics began as mindless products for children of the baby boom? This book argues that it has a rich legacy stretching back to the ancient storytelling of early agrarian societies.
The best science-fiction you’ve never read.
Rivaling Dune in scope, this trilogy explores a galactic society that existed 100,000 years ago, when mankind was fractured into multiple species of hominids, and vied for dominance of a galaxy controlled by a superior race of beings… the creators of the Halo installations. No Halo knowledge necessary to enjoy this story, which forms the backbone for the entire game series.
In this sequel to Cryptum, Greg Bear showcases his love of anthropology through a deep-dive into the various human cultures that existed 100,000 years ago… and shows us the true horrors of “The Flood,” far surpassing anything we’d imagined.
This Greek tragedy comes to the only conclusion it ever could.
Witness the fall of the Forerunners…
Looking to get your screen-locked kid to read or just curious what this Halo business is about? This is the first Halo book ever written (20 years ago!) and introduces the major elements in play in this classically-inspired sci-fi game series!
(This book cannot be returned)
The quintessential "lost world" story the gave the sub-genre its name. Before every corner of the world had been mapped, there were still unknown regions on remote continents that held fantastic mysteries... and dinosaurs, of course.
The quintessential “lost world” story that gave the sub-genre its name. Before every corner of the world had been mapped, there were still unknown regions on remote continents that held fantastic mysteries… and dinosaurs, of course.
For the literary nerds out there. Cloud Atlas tells an interwoven tale of six characters, each with completely different language depending on the setting of each story - ranging from a 19th century ship voyage to a far-future dystopia. One of the most impressive feats of writing I've ever read.
"The enemy's gate is down."
The original sci-fi story now considered a classic in the genre, Ender's Game follows six year old Ender Wiggin as he's conscripted into Battle School and trained as a military leader to fight the genocidal "Buggers" that threaten Earth. Plot twists ensue.
This mature sequel to Ender's Game explores the life of Ender Wiggin after his traumatic experience in the Formic Wars. Here, an older Ender assists colonization efforts on a planet where colonists are turning up brutally murdered by by a new race of strange alien beings...
Harari argues in this book that human history is really the history of ideas, and that all cultures are a product of the stories we tell, on both an individual and a societal level. This book and Hero with a Thousand Faces will also help immensely with understanding all the forces at play in the complex, classic sci-fi novel Dune.
Having an existential crisis?
DON'T PANIC!
Douglas Adams is here to teach you how to embrace absurdism and find the fun and humor in the ridiculous nature of this pointless existence.
The modern-day companion to Thoreau, this account of Chris McCandless's flight from society into the solitude of the Alaskan wilderness to his untimely death holds perhaps more allure today than it did when the book was first published in 1996. This classic asks its readers...was McCandless of sound mind to walk into the wilderness, or are we wrong not to?
"I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter --- we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?"
Why haven't they made this into a movie yet???
This might be the scariest book I've ever read. This is classic Crichton (Jurassic Park), taking a science headline - in this case, nanotechnology - and turning it into a smart, fast-paced thriller.
