If we want to read a collection of short stories, I suggest Forty Stories by David Barthelme.
Donald.
He's really excellent. I guess his two most commonly read books are
Forty Stories and
Sixty Stories, but both are actually anthologies of stories from earlier collections. I have
Sadness,
Come Back, Dr. Caligari, and
Amateurs in my room right now, and have been reading bits and pieces from each. A load of his stories are readily available on The New Yorker's website. He also published a number of excellent novels, my favourite being
Snow White, which is an idiosyncratic, humorous, and confounding little book, done in his characteristic 'collage style'; it imagines Snow White as a housekeeper type figure in a 60's style commune. It's worth reading the
first page.
If we end up doing
Blood Meridian, I'll at least start, as I've been meaning to give Cormac McCarthy another try, but my initial impressions have been similar to Jens'.
I've realized that the essay collections I was going to suggest are all by Canadian poets and are published by small Maritime presses, which means they would likely be impossible for more people on this forum to get, unless they order directly from the press. I'll try and think of some other non-fiction which might be workable.