 | Geek Love: A Novel by Katherine Dunn
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $4.99 An ecclectic masterpiece about a circus family gone wrong and a mother trying to rescue her daughter from evil. The mother in this case is a hunchback albino dwarf.
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 | Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Buy new: $10.52 / Used from: $8.96 They say that "War and Peace" is the Mount Everest for readers. If that is the case, then "Infinite Jest" is K2. It is an incrediblely dense and rewarding read with astonishing sidestories in the form of footnotes. It is, also, very funny.
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 | Neuromancer by William Gibson
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $1.00 It is difficult to measure the influence of this book. The first of trilogy. It's like the Bob Dylan of cyberspace/cyberpunk writing. Darkly fascinating, gritty and sensual, Neuromancer is well worth the read.
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 | Count Zero by William Gibson
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $7.93 The second in the Cyberpunk Trilogy. Lots of fun.
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 | Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $0.01 Third in the Trilogy. An adventurous mix of voodoo, cyberspace and desperation.
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 | The Gambler And Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Translator-Constance Black Garnett
I forget the other stories but "The Gambler" is so well written that I had a compulsive gambling problem without even going to the casino after reading it.
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 | Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $6.87 A great start to the world of Haruki Murakami. It is an addictive mix of mystery and surrealism that almost reads itself.
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 | The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $4.99 Murakami's masterpiece. No one handles male lonliness better. While Wind Up can be a challenging read it pays off smartly.
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 | Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Buy new: $10.04 / Used from: $7.53 Another great tale of love lost mixed with the bizarre. Frankly my favorite of Murakami's work.
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 | Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $6.21 Weird, Weird, Weird, but such fun.
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 | Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
Buy new: $10.08 / Used from: $5.00 A bit melodramatic but so mysterious and disturbing that one can forgive the soupy overtones.
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 | The Twelve Chairs (European Classics) by Ilya Ilf
Buy new: $14.96 / Used from: $9.00 A very funny book that, in my opinion, only made it past the Soviet censors due to a dark twist. Don't sneak a peak at work you will get caught laughing.
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 | Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
Buy new: $9.36 / Used from: $4.65 A great primer for Bulgalkov and more accessable than his most notable work. While it is shorter than the Master and Margarita it is very well done and scathingly sarcastic.
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 | The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Buy new: $9.36 / Used from: $4.12 A cult classic and deserving of it. The Master and Margarita is a heady romp through Soviet era Moscow, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, the time surrounding Jesus's death with a love story thrown in. It even has a talking cat.
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 | The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (European Classics) by Vladimir Voinovich
Buy new: $16.24 / Used from: $3.98 A delightful satire of the Soviet state. It is very funny while not being mean spirited, a rare quality.
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 | Elvissey (Womack, Jack) by Jack Womack
Buy new: $13.50 / Used from: $1.17 A dark, well imagined sci fi journey where Elvis is worshipped in the future. A good quasi samarai culture aspect adds to the weight of the read. Disturbing but a highly recommended.
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 | The Magus by John Fowles
Buy new: $11.55 / Used from: $2.39 I haven't read it for ages but "The Magus" is a creepy, very smart, somewhat violent novel where the boundary between reality and fantasy blurr. I may have to read it again now.
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 | The Collector (Back Bay Books) by John Fowles
Buy new: $10.19 / Used from: $2.83 Very grim, a study in evil.
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 | John Le Carré : Three Complete Novels ( Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy / The Honourable Schoolboy / Smiley's People ) by John Le Carre
Buy used from: $0.88 My favorite espionage books. The common thread of all three novels is George Smiley, spymaster and cuckhold. While he is the master interrogator, Smiley is haunted by his failed marriage and his nemesis, Soviet spy master, Karla,a fanatical communist man with a woman's code name.
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 | The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre
Buy new: $12.92 / Used from: $5.49 Le Carre's first spy novel. Fast, unsentimental and brutal.
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 | Of Love And Other Demons (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Buy used from: $0.01 A great primer for the Marquez universe. Short, beautifully written and heartbreaking, if you like this then your in for a ride because Marquez is both prolific and possesed of sheer genius.
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 | Love in the Time of Cholera (Oprah's Book Club) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $0.01 An astounding work of unrequited love. Very well done.
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 | Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami
Buy new: $11.16 / Used from: $6.75 Don't read this if you can't handle disturbing erotica. Otherwise, hop to it. This is great book about being a wreck in post war Japan. Very sex and drugs and rock n roll.
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 | In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami
Buy new: $11.20 / Used from: $0.84 A kid get stuck with a serial killer for a night. Violent but interesting.
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 | American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $3.25 Intermittently hilarious and graphically voilent, like surgical in detail. If you can handle the blood the book is great.
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 | Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
Buy new: $10.04 / Used from: $0.01 The thinking man's/woman's naval historical fiction. If you like this there's 20 more like it to follow.
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 | Sharpe's Tiger (Richard Sharpe's Adventure Series #1) by Bernard Cornwell
Buy new: $10.79 / Used from: $2.81 The land based counterpart series to Master and Commander, not as heady but certainly a great romp.
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 | The Lord of the Rings. 3 Vol. Set by J.R.R. Tolkien
Buy new: $23.10 / Used from: $0.93 While the movie series really ruined the Frodo/Sam relationship the Trilogy itself is a great study of the effects of evil on the people. I read it in 6th grade and again when the movies came out. The adult reading was better than the first pass.
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 | Bangkok 8: A Novel by John Burdett
Buy new: $10.04 / Used from: $0.01 A wonderful and quirky mystery that takes the reader through the underbelly of Thailand.
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 | Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett
Buy new: $18.21 / Used from: $0.08 The third is the Sanjit Series, very good, very scary.
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 | The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Buy new: $10.79 / Used from: $3.00 A very good and philosophical read.
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 | Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Buy new: $11.92 / Used from: $1.77 A great book with a haunting holocaust theme and it's title is derived from a quote from Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of being.
In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine. -- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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 | The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book) by Neal Stephenson
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $3.59 The best prediction of the Nano age that I have read. Very quirky and compelling.
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