 | Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition by Oliver Sacks
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $6.33 This is the third Sacks book I've read and he never ceases to delight me. There's some really fascinating stuff in here.
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 | V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
Buy used from: $5.59 I loved the movie, and I'm a huge dystopian literature fan, so I was quite eager to read this book. It was quite beautiful and dark and a mix of bleak and hopeful. If you've seen the movie, check out the book.
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 | Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1) by Stephenie Meyer
Buy new: $5.50 / Used from: $4.00 Yes, okay, YES, I admit it--I succumbed the the peer pressure! Aaaaaaand it was okay. I enjoyed it, and I'm sure I'll read the rest of the series after I can bum copies off folks. But the language veered toward the clunky and cheesy, which detracted from the book to a certain degree.
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 | Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
Buy used from: $20.00 Like any short story collection, this has its ups and downs. The overarching theme (Africa's troubles through the eyes of children) was stellar and I thought the last story was the best. Two of the stories were longer than they needed to be, but even still, they ended with such an unexpectedly searing, violent jolt, I almost felt awed.
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 | Watchmen by Alan Moore
Buy new: $13.59 / Used from: $6.81 They say this transformed the graphic novel industry and gave it legitimacy in the mainstream's eye. I can understand that; the book is dark and inventive and will make a stellar movie, I suspect!
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 | New Moon (The Twilight Saga, Book 2) by Stephenie Meyer
Buy new: $5.50 / Used from: $2.95 I hate being sucked into these things, but they're hard to resist. And hey, at least her writing has improved. Meyers's detailed descriptions of heartbreak were incredibly powerful.
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 | Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, Book 3) by Stephenie Meyer
Buy new: $13.59 / Used from: $4.50 The pace is definitely picking up. Oddly, though, I liked things better in book 2 when Bella and Edward were apart.
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 | The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea by Charles Robert Jenkins
Buy new: $10.85 / Used from: $9.44 What an interesting memoir! Jenkins is succinct and direct in a refreshing way. This book is a quick and dirty way to get behind the iron curtain. I would've liked to have read more about the aftermath of Kim Sung-Il's death, though (the national grief, the subsequent famine years).
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 | Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $5.99 This is a slender, fun (I know: what??) graphic novel about the author's brief stint working in North Korea. It's full of sly insights that were quite fascinating.
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 | Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, Book 4) by Stephenie Meyer
Buy new: $11.50 / Used from: $9.99 I actually liked this least out of the whole series. The writing was better than in book 1, but I just...I don't know, I guess I was hoping she wouldn't become a vampire in the end. And we never do find out if Nessie & Jacob end up together, or how Bella explains her condition to her mom.
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 | Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse by Stephen King
Buy new: $10.85 / Used from: $9.35 A decent mix of stories! Some are darker than others and some are more sci-fi than others. A nice range.
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 | 2666: A Novel by Roberto Bolano
Buy new: $19.80 / Used from: $7.00 Sprawling...a true literary tapestry woven together with many disparate threads bound by a common theme. This is a wonderful great book, but honestly, I felt as though some parts of it could've been cut away without the marrow of the book being affected.
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 | Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh
Buy new: $14.35 / Used from: $11.28 This slender novel really goes far in educating readers on the catastrophic India/Pakistan split in 1947, and its effect on a small town (which can be seen as a microcosm of larger society).
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 | Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement by Kathryn Joyce
Buy new: $17.13 / Used from: $17.47 Fascinating and terrifying stuff! Although I was expecting there to be more focus on the procreation aspect, I wasn't disappointed at all by the book's impressive breadth.
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 | Writing The Siege Of Leningrad: Womens Diaries Memoirs And Documentary Prose (Pitt Russian East European) by Cynthia Simmons
Buy new: $21.95 / Used from: $13.16 The Leningrad Siege is really fascinating to me, so I loved learning more about it through the journals and eyewitness accounts of women. Russian history and women's history buffs will enjoy this one.
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 | North Korean Posters: The David Heather Collection by David Heather
Buy new: $18.25 / Used from: $9.39 |
 | The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds by Marilyn Yalom
Buy new: $19.80 / Used from: $11.50 It's amazing how much you can learn about a society, its trends, and its history by examining its cemeteries. Very cool and interesting!
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 | Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $3.96 I wanted to read this before the TV show begins. It's such a fascinating concept but the execution wasn't terrific. It wasn't horrible, but I think it could've been better.
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 | Dark Tourism (Tourism, Leisure & Recreation) by Malcolm Foley
Buy new: $30.51 / Used from: $26.95 Pretty interesting, albeit a bit overly academic (read: dry) overall. This was written in the late '90s; I'd be interested in reading a new edition which features tourism related to 21st century terrorist attacks.
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 | It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $5.04 A treat! Even though it was written in the 1930s, this cautionary tale speaks volumes even in modern-day life. I wish I had read this during the Bush years!
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 | What the Dead Know: A Novel by Laura Lippman
Buy new: $10.19 / Used from: $0.87 I'm reading this now.
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