 | The Essential Lenny Bruce by John Cohen
Buy used from: $0.18 Modern, caustic stand-up comedy begins here. This book is all of Lenny's best material, transcribed into a book. Invaluable.
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 | Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion
Buy new: $12.47 / Used from: $1.47 Worthy over-view of Campbell's books & lectures.
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 | You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe
Buy new: $12.89 / Used from: $1.74 These stories "getcha". Best short-story anthology I've read yet...
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| Parables and Paradoxes, parabeln und paradoxe, in German and English (Schocken paperbacks, SB12) (English and German Edition) by Franz Kafka
Buy used from: $3.00 Franz Kafka's forte - fragments of his imagination. The German/English side-by-side editions are more difficult to acquire...
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 | Infinite Jest: A Novel by David Foster Wallace
Buy used from: $4.34 Challenging. Enthralling. Grand. "...but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it's just wonderful." (Truffaut)
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 | A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments by David Foster Wallace
Buy new: $9.74 / Used from: $5.42 Hilarious, and thought-provoking. DFW has a footnote/endnote fetish. It kind of breaks up your routine reading. You get over the irritation, and forgive his eccentricity...
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 | Girl With Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $4.98 This may be DFW's most assured writing - the short story. I return to a couple of my favorites in here @ once a year. Stories worthy of rereading: is that the mark of a future classic?
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 | The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters, 1944-1960 (Repr of 1995 ed) (Circles of the Twentieth Century) by Steven Watson
Buy used from: $6.00 Great book. It's a combo bio/commentary/picture album of all the relevent players of that group.
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 | The Second City: Backstage at the World's Greatest Comedy Theater (book with 2 audio CDs) by Sheldon Patinkin
Buy used from: $0.01 For comedy lovers, this is a treasure. A who's-who of comics and comedic actors, pretty much all of which contribute to this book. Plus, two audio CD's! LOVE THIS BOOK.
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 | Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $0.01 Facinating history book. My high school history teacher warned us way back when, that he was required to teach "love of country", not history. Don't bother quoting the book; just recommend it.
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 | Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong by James W. Loewen
Buy used from: $0.47 A sequel to "Lies My Teacher Told Me." Holds your interest from cover to cover.
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 | Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $1.01 Modern classic. I've always loved the movie as well, although it was flawed. Alternatingly subtle, then broad, satire...
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 | A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $0.97 Funniest book I've read yet, judging by the number of times it makes me laugh out loud. Where in the world did Toole get the inspiration for this novel?!? LOVE THIS BOOK.
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 | Heart of Darkness and the Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
Buy used from: $0.01 My favorite novel of all time is "Heart of Darkness". I know people who can reminisce for hours, like Marlowe does in the book. I like this little volume that pairs HoD with "The Secret Sharer".
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| Folklore of Shakespeare by T.F.Thiselton Dyer
Buy used from: $3.76 Enthralling details of Elizabethan folklore, some which is still refered to here in our time. I prefer this old book, to the modern contemporary books on the same subject...
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 | Ring of Bone by Lew Welch
Buy used from: $5.86 I don't understand the appeal of Lew's poems, to me. But they always move me. Not enough people know of Lew Welch. Check him out...
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 | The Good War: An Oral History of World War II by Studs Terkel
Buy new: $11.53 / Used from: $2.69 My favorite historian. Terkel has @ five books that are sure to be classics. This is one, and my personal favorite...
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 | Truman by David McCullough
Buy new: $15.84 / Used from: $2.61 This book was recommended to me, and I when I began it I had to keep reading it to the end. McCullough really knows how to relate history...
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 | The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor
Buy new: $12.24 / Used from: $4.97 All of O'Connor's short stories. Classic. Must-read.
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 | Wise Blood: A Novel by Flannery O'Connor
Buy used from: $0.60 This book is the cure, for when you feel alienated and out-of-your-element. What a story. A comic sub-plot relieves the darkness...
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 | Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
Buy used from: $0.01 I don't even have this volume! Most people know of "Day of the Locust", but "Miss Lonelyhearts" is as compelling, if not better. It's great that they're availible in one volume...
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 | The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
Buy new: $9.86 / Used from: $4.44 This book is frightening. If you think you're tough and hard-boiled, well, maybe you're just tough enough to get through this book...the ending of this book is chilling.
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 | Savage Night by Jim Thompson
Buy new: $9.56 / Used from: $4.00 Another inexplicably scary Jim Thompson novel, with an incredible denouement. Just an insane thriller...
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 | What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Anne Bernays
Buy new: $10.07 / Used from: $1.41 Fun reading & writing - unpretentious.
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 | The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact And Fiction Into Film (Owl Books) by Linda Seger
Buy new: $12.75 / Used from: $3.47 This book is illuminating, even if you don't have an interest in screenplays or screenwriting. It answers the question: "Why is the book great, and the movie terrible?"
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