 | Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration by David Wojnarowicz
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $2.13 A book that changed my life in many ways. David writes about life, love, sex, tragedy, abuse, AIDS and the beauty found in decay. As Burroughs put it: "Pick up his book and listen."
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 | The Waterfront Journals by David Wojnarowicz
Buy used from: $3.82 Written in different voices and monologues, David introduces us to the many people - poor, sad, rich, angry, perverse, passionate - he encountered throughout his travels across the US. Amazing.
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 | The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet
Buy new: $11.90 / Used from: $1.82 Genet's language is pure poetry. He writes about lust, thievery, and life on the fringes like no one else. "To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance." - Genet
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 | The Bell Jar: A Novel (Perennial Classics) by Sylvia Plath
Buy used from: $0.01 A book that soothes as much as it evokes. Plath is essential to anyone who has ever felt odd and alone. This book is still, in my opinion, one of the best coming of age stories ever written. Brilliant
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 | Queer: A Novel by William S. Burroughs
Buy new: $11.20 / Used from: $2.88 The best book on being gay. Haunting, poignant and beautiful: "The door closed and the curtains settled back, one trailing over a sofa as though someone had taken it and tossed it there." Perfect.
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 | Junky: The Definitive Text of Junk (50th Anniversary Edition) by William S. Burroughs
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $6.99 Another favorite. I once read that the highest achievment of a writer is to completely change the way his readers think. Pick up Burroughs and see.
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 | On the Road (Penguin Classics) by Jack Kerouac
Buy new: $10.40 / Used from: $6.35 Amazingly beautiful. Kerouac has seduced me many times, like James Dean seen through a hazy wind, in some faraway desert. Bliss.
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 | Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Buy new: $5.99 / Used from: $0.01 I read this book when I was thirteen, just realizing things about myself that were both scary and odd. Reading Anne was like talking to a friend. I've read this book many times over. Wistful.
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 | Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (Perennial Classics) by Arthur Rimbaud
Buy used from: $3.50 Rimbaud: young, gay and brilliant. His writing, his poetry, his language is equal parts heaven and hell.
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 | Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
Buy new: $12.00 / Used from: $0.01 A wonderful, electric-shock-jolt of a book on being young, crazy and depressed in America. Wurtzel's language never ceases to enthrall. Witty, crackling, and wonderfully poignant.
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 | Hunger: A Novel by Knut Hamsun
Buy used from: $4.44 Wretched, depraved, hungry and beautiful.
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 | Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
Buy new: $10.08 / Used from: $0.01 Bittersweet, tragic and comedic. Kaysen has a way of drawing us into her world: teenage adolescence, a mental institution and the 60's. You couldn't ask for more.
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 | Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel by Arthur Golden
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $0.01 Golden's language is just amazing. This book pulls you in, tugs at you softly like soft autumn winds, and wraps around you like sheathes of silk, enveloping you in a tight, safe cocoon. Haunting.
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 | Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Buy new: $10.08 / Used from: $0.01 The best gay non-gay book ever written. A brilliant novel on the pain and destruction that is caused by the unspoken. A tragic and illuminating coming of age story.
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 | Jamaica and Me: The Story of an Unusual Friendship by Linda Atkins
Buy used from: $0.01 A beautiful, simply told memoir of one white woman's relationship with a deprived, young colored girl on the streets of New York City. Bittersweet. Lingers long after you've put it down.
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 | Daughter of the Queen of Sheba: A Memoir by Jacki Lyden
Buy new: $11.25 / Used from: $0.01 A memoir about mothers and daughters, insanity, escaping and growing up. Lyden's prose is wonderfully elegant and precise. I've read this book many times over. Never ceases to amaze.
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 | The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison
Buy new: $10.07 / Used from: $2.33 Disturbing, haunting and wonderfully poetic. Harrison's account of her love affair with her once estranged father reads like a disturbing romance and a chilling coming of age.
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 | Black and Blue: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club) by Anna Quindlen
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $0.01 A quietly poignant novel on life, love and abuse.
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 | The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lector) by Thomas Harris
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $0.01 A wonderful thriller that reads more like a gothic romance written and composed to Beethoven. Having seen the movie, Harris surprised me with the elegance and beauty of his prose. Astonishing.
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 | One True Thing: Love What You Have by Anna Quindlen
Buy used from: $0.01 A beautiful story of a young woman coming to terms with herself and her parents.
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