 | The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor by Flannery O'Connor
Buy new: $15.64 / Used from: $9.40 My favorite epistolary collection. Engaging reading for Flannery O'Connor fans and those who want a glimpse of literary America at mid-century.
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 | Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $2.35 A light-hearted, philosophical look at what our society lacks.
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 | Experience by Martin Amis
Buy new: $23.45 / Used from: $0.01 The amazing writing exceeds Amis Jr.'s best fiction.
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 | Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation by William H. Gass
Buy new: $14.49 / Used from: $6.52 Multi-level book that looks at Rilke's life, translations of his poetry, and the process of translating. Though Gass is as much critic as fiction writer, I include him anyway.
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 | The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading Writing, and the World of Books by Robertson Davies
Buy new: $25.00 / Used from: $1.25 Davies' unique voice addresses reading and books in this collection of essays published two years after his death.
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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 It wouldn't be a complete list without DFW. Wonderfully entertaining.
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 | James Joyce (Penguin Lives) by Edna O'Brien
Buy new: $14.96 / Used from: $0.01 Brief biography written by an admirer of Joyce. The best so far in the Penguin Lives series.
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 | Lone Star Swing by Duncan McLean
Buy new: $11.90 / Used from: $0.01 McLean goes to Texas to trace the legend of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.
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 | The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas by Paul Theroux
Buy new: $14.35 / Used from: $0.61 Although Theroux is as much travel writer as novelist, I include this wonderful travelogue anyway.
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 | Imagining Characters: Six Conversations About Women Writers: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Willa Cather, Iris Murdoch, and Toni Morrison by A.S. Byatt
Buy new: $11.90 / Used from: $0.01 THE finest modern female novelist writes about other women novelists. Excellent.
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