 | The Assassin's Song (Vintage Contemporaries) by M.G. Vassanji
Buy new: $11.21 / Used from: $2.05 A wonderful book, especially for fathers and sons. Great details on life in India and a sweeping, jarring plot told with a strong, sure voice.
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 | The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross
Buy new: $12.24 / Used from: $5.44 A wonderful survey of the personalities and movements that contributed to 20th century music.
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 | Into Hot Air: Mounting Mount Everest Another "Novel" by Chris Elliott by Chris Elliott
Buy new: $11.66 / Used from: $0.01 Chris Elliott always cracks me up; his novels combine metafiction techniques with outrageous parody.
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 | Zeroville by Steve Erickson
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $2.92 Could be the best novel I read all year, along with Assassin's Song. I'll never watch a movie the same way again.
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 | The Brooklyn Follies: A Novel by Paul Auster
Buy new: $13.47 / Used from: $0.01 A very generous novel set in a borough I remember fondly. I loved the rant about the lives of authors.
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 | Company by Max Barry
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $2.12 Hilarious. Beware the 13th floor.
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 | The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization (Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing) by Elaine Svenonius
Buy used from: $3.99 A well-written introduction to descriptive cataloging and classification, written for people who want to go deeper into the process.
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 | The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Buy used from: $1.70 Finally got around to reading it.
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 | Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Buy new: $6.99 / Used from: $3.80 A lightly likable fantasy, different enough from the movie to be entertaining in its own right.
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 | The Castle by Franz Kafka
Buy new: $9.89 / Used from: $1.56 So does he ever get to the castle? We'll never know.
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 | Vanilla Bright like Eminem by Michel Faber
Buy new: $16.82 / Used from: $0.01 A bright group of stories, and hardly vanilla.
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 | You Must Be This Happy to Enter (Punk Planet Books) by Elizabeth Crane
Buy new: $11.66 / Used from: $1.95 Love the run-on sentences.
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 | The Night Climbers: A Novel by Ivo Stourton
Buy new: $14.00 / Used from: $0.01 Like Secret History except at Cambridge and with a not so great ending, but I liked it nonetheless. Good plane reading.
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 | Ellington Boulevard: A Novel in A-Flat by Adam Langer
Buy new: $24.95 / Used from: $0.01 I read this during a stay in New York, which was perfect, because I could visit the places Langer mentions.
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 | A Hat Full of Sky: The Continuing Adventures of Tiffany Aching and the Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
Buy new: $6.99 / Used from: $2.87 More Terry Pratchett, this time for younger readers.
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 | Maskerade by Terry Pratchett
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $2.98 The book's not over until the main character sings.
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 | Revolutionary Road (Movie Tie-in Edition) (Vintage Contemporaries) by Richard Yates
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $0.01 I managed to read it before the movie came out; selfish people seek fulfillment in the shadow of adulthood and the memory of war.
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 | The Blood Countess by Andrei Codrescu
Buy new: $24.52 / Used from: $4.85 You can't help but read this with Codrescu's voice in your head. The sex and violence get to be overwhelming, but the journalist and would-be king is a great character.
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 | Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories
Buy new: $12.48 / Used from: $0.01 A fine collection of stories that explore many aspects of super-beinghood, from the Meerkat man to a creep who's one child's hero.
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 | A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
Buy new: $16.32 / Used from: $3.61 A relevant feast of recent Pakistani history mixed the the plight of one air force cadet; the plot interlaces with the film "Charlie Wilson's War."
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 | The Gum Thief: A Novel by Douglas Coupland
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $5.00 Another clever contemporary character study by Coupland.
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 | My Life: The Musical by Maryrose Wood
Buy new: $12.47 / Used from: $0.10 I loved this YA novel about a boy and a girl obsessed with a musical; it reminded me of my childhood on Long Island.
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 | The Writing Class by Jincy Willett
Buy new: $21.33 / Used from: $1.06 Not so much a whodunit than a whowrote it with a wonderful main character -- a writer drawn out of isolation.
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 | Watchmen by Alan Moore
Buy new: $26.39 / Used from: $13.99 A graphic novel for people who don't read graphic novels.
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 | Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $0.94 This really isn't a YA book; it's a fine personality portrait by a fine writer.
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 | Small Favor (The Dresden Files, Book 10) by Jim Butcher
Buy new: $9.99 / Used from: $4.14 I enjoy this urban fantasy series.
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 | Shakespeare's Kitchen: Stories by Lore Segal
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $0.51 A woman moves through a life of love and scholarship with tragedies and joys along the way.
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