 | Kim (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) by Rudyard Kipling
Buy new: $7.00 / Used from: $0.01 I don't think you can be literate if you haven't read this. I read everything by Kipling I can get my hands on, including all of the poetry, and all of the short stories. There are lots of both if you can track them all down.
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 | Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
Buy used from: $0.01 I'd like to kiss her feet. These people are real to me, and their world is both unique and wonderfully familiar. Next favorite is probably Tales of Burning Love.
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 | Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Buy used from: $0.01 Her best book. Expanded my skull more than a little. I also like Sula quite a bit.
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 | Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt
Buy new: $10.85 / Used from: $0.01 I can't resist anything she writes. This book is incomparable and indescribable.
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 | Shark Dialogues by Kiana Davenport
Buy used from: $0.28 My favorite generational epic, and a clear picture of an entire culture. I was left wanting to know endlessly more about Hawaiians.
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 | And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer
Buy used from: $0.01 Melancholy has never been so attractive. Neither has Ohio. A bittersweet feast.
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 | The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
Buy used from: $0.01 Read everything this man writes. I have seen the cutting edge and it is Sherman Alexie.
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 | Source of Trouble by Debra Monroe
Buy new: $13.95 / Used from: $0.01 These stories are so well crafted, they slip into your mind without any trouble and come to inhabit your dreams.
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 | Memoir from Antproof Case by Mark Helprin
Buy used from: $0.01 Nothing like anyone else's writing, and so much fun! Winter's Tale is also very good, more fantastical and complicated.
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 | American Knees: A Novel by Shawn Wong
Buy used from: $0.01 I've read this so many times - and I'm never tired of it. "The freshness lasts", so to speak.
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 | Venus Envy by Rita Mae Brown
Buy new: $7.50 / Used from: $0.01 My copy of this is falling apart. It's good life-advice - and you'll bust out laughing.
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 | Life on the Mississippi (Bantam Classics) by Mark Twain
Buy new: $4.95 / Used from: $0.01 My favorite of all the Master's books. What can you say about Twain? Sigh with awe, I guess.
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 | Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $3.29 Of course! I still haven't read any of his other books, but I really mean to!
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 | Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Buy new: $10.08 / Used from: $1.49 Another of course. Amazing how the atmosphere of it leaves you exhilarated rather than soiled, isn't it?
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 | Children of the Alley: A Novel by Naguib Mahfouz
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $4.00 This man is a Real Writer. If you haven't heard of him, try to get caught up.
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 | Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
Buy new: $6.99 / Used from: $0.01 Are you religious? Do you love anybody? Either way, read it. It's the only book that ever made me feel I might get Christianity, (which would be a big stretch for me).
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 | Tulku by Peter Dickinson
Buy used from: $0.01 I'd like to spread this book to the masses. It's inexplicably good.
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| Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo by Ntozake Shange
Buy used from: $0.01 Beautiful book: lyrical writing and a vision of human beings.
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 | The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $0.01 This one is better than Garcia Marquez and I mean it! I also love Eva Luna and her newer heroines.
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 | Short History of a Small Place by T. R. Pearson
Buy used from: $0.01 Has the narrative voice appeal of your favorite relative, and the best exploration of death I think I've seen anywhere.
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| The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica: A Novel by John Calvin Batchelor
Buy used from: $3.40 This one is weird, it's frightening, and I couldn't put it down. It changed my view of the world.
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| Moll Flanders (Signet classics) by Daniel Defoe
Buy used from: $0.98 The language may be a little old-fashioned, but the issues and fun carry over just fine. (Don't bother with the movie, it's wrong).
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| Entertaining Angels: 2 by Marita van der Vyver
Buy used from: $0.01 I identify very much with this heroine. I don't have to see S. Africa or get divorced to know that she is real and I care about her.
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 | The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
Buy new: $10.07 / Used from: $0.01 EVERYONE loves this book. It's like catnip for people: you can't help but dig into it.
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| Triplets: A novel by Joyce Rebeta-Burditt
Buy used from: $0.01 This book is CRAZY. But everyone gets better in the end, whether they want to or not!
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 | The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden
Buy used from: $0.49 I love Rumer Godden. So few books really write about women's point of view - not perky frisky tomboys who are nominally female, but real women.
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 | Jonah's Gourd Vine by Zora Neale Hurston
Buy used from: $0.01 This is my favorite by her, after her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road.
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 | Trash by Amy Yamada
Buy used from: $0.73 A city story of romance, race, gender, age, sexuality, family and maturity.
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 | Buster Midnight's Cafe by Sandra Dallas
Buy used from: $3.69 I read all her books with delight. My other faves are Alice's Tulips, New Mercies, and The Diary of Mattie Spencer.
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 | The Vagabond by Colette
Buy new: $11.90 / Used from: $1.96 I love all the Colette I've read (2 Cheri books, 4 Claudine books, Pure & the Impure). This one is probably the easiest to get into - such a modern slimline novel you'll be staggered by the publication date.
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 | The Honorary Consul (Penguin Classics) by Graham Greene
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $2.99 It's hard to say which is my favorite here. The Power & the Glory? Brighton Rock? The Ministry of Fear? I love all I've read and I have many more to read, more of the generous output of the great man.
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 | Cavedweller: A Novel by Dorothy Allison
Buy new: $11.25 / Used from: $0.01 Of course! The least autobiographical of her works, I love the others but this is a NOVEL. True and courageous writing and a sort of "Janis Joplin meets Flannery O'Connor" plot.
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 | Cry Of The Peacock by Gina B. Nahai
Buy new: $20.65 / Used from: $0.63 Amazing, dark and dense, a demented generational epic similar to Garcia Marquez but the story is of Jews in Iran.
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 | The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
Buy new: $10.08 / Used from: $1.44 My favorite of his along with The Big Sleep. I don't read mysteries, but these aren't mysteries. They are very wise and clear-eyed expose's of American society.
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