 | Personal Days: A Novel by Ed Park
Buy new: $9.36 / Used from: $0.91 Just didn't do it for me - I thought he failed to create credible characters that the reader could care about.
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 | Dear American Airlines: A Novel by Jonathan Miles
Buy new: $14.96 / Used from: $0.01 I loathed this book from start to finish -- reading it felt like being trapped in an airport bar next to a particularly garrulous, obnoxious drunk.
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 | When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
Buy new: $17.15 / Used from: $1.99 I think Sedaris peaked two books ago. This was thin gruel indeed.
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 | Cheating at Canasta: Stories by William Trevor
Buy used from: $2.94 These stories weren't bad - just not up to Trevor's usually high standard.
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 | When Science Goes Wrong by Simon LeVay
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $0.01 Not a terrible book, but it could have been so much better.
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 | The Best American Essays 2008
Buy new: $7.70 / Used from: $0.79 A fairly weak selection this year.
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 | The Indian Clerk: A Novel by David Leavitt
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $1.44 I really disliked the way that Leavitt played fast and loose with the past of someone (G.H. Hardy) who is no longer alive to defend himself. His previous experience with Steven Spender suggest that this is a pattern of his.
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 | The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $4.49 Everyone raved about this book. I couldn't figure out why. No people! There are no people in this book!
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 | The Little Book of Plagiarism by Richard A. Posner
Buy new: $9.36 / Used from: $1.70 Perfunctory and dull.
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 | Everything You Know About English Is Wrong by Bill Brohaugh
Buy new: $11.01 / Used from: $3.84 An irritating mess of a book, written in a kind of belligerent, sloppy style that made it impossible to finish. Misinformation and mistakes are to be found on almost every page.
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 | Letter to a Christian Nation (Vintage) by Sam Harris
Buy new: $7.92 / Used from: $5.99 I expected to be somewhat sympathetic to Harris's position. But the tone of his argument was so contemptuous and dismissive of those with competing views that it's hard to view this as adding anything useful to the debate.
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 | Um. . .: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean by Michael Erard
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $12.53 This book managed to belabor the obvious for hundreds of pages on end. Remarkably devoid of intellectual content.
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 | In a Cardboard Belt!: Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage by Joseph Epstein
Buy new: $11.66 / Used from: $0.01 Disturbingly mean-spirited and self-serving.
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