 | The King Must Die: A Novel by Mary Renault
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $0.01 A classic tale, made more meaningful by a retelling. I've read alot of Greek mythology books, but this one really brings it all alive. If the Greek world is alien to you, Renault is a convivial guide.
|
 | Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Marcel Proust
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $7.04 All that madeleine and memory stuff, is it really so profound? I asked, hoping to find Proust a fraud. I was . . . surprised instead. À la recherche du temps perdu is daunting in some ways, but one of a kind. I've not started Le Côté de Guermantes yet, but so far, so worth it.
|
 | The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake
Buy new: $19.77 / Used from: $3.34 . . . I'm not sure how to describe these novels. 'Ware the Steerpikes in your own life.
|
 | The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $3.99 Probably even more affecting than The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's difficult to look at plants in the same way.
|
 | An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales by Oliver Sacks
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $2.21 A good start to get you hooked on Sacks.
|
 | The Name of the Rose (Everyman's Library (Cloth)) by Umberto Eco
Buy new: $16.50 / Used from: $9.98 Medieval detective William of Baskerville gets to the bottom of a series of murders at an abbey. Heresy, inquisition and sodomy is bound to follow. (not necessarily in that order)
|
 | Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
Buy new: $10.08 / Used from: $3.58 Best non-fiction Orwell. Best personal account of war I've read, with the possible exception of Graves' Goodbye to All That.
|
 | The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $6.49 A good start to get you hooked on Murakami.
|
 | The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
Buy new: $12.96 / Used from: $1.74 A brave book on a terrible menace to all that is bright and beautiful. Solomon's descriptions of its contours make it easier to detect, and therefore (one can hope) easier to treat.
|
 | The Inheritors by William Golding
Buy new: $9.36 / Used from: $0.01 Who were those that came before us?
|
 | The Shield of Achilles by Philip Bobbitt
Buy new: $14.28 / Used from: $4.49 The evolution of the State. Wise and deliberative insights into the pros and cons of the state's power. . . its impossible to completely appreciate Terror and Consent w/o this backdrop.
|
 | Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India by Roberto Calasso
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $4.16 You know the stories, now understand them. The Indian cosmos seems wacky at first to the Western mind, but it has a logic of its own, though you have to marinate in it a bit.
|
 | King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild
Buy new: $10.80 / Used from: $4.50 A chilling story, and a prelude of holocausts and horrors to come.
|
 | Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
Buy new: $14.28 / Used from: $9.25 You have to experience Borges at some point. Nibble at first. Try the Book of Sand as a start.
|
 | Journey to the End of the Night (NEW DIRECTIONS PAPERBOOK) by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Buy new: $11.53 / Used from: $8.99 The ultimate book of darkness and misanthropy. Written by a bad guy. Read with gloves on.
|
Listmania!
