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Staff Recommendations A listing of staff proclivities, recommended by both past and present bookstore and publishing employees. Check back for new recommendations each month as we bring you the best of what we're reading or have read. Browse by title, author or staff member!   Alexander   |  Andy   |  Chris   |  Don   |  Elaine   |  Emmitt   |  Garrett   |  Jackson   |  Jeff   |  Lawrence   |  Layla   |  Linda   |  Michael   |  Nancy   |  Paul   |  Peter   |  Scott   |  Stacey   |  Tân   |  Vanessa

1 2 3 4 5 6 >>>     sort list by title | publication date The Complete Poems Of Kenneth Rexroth The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth assembles all of his published longer and shorter poems, and includes a never-before-published selection of his earliest work. Rexroth's poems of nature and protest are remarkable for their erudition and biting... The Woman in the Dunes Kobo Abe If you've seen the 1964 Teshigahara film you've already experienced Abe's brilliance (he wrote the screenplay as well). If you haven't, read this first. The haunting story of a vacationing entomologist trapped in a sand-pit with an enigmatic woman... The Hakawati Rabih Alameddine Undertake The Hawakati with no bookmark, or with many. Local artist Rabih Alameddine has given us a book that deploys a deep and rarified appreciation of the storyteller's art to create the illusion of containing the entire world. His gateway is the eponymous hakawati, grandfather of the narrator, a bard who travels from Urfa to Lebanon... An Unnecessary Woman A Novel Rabih Alameddine One of the Middle East's most celebrated voices, Rabih Alameddine follows his international bestseller, The Hakawati, with an enchanting story of a book-loving, obsessive, seventy-two-year-old "unnecessary" woman. Aaliya Saleh lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced... Rules for Radicals Saul Alinsky How'd Obama do it? Read his playbook to find out. What Machiavelli's The Prince is for the oppressor, Rules for Radicals is for the oppressed. Required reading... The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas David Almond David Almond strikes again with yet another crazily-inventive, oddly off-kilter, and utterly and bafflingly English fable about how we all really do fit in... somewhere. A must-read. (For ages 9-12) —Recommended by Jeff, City Lights Books White Girls Hilton Als It is, simply put, a privilege to spend time with a writer like Hilton Als. —Recommended by Vanessa, City Lights Books The Barbary Coast An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld Herbert Asbury You're standing right in it! The Barbary Coast. 150 years ago this area was a den of such vice and iniquity that it would've made even the Marquis de Sade blush. Find out why... —Recommended by Don, City Lights Books Shotgun Seamstress Zine Collection Osa Atoe Shotgun Seamstress collects all of the issues of a fantastic punk fanzine into one book that focuses on African American queer & feminist artists and musicians. Full of interviews, reviews, and so much more, Shotgun Seamstress was put out from 2006-2012 Violence Girl East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage, a Chicana Punk Story Alice Bag The proximity of the East L.A. barrio to Hollywood is as close as a short drive on the 101 freeway, but the cultural divide is enormous. Born to Mexican-born and American-naturalized parents, Alicia Armendariz migrated a few miles west to participate... Of All the Gin Joints Stumbling Through Hollywood History Mark Bailey Boozy stories like drunken melodies. Hollywood film lore. Actors in entertaining debauchery. And cocktail recipes as well! —Recommended by Don, City Lights Books The Heyday of Malcolm Margolin The Damn Good Times of a Fiercely Independent Publisher Kim Bancroft Northern California's book publishers are idiosyncratic, uncompromising, funky, forward-thinking, often brilliant, but largely unheralded beyond the state’s borders. Here’s the perfect book to shift that paradigm. Malcolm Margolin’s story of creating and sustaining Heyday Books, a vital Berkeley-based press celebrating its 40th anniversary... City A Novel Alessandro Baricco An intellectually powerful and refreshing narrative seen through the eyes of a boy prodigy with a strong will and an overactive imagination. This book has many dimensions - it's both complex but child-like, metaphysical and intensely thought-provoking, romantic in its all of its subtleties. I fall in love with it every time I read it... Babayaga A Novel of Witches in Paris Toby Barlow By the author of Sharp Teeth, a novel of love, spies, and witches in 1950s Paris—and a cop turned into a flea Will is a young American ad executive in Paris. Except his agency is a front for the CIA. It's 1959 and the cold war is going strong. But Will doesn't think he's a warrior—he’s just a good-hearted Detroit ad guy... 1 2 3 4 5 6 >>>