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Staff Recommendations
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A listing of current favorites, recommended by the bookstore staff. Check back for new recommendations each month as we bring you the best of what we're reading. Browse by title, author or staff member!
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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...
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The End of Everything
A Novel
Megan Abbott
This little book packs a wallop. In prose as relentless as it is compelling, Abbott rips the shiny veneer from an idyllic suburban childhood, uncovering the uncomfortable truths festering therein. —Recommended by Jeff, City Lights Books
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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...
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The Education of a British-Protected Child
Essays
Chinua Achebe
From the celebrated author of Things Fall Apart comes a new collection of autobiographical essays—his first new book in more than twenty years. Chinua Achebe's characteristically eloquent and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these seventeen...
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Lost City Radio
A Novel
Daniel Alarcon
Recommended by Paul, City Lights Books For ten years, Norma has been the on-air voice of consolation and hope for the Indians in the mountains and the poor from the barrios—a people broken by war's violence. As the host of Lost City Radio...
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The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Sherman Alexie
This is a great start to the Alexie oeuvre: a collection of interconnected stories of native American life on and around a reservation near Seattle. Humorous, surreal imagery; poetic storytelling. You can't go wrong with any Sherman Alexie!
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My Name Is Mina
David Almond
The prequel to the author's award-winning Skellig, which I haven't read and which one doesn't need to read to appreciate this little masterpiece. Almond basically takes us into the mind of a special child, an innocent, not yet corrupted by society's...
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Wintergirls
Laurie Halse Anderson
This is the single most powerful Young Adult novel I have ever read. It is searing, devastating, tragic. It is about bulimia, the death of a friend, and regret. It is also ingeniously conceived and beautifully written, transcending the difficult subject..
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West of the West
Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State
Mark Arax
With his reportage and essays, Arax is mining territory somewhere between Rebecca Solnit and James Ellroy—here you'll find both thoughtful musings on geography and intense crime investigations. Written with real vitality and engagement, this book makes...
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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...
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The Rebirth of History
Times of Riots and Uprisings
Alain Badiou
Badiou has already been established as a prominent and important contemporary philosopher, and this book shows that this reputation is well deserved. In The Rebirth of History he gives an insightful reading of the flood of riots and similar political...
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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...
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Another Country
James Baldwin
James Baldwin's Another Country is one of the most powerful books I've ever read. As only he so beautifully and evocatively can, Baldwin places the reader in the eye of the storm of late 50s American tensions around race, gender, class, power, and freedom
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The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard
J. G. Ballard
First published in 1978, this collection of nineteen of Ballard's best short stories is as timely and informed as ever. His tales of the human psyche and its relationship to nature and technology, as viewed through a strong microscope, were eerily...
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