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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 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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Many Subtle Channels
In Praise of Potential Literature
Daniel Levin Becker
This book presents us with Oulipo—the mischievous group of writers whose obsession with words knows no limits. Levin Becker expertly describes the members of the group, each one uniquely working to devise linguistic puzzles to write within.
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Ragnarok
The End of the Gods
A. S. Byatt
A standout entry in Canongate's consistently impressive Myths series, Byatt's treatment of Germanic saga and cosmogony distinguishes itself for the narrative grace of its frame and for its fearless plunge into the heart of the matter. Which in this...
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Tapping the Source
A Novel
Kem Nunn
A noir set in the burned-out post-hippie landscape of early 1980s Huntington Beach. Often referred to as a "surf noir" novel, perhaps because of the lean, stripped-down evocative prose and the mystical hue of the plot. And of course, there's the fact...
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Cubop City Blues
A Novel
Pablo Medina
Not a large book but voluminous and various and well worth reading twice or thrice. Medina's ravishing, sportive anatomy of nostalgia will earn the admiration of fans of that genre's grandmaster, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. —Recommended by Matthew
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Legend of Pradeep Mathew
A Novel
Shehan Karunatilaka
Aging sportswriter W.G. Karunasena's liver is shot. Years of drinking have seen to that. As his health fades, he embarks with his friend Ari on a madcap search for legendary cricket bowler Pradeep Mathew. En route they discover a mysterious...
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Mr. Fox
A Novel
Helen Oyeyemi
Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding, and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, the celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary...
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A Boy and a Bear in a Boat
Dave Shelton
One of the most charming books I've ever encountered. Just flip through it and try not to smile at the author's whimsical illustrations. (For ages 8 to 12) —Recommended by Jeff, City Lights Books
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1Q84
3 Volume Boxed Set
Haruki Murakami
This deluxe three-volume paperback boxed set beautifully showcases Haruki Murakami's most ambitious novel yet, 1Q84—a love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a dystopia to rival George Orwell's.
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Ready Player One
Ernest Cline
If you are a geek for 80s popculture taking place in Virtual Reality in the futuretime of 2044, solving videogame mysteries to win the ultimate prize, then this book is for you. I loved it to bytes! —Recommended by Don, City Lights Books
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Antwerp
Roberto Bolaño
This book is actually a labyrinth. —Recommended by Dia, City Lights Books.
Antwerp's signature elements—crimes and campgrounds, drifters and poetry, sex and love, corrupt cops and misfits—mark this, his first novel, as pure Bolaño.
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The Crimean War
A History
Orlando Figes
From "the great storyteller of modern Russian historians," (Financial Times) the definitive account of the forgotten war that shaped the modern age
The Charge of the Light Brigade, Florence Nightingale—these are the enduring icons of the Crimean War.
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Love and Obstacles
Stories
Aleksandar Hemon
From the celebrated author of the bestselling Lazarus Project-"a dazzling collection of stories...further cementing [Hemon's] position among the finest fiction writers working in English" (GQ). The stories of Love and Obstacles are united by their...
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A Wicked Company
The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment
Philipp Blom
The flourishing of radical philosophy in Baron Thierry Holbach's Paris salon from the 1750s to the 1770s stands as a seminal event in Western history. Holbach's house was an international epicenter of revolutionary ideas and intellectual daring...
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