A while back, I asked for some recommendations on books people have recently read and enjoyed. And boy, did ever I get a great list of ideas. I’ve been slowly collating the whole thing together so I have a handy-dandy resource for my weekly visits to the local used bookstore, and I thought I’d share it with you.

I’ve included links to Amazon, as well as blurbs from the official reviews published on Amazon. Happy browsing, and I’ll post the remainder of the list soon.

:::

– Reader’s recommended reading: A through O –

• A Confederacy of Dunces
“The many subplots that weave through A Confederacy of Dunces are
as complicated as anything you’ll find in a Dickens novel, and
just as beautifully tied together in the end. But it is
Ignatius–selfish, domineering, and deluded, tragic and comic and
larger than life–who carries the story.”

• A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth
“She features the people most involved with rediscovering and
studying coelacanths, as well as the national and scientific
rivalries arising from the fish’s fame. Filled with black and
white photos, this book should appeal not only to
cryptozoologists and naturalists, but to anyone interested in the
living evolutionary record.”

• A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland Indiana (2 recommendations)
“It’s a cliche‚ to say that a good memoir reads like a
well-crafted work of fiction, but Kimmel’s smooth, impeccably
humorous prose evokes her childhood as vividly as any novel.”

• A Prayer for Owen Meany (I’ve read this but never liked it as much as most people seem to.)
“A rollicking entertainment, Owen Meany is also a meditation on
literature, history, and God.”

• A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance
“Surprisingly, it’s Juska’s accounts of visiting the Berg
collection at the New York Public Library, or the stories of her
writing classes at a prison, that remain in mind, long after her
personals game has faded. Old women looking for sex may not seem
a hot topic, but there’s something universal in this woman’s love
affair with the written word.”

• A Thread of Grace
“Mary Doria Russell’s extraordinary and complex historical novel,
A Thread of Grace, is the kind of book that you will find
yourself haunted by long after finishing the last page.”

• A Walk in the Woods (4 recommendations; I really enjoyed this one.)
“In A Walk in the Woods Bill Bryson tackles what is, for him, an
entirely new subject: the American wilderness. Accompanied only
by his old college buddy Stephen Katz, Bryson starts out one
March morning in north Georgia, intending to walk the entire
2,100 miles to trail’s end atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin.”

• Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
“A bestseller in Turnbull’s native Australia, this cute firsthand
look at the hardships of settling into a city infamously chilly
to outsiders gives a glimpse of the true nature of Parisians and
daily life in their gorgeous city.”

• American Gods
“Neil Gaiman’s best and most ambitious novel yet, a scary,
strange, and hallucinogenic road-trip story wrapped around a deep
examination of the American spirit. Gaiman tackles everything
from the onslaught of the information age to the meaning of
death, but he doesn’t sacrifice the razor-sharp plotting and
narrative style he’s been delivering since his Sandman days.”

• Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir
“A chronically unemployed and nearly unemployable alcoholic,
McCourt appears to be the model on which many of our more
insulting cliches about drunken Irish manhood are based. Mix in
abject poverty and frequent death and illness and you have all
the makings of a truly difficult early life. Fortunately, in
McCourt’s able hands it also has all the makings for a compelling
memoir.”

• Are Men Necessary?: When Sexes Collide
“With hands on hips and eyes wide open, Dowd surveys gender
relations in contemporary settings such as the workplace, the
White House, the mall, and the media, comparing and contrasting
as she goes. And while her secondary sources are endless–and,
let’s face it, the subject of gender inequality is not exactly
new–Dowd manages to produce a fair share of bons mots.”

• Beasts of No Nation: A Novel
“The impressionistic narration by a boy constantly struggling to
understand the incomprehensible is always breathless, often
breathtaking and sometimes heartbreaking. Its odd singsong
cadence and twisted use of tense take a few pages to get used to,
but Iweala’s electrifying prose soon enough propels a harrowing
read.”

• Behind the Scenes at the Museum
“I exist!” exclaims Ruby Lennox upon her conception in 1951,
setting the tone for this humorous and poignant first novel in
which Ruby at once celebrates and mercilessly skewers her
middle-class English family.”

• Bel Canto (I liked this one, and also recommend Patchett’s Truth and Beauty: A Friendship, about her friendship with Lucy Grealy, as well as Grealy’s own memoir, Autobiography of a Face)
“Joined by no common language except music, the 58 international
hostages and their captors forge unexpected bonds. Time stands
still, priorities rearrange themselves. Ultimately, of course,
something has to give, even in a novel so imbued with the rich
imaginative potential of magic realism. But in a fractious world,
Bel Canto remains a gentle reminder of the transcendence of
beauty and love.”

• Brother Fish
“Brother Fish carries on many of Courtenay’s preoccupations:
racism, cruelty, the courage and generosity of the ostracised,
the mechanics of survival. It is a big, racy read that covers not
just Australia but China, Korea and America, first from the
1920s, then concentrating on the Korean War, and finishing in
Launceston in 1986.”

• But Enough About Me: A Jersey Girl’s Unlikely Adventures Among the Absurdly Famous
“Known for her celebrity profiles, journalist Dunn blends
interviewing tips, dirt-digging secrets and memoir-type snippets
in a mix that’s tough to define, but a delight to read.”

• Camel Club
“The Camel Club takes readers inside the Beltway as four unlikely
misfits struggle not only to survive, but to save their president
and their country from a plot that will lead to nuclear disaster.”

• Company
“As bitter as break-room coffee, the novel eviscerates demeaning
modern management techniques that treat workers as “headcounts.”
Though Barry’s primary target is corporate dehumanization, he’s
at his funniest lampooning the suits that tread the stage,
consumed by the sound and fury of office politics that signify
nothing.”

• Coyote
“Steele’s most ambitious novel yet, in which he attains the level
of Heinlein and Poul Anderson in that, howsoever much he
preaches, he still gives us a cracking good story that even
readers not of the true space-exploration faith will enjoy.”

• Daughter of Fortune
“Allende expands her geographical boundaries in this sprawling,
engrossing historical novel flavored by four cultures: English,
Chilean, Chinese and American, set during the 1849 California
Gold Rush.”

• Death of a Beekeeper
“Powerful story of a man trying to deal with cancer; at times can
make you cry, but also laugh.”

• Derailed
“The buzz is warranted: this story of a middle-class professional
whose life goes incredibly, criminally awry is one of the most
exciting thrillers in years.”

• Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that
Changed America (3 recommendations)
“Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book,
mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it
works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of
19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson’s skillful
writing.”

• Devil Wears Prada (I liked this one.)
“Andy’s mishaps will undoubtedly elicit laughter from readers, and
the story’s even got a virtuous little moral at its heart.
Weisberger has penned a comic novel that manages to rise to the
upper echelons of the chick-lit genre.”

• Dirty Job (I haven’t read this, but I love some of Moore’s other books.)
“If it sounds over the top, that’s because it is—but Moore’s
enthusiasm and skill make it convincing, and his affection for
the cast of weirdos gives the book an unexpected poignancy.”

• Doomsday Book
“Draws upon Willis’ understanding of the universalities of human
nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering and the
indomitable will of the human spirit.”

• Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
“Barack Obama, a black man raised by his white mother and
grandparents, decided to journey to Kenya to learn more about his
African father after receiving news of his death. This memoir is
not about his father’s life, but about Obama’s, and he brings
that home with an intimate tone rather than that of his public
speeches.”

• Dress your Family in Corduroy and Denim (Love Sedaris. Love. If you’re also a fan, you should be reading David Rakoff.)
“Sedaris’s latest provides more evidence that he is a great
humorist, memoirist and raconteur, and readers are lucky to have
the opportunity to know him so well.”

• Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy,
India, and Indonesia (2 recommendations)
“Sustaining a chatty, conspiratorial tone, Gilbert fully engages
readers in the year’s cultural and emotional tapestry—conveying
rapture with infectious brio, recalling anguish with touching
candor—as she details her exotic tableau with history, anecdote
and impression.”

• Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
“As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also
disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and
moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as
well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers
everywhere.”

• Face of the Assassin
“Lindsey really gets Mexico City and through his writing skills
and gift for great imagery, the city comes alive.”

• Fall On Your Knees
“This epic tale of family history, family secrets, and music
centers on four sisters and their relationships with each other
and with their father. Set in the coal-mining communities of Nova
Scotia in the early part of this century, the story also shifts
to the battlefields of World War I and the jazz scene of New York
City in the 1920s.”

• Fingersmith
“A damning critique of Victorian moral and sexual hypocrisy, a
gripping melodrama, and a love story to boot, this book
ingeniously reworks some truly classic themes.”

• From Baghdad, With Love: A Marine, the War, and a Dog Named Lava
“Jay Kopelman tells a story that is both tender and
thought-provoking–candidly portraying the ugly conditions in
wartime Iraq, while also describing his (and his fellow Marines’)
growing attachment to a scruffy stray puppy.”

• Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
“Pressfield’s first novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, was about
golf, but here he puts aside his putter and picks up sword and
shield as he cleverly and convincingly portrays the clash between
Greek hoplites and Persian heavy infantry in the most heroic
confrontation of the Hellenic Age: the battle of Thermopylae
(”the Hot Gates”) in 480 B.C.”

• God-Shaped Hole
“When Beatrice “Trixie” Jordan was 12, a fortune teller told her
that her one true love would die young and leave her all alone.
Now it’s 15 years later and the successful young LA jewelry
designer has had several relationships but no “true love” until
she impulsively answers ad in the “males wanting females” section
of the LA Weekly. There she meets writer Jacob Grace. It doesn’t
take her very long to know that he is the one for her. Not that
things go very smoothly.”

• Good In Bed (2 recommendations; I thought it was just okay.)
“Weiner’s witty, original, fast-moving debut features a lovable
heroine, a solid cast, snappy dialogue and a poignant take on
life’s priorities. This is a must-read for any woman who
struggles with body image, or for anyone who cares about someone
who does.”

• Henderson The Rain King
“Gene Henderson, a 50-something millionaire living in 1950s
America, decides to take a trip to Africa to try to quiet the
voice inside him that keeps saying “I want, I want.”

• His Dark Materials Trilogy (2 recommendations)
“In the epic trilogy His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman unlocks
the door to worlds parallel to our own. Dæmons and winged
creatures live side by side with humans, and a mysterious entity
called Dust just might have the power to unite the universes–if
it isn’t destroyed first.”

• How To Survive A Robot Uprising: Tips On Defending Yourself Against The Coming Rebellion
“In this uncomfortably humorous survival guide, Wilson, a Ph.D.
candidate at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon
University, reminds readers that “any machine could rebel, from a
toaster to a Terminator,” and though the forms our future robot
enemies may take are manifold, they each have exploitable
weaknesses that, fortuitously, match our natural human strengths.”

• I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence
“Amy Sedaris’s sidesplitting guide to throwing parties hopes to return
readers to the times when the word “entertainment” was
“charmingly old-fashioned, like courtship or back alley
abortions.” While her tongue is firmly in cheek, novice
party-planners will actually find some helpful hints along the
way as Sedaris offers instructions and real recipes.”

• Interpreter of Maladies
“Lahiri’s touch in these nine tales is delicate, but her
observations remain damningly accurate, and her bittersweet
stories are unhampered by nostalgia.”

• Invisible Monsters (I loved this, as I do all of his books)
“Still working on measuring out the proper dosages of his many
writerly talents (equal parts potent imagery, nihilistic
coolspeak, and doped-out craziness), Palahniuk every now and then
loosens his grip on the story line, which at points becomes as
hard to decipher as your local pill addict’s medicine cabinet.
However Invisible Monsters works best on a roller-coaster level.
You don’t stop and count each slot on the track as you’re going
down the big hill. You throw up your hands and yell, “Whee!”

• Jesus Land
“Tinged with sadness yet pervaded by a sense of triumph,
Scheeres’s book is a crisply written and earnest examination of
the meaning of family and Christian values, and announces the
author as a writer to watch.”

• Killing Yourself to Live : 85% of a True Story
“Klosterman follows up on 2003’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by
expanding on an article he wrote for Spin about driving
cross-country to visit several of America’s most famous rock and
roll death sites, from the Rhode Island club where more than 90
Great White fans died in a fire, to the Iowa field where Buddy
Holly’s plane crashed.”

• King Dork (2 recommendations)
“In Frank Portman’s dazzling debut novel, frustrated song-writer
and high school student Tom Henderson finds his dead father’s
copy of The Catcher in the Rye, and his life changes forever.
Part social satire, part mystery, with a healthy dose of rock
music (and angst), King Dork is one of our must-read favorites of
the year.”

• Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (I have a strange crush on Bourdain, for real. He rocks.)
“Most of the book, however, deals with Bourdain’s own maturation
as a chef, and the culmination, a litany describing the many
scars and oddities that he has developed on his hands, is
surprisingly beautiful. He’d probably hate to hear it, but
Bourdain has a tender side, and when it peeks through his rough
exterior and the wall of four-letter words he constructs, it
elevates this book to something more than blustery memoir.”

• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (4 recommendations)
“While the Bible may be the word of God, transcribed by divinely
inspired men, it does not provide a full (or even partial)
account of the life of Jesus Christ. Lucky for us that
Christopher Moore presents a funny, lighthearted satire of the
life of Christ–from his childhood days up to his crucifixion–in
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. This
clever novel is surely blasphemy to some, but to others it’s a
coming-of-age story of the highest order.”

• Lost and Found
“Luckily, this novel about a reality-TV show is a satire, if an
often muted one. Addressing the comedy and tragedy of missed
connections, bestseller Parkhurst (The Dogs of Babel) uses the
forum of Lost and Found, an Amazing Race–type competition, for a
mostly somber (but occasionally very funny) set of character
studies.”

• Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog (3 recommendations)
“Dog lovers will delight in the antics of Marley, a yellow lab, as
he happily terrorizes the Grogan household. John Grogan,
columnist for the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, reads this account of
life with, arguably, one of the world’s worst dogs. The (reader)
gets to delight in Marley’s mischief without having to deal with
the mess or the embarrassment of such a dog. You can hear the
affection in Grogan’s voice, even as he relates his frustrating,
humbling, and humiliating experiences with such a lovable menace.”

• Middlesex (4 recommendations, I have to confess I personally couldn’t really get into this one)
“When you get to the end of this splendorous book, when you
suddenly realize that after hundreds of pages you have only a few
more left to turn over, you’ll experience a quick pang of regret
knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may
even resist finishing it–putting it aside for an hour or two, or
maybe overnight–just so that this wondrous, magical novel might
never end.”

- Midwives (2 recommendations)
“In Midwives, Chris Bohjalian chronicles the events leading up to
the trial of Sibyl Danforth, a respected midwife in the small
Vermont town of Reddington, on charges of manslaughter. It
quickly becomes evident, however, that Sibyl is not the only one
on trial–the prosecuting attorney and the state’s medical
community are all anxious to use this tragedy as ammunition
against midwifery in general; this particular midwife, after all,
an ex-hippie who still evokes the best of the flower-power
generation, is something of an anachronism in 1981.”

• Motherless Brooklyn
“Sure, the story is a mystery, but Motherless Brooklyn could be
about flower arranging, for all we care. What counts is Lionel’s
tic-ridden take on a world full of surprises, propelling this
fiction forward at edgy, breakneck speed.”

• My Sister’s Keeper (8 recommendations, holy cow)
“The difficult choices a family must make when a child is
diagnosed with a serious disease are explored with pathos and
understanding in this 11th novel by Picoult (Second Glance,
etc.). The author, who has taken on such controversial subjects
as euthanasia (Mercy), teen suicide (The Pact) and sterilization
laws (Second Glance), turns her gaze on genetic planning, the
prospect of creating babies for health purposes and the ethical
and moral fallout that results.”

• Neuromancer (An SF classic. Loved it then, love it now.)
“Here is the novel that started it all, launching the cyberpunk
generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of
science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award,
and the Philip K. Dick Award. With Neuromancer, William
Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace–and science fiction
has never been the same.”

• Never Have Your Dog Stuffed
“Like Alda’s persona, his book is more human and less flash. What
would be filler in most books is often the mot entertaining and
revealing here; especially Alda’s dynamic relationship with his
parents. Really, who else would name his memoir after an
unfortunate trip to the taxidermist?”

• Never Let Me Go (2 recommendations)
“Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, Never Let Me Go is
another classic by the author of The Remains of the Day.”

• Nobody’s Fool
“Set in the economically desperate ex-resort town of North Bath,
N.Y., Russo’s novel displays his characteristic verbal panache
and biting wit.”

• Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls
“There is little sugar but lots of spice in journalist Rachel
Simmons’s brave and brilliant book that skewers the stereotype of
girls as the kinder, gentler gender. […] Odd Girl Out is that
rare book with the power to touch individual lives and transform
the culture that constrains girls–and boys–from speaking the
truth.”

• On Beauty (2 recommendations)
“Smith has fashioned a superb book, her best to date. She has
interwoven class, race, and gender and taken everyone prisoner.
Her even-handed renditions of liberal and/or conservative
mouthings are insightful, often hilarious, and damning to all.
She has a great time exposing everyone’s clay feet. This author
is a young woman cynical beyond her years, and we are all richer
for it.”