List #35 Stephanie Anderson

Stephanie Anderson: WORD. Brooklyn, NY. 11222.

Here are her self-imposed rules for the following list:I feel like I need to qualify this list with the rules I made for myself, which was the only way to get it under 50. For a book to be a favorite handsell, it must meet the following criteria:

1. It is a book that a reader is unlikely to have bought on their own (this is a rule I broke on several occasions)
2. It is a book that has several odd yet appealing characteristics that make it a very good fit with a certain sort of person
3. It is a book which, if successfully handsold, leaves me with the feeling that I have done A Good Deed

I also did not include any books published this year, as otherwise the list would be made up half of them and that seems somehow wrong. They need to age a bit, don't you think? Hi, I'm crazy. Also also, I tried to spread the love across as many sections of the store as I could, but of course fiction got the lion's share.

1. 33 1/3: CELINE DION'S LET'S TALK ABOUT LOVE by Carl Wilson
2. ALEC: THE YEARS HAVE PANTS by Eddie Campbell
3. AN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD by Annie Dillard
4. APPETITES by Carolyn Knapp
5. THE BEST OF EVERYTHING by Rona Jaffe
6. BIG RABBIT'S BAD MOOD by Ramona Badescu, illustrated by Delphine Durand
7. BOMBARDIERS by Po Bronson
8. BORN TO RUN by Christopher McDougall
9. THE CITY & THE CITY by China Mieville
10. CLOWN GIRL by Monica Drake
11. THE CURSE OF THE APPROPRIATE MAN by Lynn Freed
12. THE DARK IS RISING by Susan Cooper
13. THE DAYS OF ABANDONMENT by Elena Ferrante
14. FATHERS AND SONS by Alexander Waugh
15. FLATLAND by Edwin Abbott
16. THE GONE-AWAY WORLD by Nick Harkaway
17. GETTING THINGS DONE by David Allen
18. GRACELING by Kristin Cashore
19. HOW TO COOK EVERYTHING by Mark Bittman
20. HOW TO BE A DOMESTIC GODDESS by Nigella Lawson
21. INFINITE JEST by David Foster Wallace
22. THE INTUITIONIST by Colson Whitehead
23. IT'S USEFUL TO HAVE A DUCK by Isol
24. K BLOWS TOP by Peter Carlson
25. KING DORK by Frank Portman
26. LAST NIGHT IN MONTREAL by Emily St. John Mandel
27. LAST SUMMER OF THE DEATH WARRIORS by Francisco X. Stork
28. LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN by James Agee
29. LOOK AT ME by Jennifer Egan
30. MATTERHORN by Karl Marlantes
31. MONEY by Martin Amis
32. THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY by Trenton Lee Stewart
33. OUT by Natsuo Kirino
34. NINE RULES TO BREAK WHEN ROMANCING A RAKE by Sarah Maclean
35. NOBODY'S BABY BUT MINE by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
36. THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH by Norton Juster
37. PROMETHEA by Alan Moore
38. RAYMOND CARVER by Carol Sklenicka
39. RUMSPRINGA by Tom Shachtman
40. THE SELECTED STORIES OF DEBORAH EISENBERG by, well, Deborah Eisenberg
41. STONER by John Williams
42. TENDER MORSELS by Margo Lanagan
43. TRAITOR TO HIS CLASS by H. W. Brands
44. TWENTY FRAGMENTS OF A RAVENOUS YOUTH by Xiaolu Guo
45. VANITY FAIR by William Makepeace Thackeray
46. THE WESTING GAME by Ellen Raskin
47. WHAT IT TAKES by Richard Ben Cramer
48. WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebecca Stead
49. WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD by Jincy Willett
50. WRITTEN LIVES by Javier Marias

List #34 Tracy Wynne

Tracy Wynne: Books Inc, Alameda. Alameda, CA 94501.
Secret Garden-Frances Hodgson Burnett
I, Claudius-Robert Graves
From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler-E.L. Konigsburg
Dalva-Jim Harrison
5 Children and It-Edith Nesbit
Alice in Wonderland-Lewis Carroll
Ralph S. Mouse-Beverly Cleary
Henry V-William Shakespeare
Hobbit-JRR Tolkien
Omnivore's Dilemma-Michael Pollan
Roget's International Thesaurus
Death Comes for the Archbishop-Willa Cather
Stranger In a Strange Land-Robert Heinlein
Thurber Carnival-James Thurber
Collected Wodehouse-P.G. Wodehouse
1 Fish 2 Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish-Dr. Seuss
Once and Future King-T.H. White
Baron in the Trees-Italo Calvino
Cold Comfort Farm-Stella Gibbons
Rebecca-Daphne Du Maurier
Pillow Book of Sei Shonegon-Arthur Waley
Mastering the Art of French Cooking-Julia Child
Dune-Frank Herbert
Portable Dorthy Parker-Dorothy Parker
Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down-Anne Fadiman
Living the Good Life-Linda Cockburn
Boggs: A Comedy of Values-Lawrence Weschler
Bury Me Standing-Isabel Fonseca
Wide Sargasso Sea-Jean Rhys
Wind In the Door-Madeline L'Engle
Chess Garden-Brooks Hansen
Witch of Blackbird Pond-Elizabeth George Speare
You Can't Say You Can't Play-Vivian Paley
High Wind In Jamaica-Richard Hughes
Silver Palate Cookbook-Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins
Ubik-Philip K. Dick
Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy-Sigird Undset
Fingersmith-Sarah Waters
Island of the Blue Dolphin-Scott O'Dell
Member of the Wedding-Carson McCullers
Comedians-Graham Greene
Killer Inside Me-Jim Thompson
Most of S. J. Perleman
Dracula-Bram Stoker
Zuleika Dobson-Max Beerbohm
Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor-Flannery O'Connor
Egg & I-Betty MacDonald
If On a Winter's Night a Traveler-Italo Calvino
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie-Muriel Spark

List #33 Terry Whittaker

Terry Whittaker: Viewpoint Books. Columbus, IN. 47201
Fahrenheit 451-Ray Bradbury
Year of Wonders-Geraldine Brooks
March-Geraldine Brooks
A Clockwork Orange-Anthony Burgess
In Cold Blood-Truman Capote
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay-Michael Chabon
An Arsonist’s Guide to the Writer’s Homes of New England-Brock Clarke
The Brothers Karamazov-Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment-Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Middlesex-Jeffrey Eugenides
A Fan’s Notes-Frederick Exley
White Oleander-Janet Fitch
Everything is Illuminated-Jonathan Safran Foer
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close-Jonathan Safran Foer
The Corrections-Jonathan Franzen
Ellen Foster-Kaye Gibbons
Chaos: Making a New Science-James Gleick
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History-Stephen Jay Gould
The Tin Drum-Gunter Grass
Snow Falling on Cedars-David Guterson
Riddley Walker-Russell Hoban
The Posionwood Bible-Barbara Kingsolver
Into the Wild-Jon Krakauer
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold-John LeCarre
To Kill a Mockingbird-Harper Lee
The Fixer-Bernard Malamud
Chronicle of a Death Foretold-Garbrel Garcia Marquez
Killing Mr. Watson-Peter Mathiesson
The Road-Cormac McCarthy
Let the Great World Spin-Colum McCann
Atonement-Ian McEwan
Lonesome Dove-Larry McMurtry
The River of Doubt-Candace Millard
Beloved-Toni Morrison
The Shipping News-E.Annie Proulx
The Milagro Bean Field War-John Nichols
Going After Caciatto-Tim O’Brien
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance-Robert Pirsig
Empire Falls-Richard Russo
White Teeth-Zadie Smith
Longitude-Dava Sobel
The Confessions of Nat Turner-William Styron
The Mosquito Coast-Paul Theroux
War and Peace-Leo Tolstoy
A Confederacy of Dunces-John Kennedy Toole
Fathers and Sons-Ivan Turgenev
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant-Anne Tyler
Cutting For Stone-Abraham Verghese
The Book Thief-Markus Zusak

List #32 Josh Christie

Josh Christie: Sherman's Books and Stationery in Freeport: 128 Main St, Freeport, ME 04032(Their Bar Harbor store has been open since 1886).
Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain by Kirsten Menger-Anderson
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
The Story of Sugarloaf by John Christie
World War Z by Max Brooks
The Nightly News by Jonathan Hickman
1984 by George Orwell
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The Naked Pint by Christina Perozzi and Hallie Beaune
Active Liberty by Stephen Breyer
Speaking Freely by Floyd Abrams
Local by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly
Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan Howard
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
Extra Lives by Tom Bissell
One and the Same by Abigail Pogrebin
Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross
Wednesday Comics
I Found This Funny by Judd Apatow
Guide to Getting It On by Paul Joannides
Actual Air by David Berman
The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Last Call by Daniel Okrent
Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff
Phonogram, The Singles Club by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie
Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter
I Married You for Happiness by Lily Tuck
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
The Vikings by Robert Ferguson
Bonk by Mary Roach
Good Eggs by Phoebe Potts
K Blows Top by Peter Carlson
The Citizen’s Constitution by Seth Lipsky
Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel M. Klein
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil
The Ridiculous Race by Steve Hely and Vali Chandrasekaran
All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-Down House by David Giffels
Socrates Café by Christopher Phillips
Live from New York by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
The Ascent of Rum Doodle by W.E. Bowman
This Life is in Your Hands by Melissa Coleman
Red, White and Brew by Brian Yaeger
The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni
In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honore


Also, feel free to keep those lists coming to us at micawbers@popp.net
It is easiest if they comes as text in the e-mail but can come as an attachment.

List #31 Eowyn Ivey

Eowyn Ivey: Fireside Books. Palmer, AK. 99645

Adventures of Cow, Lori Korchek
The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science, Richard Holmes
All the Powerful Invisible Things: A Sportswoman's Notebook, Gretchen Legler
All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach
The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
Beloved, Toni Morrison
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, Tom Franklin
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Jeff Kinney
A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Giver, Lois Lowry
The Good Earth, Pearl Buck
Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown
The Green Age of Asher Witherow, M. Allen Cunningham
Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
The Ice-Shirt (Seven Dreams), William T. Vollmann
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor
Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
Life of Pi, Yann Martel
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich
My Life in France, Julia Child
And Her Soul Out Of Nothing, Olena Kalytiak Davis
Ordinary Wolves, Seth Kantner
Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, Candice Millard
Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi
The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
The Spanish Bow, Andromeda Romano-Lax
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman
Stoner, John Williams
Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky
The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
Tinkers, Paul Harding
True Grit, Charles Portis
Two in the Far North, Margaret E. Murie
Two Old Women, Velma Wallis
We Are in a Book!, Mo Willems
What is the What, Dave Eggers
Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle

It is worth mentioning that Eowyn's novel "The Snow Child" releases in the US on Feb 1, 2012.

List #30 Sheryl Cotleur

Sheryl Cotleur: Book Passage. Corte Madera, CA. 94925

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (actually everything by her)
Tinkers by Paul Harding
Ancient Child by N. Scott Momaday
Power by Linda Hogan
Lightning Bird by Lyall Watson
People of the Sea by David Thomson
A Mantis Carol by Laurens Van Der Post
On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry
Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
Bear by Marian Engel
Radical Hope by Jonathan Lear
Best of It by Kay Ryan
Alive Together by Lisel Mueller
The Widow and the Tree by Sonny Brewer
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
Tree of Meaning by Robert Bringhurst
Voices of the First Day by Robert Lawlor
Wisdom of the Mythtellers by Sean Kane
Boys of Our Youth by Joann Beard
Watch With Me by Wendell Berry
Other Side of Eden by Hugh Brody
Eye of the Albatross by Carl Safina
Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch
Move Your Shadow by Joseph Lelyveld
Grass Dancer by Susan Power
Black Elk Speaks by John Neihardt
Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje
The Storyteller by Mario Vargas LLohsa
Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison
La Maravilla by Alfredo Vea, Jr.
Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart
Geography of the Heart by Fenton Johnson
Light At The Edge of The World by Wade Davis
At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Mattheisen
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Generosity by Richard Powers
Man Who Killed The Deer by Frank Waters
Dry White Season by Andre Brink
An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina
Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams
Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson
New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver
Where Rivers Change Direction by Mark Spragg
Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda
Classics for Pleasure by Michael Dirda
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht

List #29 Michael Barnard

Michael Barnard: Rakestraw Books. Danville, CA. 94526

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
The Gastronomical Me by M. F. K. Fisher
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomaso di Lampedusa
The Weekend by Peter Cameron
What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies
The Three Junes by Julia Glass
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susannah Clarke
The Decline & Fall of Practically Everybody by Will Cuppy
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Rip-Rap and Cold Mountain Poems by Gary Snyder
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Schaffer & Annie Barrows
A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
The Blessing by Nancy Mitford
Cabal by Michael Dibdin
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder
The Rape of Europa by Lynn Nicholas
Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
King Matt the First by Janusz Korczak
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White
Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey
The Prime of Miss Jean Brody by Muriel Spark
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore
Last Letters from Hav by Jan Morris
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin
Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris by A. J. Liebling
Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
The Ninemile Wolves by Rick Bass
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Harouan and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall
The Bottom of the Harbor by Joseph Mitchell
Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
Mapp & Lucia by E. F. Benson
West of Here by Jonathan Evison
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright
Comfort and Joy by Jim Grimsley
At Close Range and Other Stories by Annie Proulx
Queen of the South by Arturo Perez Reverte

List #28 Liz Whaley

Liz Whaley: Water Street Bookstore. Exeter, NH. 03833

1. Arnow, Harriette The Dollmaker
2. Atwood, Margaret The Blind Assassin
3. Atwood, Margaret The Handmaid’s Tale
4. Austen, Jane Persuasion
5. Austen, Jane Pride and Prejudice
6. Barker, Pat Regeneration
7. Brittain, Vera Testament of Youth (nonfiction)
8. Bronte, Charlotte Jane Eyre
9. Byatt, A.S. Possession
10. Cather, Willa My Antonia
11. Cather, Willa O Pioneers!
12. De Bernieres, Louis Corelli’s Mandolin
13. Dickens, Charles Great Expectations
14. Dostoevsky, Fyodor The Brothers Karamazov
15. Drabble, Margaret The Realms of Gold
16. Du Maurier, Daphne Rebecca
17. Ehrlich, Greta The Solace of Open Spaces (nonfiction)
18. Eliot, George Middlemarch
19. Faulkner, William Light in August
20. Fitzgerald, F.Scott Tender Is the Night
21. Frazier, Charles Cold Mountain
22. Gibbons, Stella Cold Comfort Farm
23. Haien, Jeannette The All of It
24. Hegi, Ursula Stones from the River
25. Hemingway, Ernest For Whom the Bell Tolls
26. Hurston, Zora Neale Their Eyes Were Watching God
27. Lee, Harper To Kill a Mockingbird
28. Lippi, Rosina Homestead
29. Llewellyn, Richard How Green Was My Valley
30. Morrison, Toni Beloved
31. Morrison, Toni Song of Solomon
32. Morrison, Toni Sula
33. Munro, Alice Friend of My Youth
34. Piercy, Marge Gone to Soldiers
35. Proulx, Annie Close Range: Wyoming Stories
36. Robertson, Adele Crockett The Orchard: A Memoir (nonfiction)
37. Robinson, Marilynne Housekeeping
38. Rose, Phyllis Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages (nonfiction)
39. Saint Exupery, Antoine de Wind, Sand and Stars (nonfiction)
40. Shakespeare, William Hamlet
41. Shakespeare, William King Lear
42. Shakespeare, William Twelfth Night
43. Stegner, Wallace Angle of Repose
44. Stegner, Wallace Crossing to Safety
45. Undset, Sigrid Kristin Lavransdatter
46. Urquhart, Jane The Stone Carvers
47. Wiesenthal, Simon The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness (nonfiction)
48. Woolf, Virginia Mrs. Dalloway
49. Woolf, Virginia A Room of One’s Own (nonfiction)
50. Woolf, Virginia Three Guineas (nonfiction)

Books rising like a phoenix.

Or, the un-death of the book. Much print and time and thought is spent these days to dithering about the book industry and how to go forward with old, boring, paper books. The answer, sometimes, is right in front of us. For some time one of my main concerns was the seemingly out-of-whack pricing in terms of new books. Biographies and Collected Poems were $35 or $40. New fiction was climbing up and over $25 towards $30. Those problems still exist--but there is a much more positive trend at work.

The flip-side of our technological 'problem' is that all coins have two sides. More books are being made into art objects currently at reasonable prices. Technology has made that possible. Art books, to be sure, are one category that has seen sales dip in museum and other specialty stores. But it isn't just art books that have become beautiful. It crosses all genres. In the past few weeks I have posted two books to our Facebook page that have forced me to stop unpacking boxes to sit and peruse and enjoy.

The first was Matt Kish's "Moby Dick in Pictures" which should be appreciated not only for its glorious work but also for the certain toil and hours spent creating it. It contains a piece of art for each page of Melville's true American masterpiece. There is short passage to accompany each page that comes from the book. I have already seen many customers page through it and say, "This is going on my holiday list." I'm one of them.

The second was Gingko Press' artistic rendition of Nabokov's "Pale Fire." Priced at $35 it comes with a kind of box set with two booklets and set of index cards. Everyone involved in this project should be proud of the end project--a work that combines words with images that ends with a tactile thing greater than the sum of its parts. This is not the first time Gingko has taken Nabokov to a new level. A few years back they had a book entitled "Alphabet in Color" that dealt with Nabokov's synesthesia. $25 and worth every single penny.

The bike trend has hit full-force and with Minneapolis/St. Paul consistently listed as one of the most bikeable areas in the country we've got the interest to buy books. Three titles we're currently featuring include a local bike map(that is in its 9th or 10th printing) that is made of paper that seems to rubber. It doesn't tear(and believe me, many a child has tried) and is water-resistant. It sells for $10.95. Cyclepedia comes to us from Chronicle Books, always doing good design on all manner of things, and is a look at 100 different bikes. Also $35. Last is a leather bound journal that comes with Nigel Peake drawings. It has some small folders to place things and lots of blank pages to jot down routes or ideas. It is small enough to easily fit in any handle bag and it costs $14.95. Under fifteen books with a leather cover with a handsome wheel design.

Not to ignore the more standard trade books. Archipelago, NYRB, Open Letter and many others are giving their books extra oomph in terms of production. They well know a book can no longer just be a book in order to catch a browser's eye and purse.

The kids books we see coming in every day are a giant step up from what they were even five years ago. Picture books, YA titles, board books and all kinds of clever packaging and design make them worth looking at over and over.

Finally, cookbooks. There used to be cookbooks that fell into either utilitarian(you could actually follow the recipes and make good food) or art/photo cookbooks. Now these two groups are melding together. I got one in the mail earlier this week from Melville House. I've spouted long and long for these guys who have their hands in so many great things its become hard to track. They brought Hans Fallada to the American audience and run a series called the Neversink Library which is new favorite of mine. They, more recently, have started a program for bookstores(indie and chain) to adopt a penguin by selling some copies of their books. Yet it is one of their food books I've been spending time with the past three days. Stephane Reynaud's "Rotis" is food porn in its pictures and art but remains, at its best, a book that any home cook can work with and enjoy.

Does all of this mean the questions and problems facing us do not exist? Not at all. But they are a big part of the possible solutions.

Thanks go to Kurtis Scaletta, local author and friend of the store, for urging me to take this on in some detail.

List #27 Carla Jimenez

Carla Jimenez: Inkwood Books. Tampa, FL. 33609.

FICTION:

AMERICAN RUST, PHILIPP MEYER
ASSORTED FIRE EVENTS, DAVID MEANS
BEFORE WOMEN HAD WINGS, CONNIE MAY FOWLER
THE BIRD ARTIST, HOWARD NORMAN
A BLIND MAN CAN SEE HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU, AMY BLOOM
BREATH, TIM WINTON
DREAMING IN CUBAN, CRISTINA GARCIA
ELLA MINNOW PEA, MARK DUNN
FATHER AND SON, LARRY BROWN
FEAST OF LOVE, CHARLES BAXTER
THE GATHERING, ANNE ENRIGHT
GRUB, ELISE BLACKWELL
IN CUBA I WAS A GERMAN SHEPHERD, ANA MENENDEZ
LARRY'S PARTY, CAROL SHIELDS
THE LITTLE FRIEND, DONNA TARTT
LUSH LIFE, RICHARD PRICE
THE MARCH, E.L. DOCTOROW
MEN GIVING MONEY, WOMEN LAUGHING, ALICE MATTISON
MYSTIC RIVER, DENNIS LEHANE
THE NAMESAKE, JHUMPA LAHIRI
NOBODY'S FOOL, RICHARD RUSSO
POISONWOOD BIBLE, BARBARA KINGSOLVER
ROUND ROCK, MICHELE HUNEVEN
SECRET NAMES OF WOMEN, LYNN BARRETT
SISTERS OF THE HEART, CHITRA DIVAKARUNI
SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN, LISA SEE
SUITE FRANCAISE, IRENE NEMIROVSKY
THE SURRENDERED, CHANG RAE LEE
UNDER COVER OF DAYLIGHT, JAMES W. HALL
THE WELL AND THE MINE, GIN PHILLIPS
WHITE TEETH, ZADIE SMITH

NONFICTION:
BIG BOX SWINDLE, STACY MITCHELL
BIRD BY BIRD, ANNIE LAMOTT
THE BOOK OF AWAKENING, MARK NEPO
COMFORTABLE WITH UNCERTAINTY, PEMA CHODRON
EXUBERANCE, KAY REDFIELD JAMISON
FAST FOOD NATION, ERIC SCHLOSSER
I THOUGHT MY FATHER WAS GOD, NATIONAL STORY PROJECT
THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, REBECCA SKLOOT
IN PRAISE OF SLOWNESS, CARL HONORE
LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS, RICHARD LOUV
THE LIARS CLUB, MARY KARR
LISTENING IS AN ACT OF LOVE, DAVE ISAY
DEEP ECONOMY, BILL McKIBBEN
THE LOST ART OF READING, DAVID ULIN
PRAYERS FOR HEALING: 365...FROM AROUND THE WORLD, MAGGIE OMAN et al
THE TENDER BAR, J.R. MOEHRINGER
ULTIMATE PUNISHMENT, SCOTT TUROW
THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS, ISABEL WILKERSON
THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, JOAN DIDION

Penguins

I'm still wrestling with broken attachments but we're nearing the end of that. I promise.

In more uplifting news, Check out this promo which is one of the most creative, and zaniest, I've yet heard of. Melville House is yet again doing cool stuff with their fine books.

Help us, and these other listed stores, become a penguin adoptive parent.

Freaky Friday

It is with clenched fists that I type these words--no list today. Outlook Express is winning the battle yet I shall win the war.

And, yes, I am aware that most people stopped using OE in about 1997.

Until next week when we return with more lists, a penguin named Mr. Micawber(soon) and some chatter about all the fantastic art books coming out this Fall.

Have fun and be nice...

List #26 Jean Westcott

Jean Westcott: Olsson's Books and Records. Washington, DC.(Closed in 2006)
The Lord of the Rings—JRR Tolkein
His Dark Materials—Phillip Pullman
Their Eyes were Watching God—Zora Neil Hurston
Fall on Your Knees—Anne Marie MacDonald
Affliction—Russell Banks
Handmaid’s Tale—Margaret Atwood
A Series of Unfortunate Events—Lemony Snicket
Chaos—James Gleik
Harry Potter series—J K Rowling
The Kiss of the Spider Woman—Manuel Puig
Nobody’s Fool—Rick Russo
The Monster at the End of this Book—Jon Stone
Eva Moves the Furniture—Margot Livesey
Waiting for an Angel—Helon Habila
Beloved—Toni Morrison
Angela’s Ashes—Frank McCourt
The Watsons Go to Birmingham—Christopher Paul Curtis
So The Wind Won’t Blow it All Away—Richard Brautigan
To a God Unknown—John Steinbeck
Eureka Street—Robert McLiam Wilson
Complete Stories of Edgar Allen Poe
The Master and Margarita—Mikael Bulgakov
Leaves of Grass—Walt Whitman
Collected Stories of Jean Rhys
Labyrinths—Jorge Luis Borges
The Hunger Games—Suzanne Collins
Island of the Blue Dolphins—Scott O’Dell
Beowulf
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital—Lorrie Moore
Source of Light—Reynolds Price
Selected Stories of Alice Munro
Foxfire—Joyce Carol Oates
World’s End—TC Boyle
Love is Hell—Matt Groening
Ooh la la Max in Love—Maira Kalman
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius—David Eggers
Maus—Art Spiegelman
For Whom the Bell Tolls—Hemingway
Complete Fairy Tales—Brothers Grimm
Third Policeman—Flann O’Brien
Mythology—Edith Hamilton
Complexity—H. Mitchell Waldrop
Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor
Pobby and Dingan—Ben Rice
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel—Susanna Clarke
The Room—Emma Donohue
Kaffir Boy—Mark Mathabane
The Trial—Franz Kafka
Holes—Louis Sachar
That Was Then, This is Now, SE Hinton

List #25 Kimberly Stephenson

Kimberly Stephenson: McGill University. Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

1)Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
2) Bleak House - Dickens
3) To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee
4) Chronicles of Narnia - Lewis
5) Les Miserables - Hugo
6) Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
7) My Life and Hard Times - Thurber
8) Atonement - McEwan
9) Main Street -Lewis
10) Jungle - Sinclair
11) Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
12) Dubliners - Joyce
13) Daughter of Time - Tey
14) Coventry - Humphreys
15) American Way of Death – Mitford
16) Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
17) Kim - Kipling
18) Tin Flute - Roy
19) Confederacy of Dunces - Toole
20) Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Twain
21) Kidnapped - Stevenson
22) When the Lights Go Down – Kael
23) Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci – Spence
24) Time and Again - Finney
25) Path to Power – Caro
26) Great Deluge – Brinkley
27) Suspects – Thomson
28) Black Cherry Blues - Burke
29) Mrs. Dalloway - Woolf
30) Resurrection - Tolstoy
31) Battle Cry of Freedom – MacPherson
32) World War Z -Brooks
33) Human Comedy - Saroyan
34) Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Smith
35) Stone Angel - Laurence
36) Lady Oracle - Atwood
37) Three Day Road - Boyden
38) Wuthering Heights - Bronte
39) Suttree - McCarthy
40) Stand - King
41) Harry Potter - Rowling
42) Call of the Wild - London
43) World's End - Boyle
44) 1984- Orwell
45) Moonstone - Collins
46) Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz - Richler
47) Ragtime - Doctorow
48) Henry and Clara - Mallon
49) Complete Sherlock Holmes - Doyle
50) Cal - Maclaverty


A special note that this is our first list from outside the United States.

List #24 Melanie Tighe

Melanie Tighe: Dog-Eared Pages. Phoenix, AZ. 85032

1. Harry Potter (series)- J.K. Rowling
2. Captain Underpants (series)-Dave Pilkey
3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid (series) Jeff Kinney
4. Magic Tree House (series) Mary Pope Osborne
5. Goosebumps (series) R.L. Stine
6. Nancy Drew (series) Carolyn Keene
7. Hardy Boys (series) Frank Dixon
8. 39 Clues (series) various authors
9. Guardians of Ga’hoole (series) Kathryn Lasky
10. Warriors (series) Erin Hunter
11. Eragon (series) Christopher Paolini
12. The Lightening Thief (series) Rick Riordan
13. Hunger Games (series) Suzanne Collins
14. Crank (series) Ellen Hopkins
15. The Dark is Rising (series) Susan Cooper
16. Narnia (series) C.S. Lewis
17. The Uglies (series) Scott Westerfield
18. TTYL (series) Lauren Myracle
19. Junie B. Jones (series) Barbara Park
20. Ramona (series) Beverly Cleary
21. Choose Your Own Adventure (series) various authors
22. American Girls (series) various authors
23. Twilight (series) Stephenie Meyer
24. Left Behind Kids (series) Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye
25. Geronimo Stilton (series) Geronimo Stilton
26. Little House on the Prairie Laura Ingalls Wilder
27. Frindle Andrew Clements
28. The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien
29. Call of the Wild Jack London
30. Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
31. The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
32. Where the Sidewalk Ends Shel Silverstein
33. The Borrowers Mary Norton
34. The Minstrel’s Tale Anna Questerly
35. Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing Judy Blume
36. Are You There God It’s Me, Margaret Judy Blume
37. James and the Giant Peach Roald Dahl
38. Indian in the Cupboard Lynn Reid Banks
39. Tale of Desperaux Kate DiCamillo
40. Mr. Popper’s Penguins Richard and Florence Atwater
41. A Wrinkle in Time Madeleine L'Engle
42. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler E. L. Konigsburg
43. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh Robert C. O’Brien
44. The Giver Lois Lowry
45.Redwall Brian Jacques
46. Number the Stars Lois Lowry
47. Charlotte’s Web E.B. White
48. The Cricket in Times Square George Selden
49. A Long Way From Chicago Scott Peck
50. Lord of the Flies William Golding

List #23 Sue Gazell

Sue Gazell: BookMan/BookWoman Books. Nashville, TN. 37212.

1. The Coroner’s Lunch (series) - Colin Cotterill
2. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
3. The Master Butchers’ Singing Club - Louise Erdrich
4. Last Reports on the Miracles of Little No Horse Louise Erdrich
5. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
6. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
7. Lamb - Christopher Moore
8. Peace Like a River - Leif Enger
9. Big Rock Candy Mountain - Wallace Stegner
10. Shanghai Girls - Lisa See
11. Dreams of Joy - Lisa See
12. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
13. The Voyage of the Narwhal - Andrea Barrett
14. Fatu Hiva - Thor Heyerdahl
15. The Bone People - Keri Hulme
16. The Arctic Grail - Pierre Berton
17. The Uttermost Part of the Earth - E. Lucas Bridges
18. Tschiffely’s Ride - A. F. Tschiffely
19. This Way Southward - A. F. Tschiffely
20. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
21. A Yellow Raft in Blue Water - Michael Dorris
22. This Cold Heaven - Gretel Ehrlich
23. Enchanted Vagabonds - Dana and Ginger Lamb
24. The Art if Racing in the Rain – Garth Stein
25. Yes is Better Than No - Byrd Baylor
26. anything by Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, if I have to make a choice
27. The Gift of Rain - Tan Twan Eng
28. The Grass Dancer - Susan Power
29. City of Tranquil Light - Bo Caldwell
30. The Shaman Sings (series) – James Doss
31. Tales of the Otori series - Lian Hearn
(Across the Nightingale Floor, first in series)
32. Outlander(series) - Diana Gabaldon
33. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
34. Forbidden Journey - Ella Maillart
35. News from Tartary - Peter Fleming
36. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
37. Shogun - James Clavell
38. One River - Wade Davis
39. Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett
40. The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough
41. Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner
42. The Bounty - Caroline Alexander
43. The Last Kings of Thule - Jean Malaurie
44. The Noose of Laurels - Wally Herbert
45. The Cloud Forest (or anything by) - Peter Matthiessen
46. Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver
47. The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver
48. Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
49. The Skull Mantra (series) - Eliot Pattison
50. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

List #22 Kira Apple

Kira Apple: Wise Owl Books. West Reading, Pennsylvania. 19611.

1. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
3. The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
4. The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
5. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontё
7. Dawn by Octavia Butler
8. Enchantment by Orson Scott Card
9. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
10. Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card
11. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
12. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
13. The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie
14. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
15. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
16. Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
17. Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman
18. The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman
19. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More by Roald Dahl
20. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
21. The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
22. Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner
23. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
24. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
25. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
26. The Princess Bride by William Goldman
27. Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris
28. Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
29. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
30. Dubliners by James Joyce
31. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
32. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
33. Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
34. The Giver by Lois Lowry
35. A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
36. Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters
37. Roxaboxen by Alice McLarren
38. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
39. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
40. Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
41. The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma
42. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
43. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
44. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
45. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
46. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
47. Hyperion by Dan Simmons
48. A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip C. Stead and Erin E. Stead
49. The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
50. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

List #21 Carol Schneck

Carol Schneck: Schuler Books and Music. Okemos, MI. 48864
Fool on the Hill – Matt Ruff
Beekeeper's Apprentice – Laurie R. King
The Book of Joe – Jonathan Tropper
Motherless Brooklyn – Jonathan Lethem
A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
The Car Thief – Theodore Weesner
Leisure Seeker – Michael Zadoorian
Pictures of Perfection – Reginald Hill
Regeneration trilogy – Pat Barker
Mysteries of Pittsburgh – Michael Chabon
Sandman Slim – Richard Kadrey
Nobody's Fool – Richard Russo
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones – Paul Reps
Start Where You Are – Pema Chodron
The Joy of Living - Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
The Chimney Sweeper's Boy – Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell)
The Book of Ebenezer le Page – G.B. Edwards
Another Country – James Baldwin
Second Tree from the Corner – E.B. White
The Wee Free Men – Terry Pratchett
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven – Sherman Alexie
Maisie Dobbs – Jacqueline Winspear
The Camomile Lawn – Mary Wesley
Citizen Vince – Jess Walter
Northline – Willy Vlautin
Look Me in the Eye – John Elder Robison
The Sweet Science – A.J. Liebling
On Boxing – Joyce Carol Oates
Skippy Dies – Paul Murray
Black Swan Green – David Mitchell
Up in the Old Hotel – Joseph Mitchell
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things – Jon McGregor
I Am Not Myself These Days – Josh Kilmer-Purcell
The Fox in the Attic – Richard Hughes
Bangkok 8 – John Burdett
Paula Spencer – Roddy Doyle
Scent of the Missing – Susannah Charleson
Queer – William S. Burroughs
The Black Tower – Louis Bayard
Jenny and the Cat Club – Esther Averill
The Story of Ferdinand – Munro Leaf
Ten Thousand Saints – Eleanor Henderson
My Dear I Wanted to Tell You – Louisa Young
The Woodcutter – Reginald Hill
Armand Gamache series by Louise Penny
Inspector Montalbani series by Andrea Camilleri
Lynley/Havers series by Elizabeth George
Books I would handsell if they were in print:
48. Yesterday's Burdens by Robert M. Coates
49. The Crystal Cabinet by Mary Butts
50. Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones

Misc

List #20 Jenny Lyons/staff at TKE

Jenny Lyons/staff: The King's English. Salt Lake City, UT. 84105



Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
The Tiger's Wife By Tea Obreht
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
Three Junes by Julia Glass
Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart
This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathon Tropper
Last Night at the Lobster, Stewart O'Nan
Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
Bottom of the 33rd by Dan Barry
Foreign Bodies By Cynthia Ozick
The Surrendered By Chang-rae Lee
Cutting for Stone By Abraham Verghese
Ransom By David Malouf
1861 by Adam Goodheart
The Tiger by John Vaillant
The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen
Charms for the Easy Life, Kaye Gibbon
The Highest Tide, Jim Lynch
Border Songs, Jim Lynch
Firmin, Sam Savage
Last Night at the Lobster, Stewart O'Nan
My Antonia, Willa Cather
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
Where I'm Calling From, Raymond Carver
Motel Life, Willy Vlautin
Three Questions, Jon Muth
THE UNLIKELY ROMANCE OF KATE BJORKMAN by Louise Plummer
UNCIVIL SEASONS by Michael Malone
THE MADONNAS OF LENINGRAD by Deborah Dean
GOODNIGHT ME by Somebody Daddo
HOW TO SAVE A LIFE by Sara Zarr
City of Thieves, David Benioff
Graceland by Chris Abani
Suicide by Edouard Leve
The Western Lands by William Burroughs
Amulet by Roberto Bolano
Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas
Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick
Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
Juniper Berry by M.P. Kozlowsky
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Girls Don't Fly, Kristen Chandler
Wolves Boys and Other Things that May Kill me, by Kristen Chandler
Scapegoat, by Dean Hale
Icefall, by Matt Kirby
Chihuahua Chase, Ann Cannon
A Place of Greater Safety By Hilary Mantel
Guernsey Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Schaefer

Following comments from Hans--

Betsy Burton, owner, wrote a memoir/history of this store a few years back which I enjoyed very much. I am sure they would be happy to sell you a copy. Or your local would.

In any case, this concludes the original twenty lists and puts us at 1,000 books. Thanks for checking in with us and keep doing so--tomorrow I'll post some miscellaneous fun stuff about these lists and on Wednesday I'll begin posting the rest of the lists in the order they got to me.

Edit: I apologize for the two duplicates(thought I think it was multiple staff members naming a title). In any case, it was my(Hans') fault for not being clear about it. Here are two more titles from them--
Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie King
Bricklayer by Noah Boyd

List #19 Cody Morrison/Sq. Books

Cody Morrison/Richard Howorth/Lyn Roberts: Square Books. Oxford, MS. 38655

Richard Howorth-Square Books owner
Lit by Mary Karr
One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty
Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
Music of the Swamp by Lewis Nordan
Rock Springs by Richard Ford
Father & Son by Larry Brown
All God's Dangers by Theodore Rosengarten
Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson
Age of Grief by Jane Smiley
Round Rock by Michelle Huneven
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
The English Major by Jim Harrison
Resuscitation of a Hanged Man by Denis Johnson
Erasure by Percival Everett
Freedom by Jonathan Fanzen
The Adrian Mole Diaries by Sue Townsend
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
The Typist by Michael Knight
Selected Short Stories by William Faulkner
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Long Last Happy by Barry Hannah
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
The Pleasures of the Damned by Charles Bukowski

Cody Morrison, buyer at Sq Bks:
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Among the Thugs by Bill Buford
Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger
The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow
Balzac & the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
Rides of the Midway by Lee Durkee
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obrhet
Ninety-two in the Shade by Thomas McGuane
Last Days of the Dogmen by Brad Watson
Dino by Nick Tosches
Sent For You Yesterday by John Edgar Wideman
The Salt Line by Elizabeth Spencer
Joe by Larry Brown

Lyn Roberts, general mangager, Sq Bks
Poachers by Tom Franklin
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
Airships by Barry Hannah
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Border Songs by Jim Lynch
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
Waterland by Graham Swift
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

I'm trying not to editorialize about the lists themselves but I'm fairly certain this is the first one that contains a book that hasn't actually been published yet. People are all crazed for Jeffrey Eugenides' new novel and it shows here. Square Books is the kind of store that authors, booksellers and readers all collectively swoon over. They have a good thing going.

List #18 Stefan Moorehead

Stefan Moorehead:Unabridged Bookstore. Chicago, IL. 60657
Last Werewolf--Glen Duncan
Visit from the Goon Squad--Jennifer Egan
Tiger's Wife--Tea Obreht
Splendid Conspiracy--Albert Cossery
Lord of Misrule--Jaimy Gordon
Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees--Lawrence Weschler
The Pale King--David Foster Wallace
Blood Horses--John Jeremiah Sullivan
Visitation--Jenny Erpenbeck
President is a Sick Man--Matthew Algeo
Conscience--Hector Malot
Forever War--Dexter Filkins
Embassytown--China Mieville
Local--Brian Wood
Sometimes a Great Notion--Ken Kesey
Sound and the Fury--William Faulkner
Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet--David Mitchell
Cloud Atlas--David Mitchell
Wind-up Bird Chronicle--Haruki Murakami
Confederacy of Dunces--John Kennedy Toole
The Ask--Sam Lipsyte
Absurdistan--Gary Shteyngart
Super Sad True Love Story--Gary Shteyngart
Lunatic at Large--J. Storer Clouston
You Shall Know our Velocity--Dave Eggers
On Writing--Stephen King
About a Mountain--John D'Agata
Blankets--Craig Thompson
Bottomless Bellybutton--Dash Shaw
The Scott Pilgrim series--Bryan Lee O'Malley
Savage Detectives--Roberto Bolano
The Hakawati--Rabih Alameddine
Lunar Park--Brett Easton Ellis
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao--Junot Diaz
Freedom--Jonathan Franzen
Tree of Smoke--Denis Johnson
American Salvage--Bonnie Jo Campbell
Brain Dead Megaphone--George Saunders
The Mystery Guest--Gregoire Bouillier
The Language Instinct--Steven Pinker
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City--Nick Flynn
Stanley--Syd Hoff
I Drink for a Reason--David Cross
People are Unappealing--Sara Barron
Neuromancer--William Gibson
2001--Arthur C. Clarke
Childhood's End--Arthur C. Clarke
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--Douglas Adams
Hold Everything Dear--John Berger
The Memory of Fire Trilogy--Eduardo Galeano

This is yet another case where one bookseller(Emily Pullen) pointed me to another. And how about Lawrence Weschler showing up on back-to-back lists? That, friends, is pure goodness.

Also, I'll do my best to get tomorrow's post up as usual but I'll be in the hinterlands of MN wilderness and it may not happen. Do not fear: we shall return.

List #17 Jay D. Peterson

Jay D. Peterson:Magers&Quinn Booksellers. Minneapolis, MN. 55408
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone--Deborah Madison
River Cottage Everyday--Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall
At My French Table--Jane Webster
Best Recipes in the World--Mark Bittman
Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees--Lawrence Weschler
River Town--Peter Hessler
The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth--Bill Holm
Eccentric Islands--Bill Holm
The Whale--Philip Hoare
Canoeing with the Cree--Eric Sevareid
Wonder Bear--Tao Nyeu
Invention of Hugo Cabret--Brian Selznick
Book Thief--Markus Zuzak
Charley Harper's ABCs--Charley Harper
Charley Harper's 123s--Charley Harper
Charley Harper's Birds and Words--Charley Harper
Above the River : The Complete Poems of James Wright--James Wright
Four Quartets--T.S. Eliot
Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This?--Dorothy Parker
Collected Poems of George Seferis--George Seferis
Let the Great World Spin--Colum McCann
Out Stealing Horses--Per Petterson
Gilead--Marilynne Robinson
Home--Marilynne Robinson
Housekeeping--Marilynne Robinson
Visit from the Goon Squad--Jennifer Egan
Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol--Nikolai Gogol
Difficult Loves--Italo Calvino
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler--Italo Calvino
History of Love--Nicole Krauss
Stoner--John Williams
Paris Review Interviews Vols 1-4--Philip Gourevitch(ed.)
This Side of Paradise--F. Scott Fitzgerald
Dud Avocado--Elaine Dundy
What is the What--Dave Eggers
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay--Michael Chabon
WPA Guide to Minnesota--Complied by Federal Writer's Project
Death of the Dream : Farmhouses in the Heartland--William G. Gabler
Gourmet Rhapsody--Muriel Barbery
Heat--Bill Buford
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again--David Foster Wallace
Atonement--Ian McEwan
Basil and Josephine Stories--F. Scott Fitzgerald
When Kafka was the Rage--Anatole Broyard
The Cook and the Gardener : A Year of Recipes and Writings from the French Countryside--Amanda Hesser
Parisians--Graham Robb
Eucalyptus--Murray Bail
Fargo Rock City--Chuck Klosterman
Anything by John Banville
Slouching Toward Bethlehem--Joan Didion
Gerhard Richter's Overpainted Photographs--Gerhard Richter

The store Jay is at is nothing short of an emporium. It's hard to know where to start or end because so much good stuff fills the place.

Jay is one member of a staff that is friendly and helpful and will watch your 4 year-old terrorize the joint(thanks Aaron) as mine did during a wonderful event with John Vaillant.

List #16 Paul Ingram

Paul Ingram: Prairie Lights. Iowa City, IA. 52240

Gunther Grass, The Tin Drum
Robertson Davies, The Deptford Trilogy
Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker
G. B. Edwards, Book of Ebeneezer LePage
William Maxwell, Time Will Darken it.
William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow
Willa Cather, My Antonia
Julie Hecht, Do the Windows Open.
Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra
Rilla Askew, The Mercy Seat
Sebastian Barry, Long Long Way
Willaim Trevor, The Story of Lucy Gault
Charles Portis, Masters of Atlantis
Charles Portis, True Grit
Eudora Welty, Collected Stories
Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
Vilhjalmer Moberg, The Emigrants
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Jim Crace, A Gift of Stones
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson, Home
Joseph Skibell, Blessing on the Moon
Ed Carey, Observatory Mansions
Jane Hamilton, When Madeline Was Young
Herman Mellville, Moby Dick
Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers
James Agee, A Death in the Family
George V. Higgins The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Kent Haruf, The Tie That Binds
William Faulkner, The Unvanquished
William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra
Annie Dillard The Living
Barbara Gowdy, White Bone
Wayne Johnston, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams
Nelson Algren, The Man With the Golden Arm
George Orwell, 1984
Redmond O'Hanlon, Into the Heart of Borneo
Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist
Rose Tremain, Music and Silence
Michele de Kretzer, The Hamilton Case
John Steffler, The Afterlife of George Cartwright
Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces
Jane Gardam, Old Filth
Richard B. Wright, Clara Callan
Karen Joy Fowler, Sarah Canary
Aryeh Lev Stollman, The Far Euphrates
Colm Toibin, The Blackwater Lightship

Paul is a book-guzzling tornado of a hand-selling book man. Check out the brief youtube videos of his live shelftalkers. You can access those and lot more of Paul's picks via the website

He pointed me towards Castle Freeman Jr. whose little novels are Maine gothic goodness.

List #15 Tom Campbell

Tom Campbell: The Regulator Bookshop. Durham, NC. 27705

Non-Fiction
--Dispatches by Michael Herr
--Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger
--A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube by Patrick Leigh Fermor
--Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell
--The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It by Lawrence S. Ritter
--Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball's Longest Game by Dan Barry
--The Heart of Understanding by Thich Nhat Hanh
--Last Train to Memphis; The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick
--Trawler: A Journey Through the North Atlantic by Redmond O’Hanlon
--Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
--Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell
--Oak: The Frame of Civilization by William Bryant Logan
--At Day's Close: Night in Times Past by A. Roger Ekirch
--Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet by Oliver Morton
--On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee
--Ethel and Ernest: A True Story by Raymond Briggs
--Not Your Usual Founding Father: Selected Readings from Benjamin Franklin
--Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour by Lynne Olson
--The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen

Fiction
--Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
--The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
--A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
--Little, Big by John Crowley
--Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
--Aubrey/Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brian
--Island: The Complete Stories by Alistair MacLeod
--If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor
--Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
--The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
--The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
--Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
--Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
--Possession by A.S. Byatt
--The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
--The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford
--Any Human Heart by William Boyd
--Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
--A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter
--Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
--Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle
--The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein
--War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
--The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
--The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall
--Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
--Morality Play by Barry Unsworth
--Last Orders by Graham Swift
--The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
--Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
--The Death of the Fox by George Garrett

When book blogs were just little puppies The Regulator was the very first one I had bookmarked. It continues to be a thoughtful, informative and provocative read.

List #14 Paul Yamazaki

Paul Yamazaki: City Lights Books. San Francisco, CA. 94133

100 YEARS OF SOLITUDE-gabriel garcia-marquez
A SECRET LOCATION ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE-steve clay
AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY-aime cesaire
ARCADES PROJECT-walter benjamin
ARK OF BONES-henry dumas
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X-malcolm x
BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM-james mcpherson
BELOW THE LINE- sara chin
BETWEEN COVERS-john tebbel
BLACK JACOBINS-clr james
BLACK MUSIC-leroi jones (amiri)
BLUES PEOPLE-leroi jones (amiri)
BROTHERS KARAMAZOV-fydor dostoevsky
CITY OF QUARTZ-mike davis
COMPLETE POEMS OF KENNETH REXROTH-kenneth rexroth
COMPLETE WORKS OF ISAAC BABEL-isaac babel
CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND-lawrence ferlinghetti
DOGEATERS-jessica hagedorn
FACING WEST: metaphysics of indian hating-richard drinnon
FLASH OF THE SPIRIT-robert farris thompson
FOUR LIVES IN THE BEBOP BUSINESS-ab spellman
From A Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate-nathaniel mackey
GIANT TALK-quincy troupe
GOD'S BIT OF WOOD-ousame sembene
GOD'S CHINESE SON: taiping heavenly kingdom-jonathan d spence
HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS-ep thompson
HOWL-allen ginsberg
I HOTEL-karen tei yamashita
KNOWN WORLD-edward p jones
LES MISERABLES-victor hugo
MALCOLM X-manning marable
MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES-robert musil
MANY HEADED HYDRA-marcus-peter rediker-linebaugh
MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN-salman rushdie
MOBY DICK-herman melville
MUMBO JUMBO-ishmael reed
MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS-amos tutuola
NO NO BOY-john okada
ORIENTALISM-edward said
RECONSTRURCTION-eric foner
RECYCLOPEDIA-harryette mullen
RIVER OF SHADOWS-rebecca solnit
SALT EATERS-toni cade bambara
SOLITUDES CROWED WITH LONLINESS-bob kaufman
THE LONG GOODBYE-raymond chandler
THELONIUS MONK-robin kelly
ULYSSES-james joyce
UNDERWORLD-don delillo
WAR & PEACE-leo tolstoy
WIND IN THE WILLOWS-kenneth grahame

Is there a more true mecca of American books than this one? I was lucky enough to once have Mr. Ferlinghetti at the register while I shopped there. Paul Yamazaki has been the chief buyer since 1984 and has worked at City Lights for a decade longer. This might embarrass him, but it's true to note that his name is often spoken in a whisper as a sign of respect by other booksellers.

List #13 Stacie M. Williams

Stacie M. Williams: Boswell Book Company. Milwaukee, WI. 53211

Cat's Eye-Margaret Atwood
I Hate to See That Evening Sun go Down-William Gay
Arturo's Island-Elsa Morante
Nine Parts of Desire-Geraldine Brooks
The Best Day The Worst Day-Donald Hall
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy-Douglas Adams
Watership Down- Richard Adams
Willful Creatures- Aimee Bender
Things That Fall From the Sky- Kevin Brockmeier
Selected Poems: 1945-2005-Robert Creeley
The Art of Living-Epictetus
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness-William Styron
Ghosts of Wyoming-Alyson Hagy
Out Stealing Horses-Per Petterson
The Tsar's Dwarf-Peter Fogtdal
Outer Dark-Cormac McCarthy
Smonk-Tom Franklin
Tales of a Female Nomad- Rita Golden Gelman
Deer Hunting with Jesus-Joe Bageant
Five Skies-Ron Carlson
Serena-Ron Rash
Lipstick Jihad-Azadeh Moaveni
Don't Sleep There are Snakes-Daniel Everett
Canine Body Language-Brenda Aloff
Pack of Two-Caroline Knapp
Coal Black Horse-Robert Olmstead
The Yacoubian Building-Alaa Al Aswany
The Attack-Yasmina Khadra
Blue Latitudes-Tony Horowitz
How Fiction Works-James Wood
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna st. Vincent Millay-Nancy Milford
Brothel: Mustang Ranch and its Women-Alexa Albert
Rapture of Canaan-Sheri Reynolds
Daughters of the North-Sarah Hall
Wake Up Sir- Jonathan Ames
Dogs of Babel-Carolyn Parkhurst
The Killer Inside Me-Jim Thompson
Under the Banner of Heaven-Jon Krakauer
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove-Christopher Moore
When I was Mortal-Javier Marias
Senselessness-Horacio Castellanos Moya
Mariette in Ecstasy-Ron Hansen
When Things Fall Apart-Pema Chodron
A Passage to India-E.M. Forster
The Awakening-Kate Chopin
Mystery & Manners: Occasional Prose-Flannery O'Connor
Arcadia- Tom Stoppard
Numbers in the Dark-Italo Calvino
Collected Letters-Elizabeth Bishop, Flannery O'Connor, T.S. Eliot, Yeats, Keats, Welty, Hemingway, Fitzgerald pretty much anyone

We let Stacie cheat a little at the end with the letters because it was so funny and indicative of the problem many of us faced. 50 just isn't that many. Milwaukee has long been a great book, and art in general, town and its been fun to see the several stores rise from the ashes of the Harry W. Schwartz stores. Boswell is one and from there you can jump to Daniel Goldin's blog or the bookseller blog.

List #12 Kelly von Plonski

Kelly von Plonski: Subterranean Books. St. Louis, MO. 63130


Firmin by Sam Savage
Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Razors' Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Kokoro by Soseki
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
The Getaway by Jim Thompson
Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout
The Delivery Man by Joe McGinniss, Jr
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
No God But God by Reza Aslan
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Voluntary Madness by Nora Vincent
Finding Nouf  by Zoe Ferraris
City of Thieves by David Benioff
I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle
Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride
Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Arsonist's Guide to Homes in New England by Brock Clarke
2666 by Roberto Bolano
Home & Gilead by Marilyn Robinson
Leningrad: State of Siege by Michael Jones
Selected Letters of TS Spivet by Reif LArsson
The Children's Book by AS Byatt
This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
New York Stories by Paul Auster
The Death Instinct by Jed Rubenfeld
Room by Emma Donohue
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran
Kids:
Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen
Time For Bed by Mem Fox
Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney
The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
Sergio Makes a Splash by Edel Rodriguez
Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site by Tom Lichtenheld
Broken Glass Park by Alina Bronsky
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
The Surrendered by Change- Rae Lee
Nine Stories by JD Salinger
Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr
Stones Fall by Iain Pears

Abraham and Associates rep John Mesjak(and my3books guy) gave me the heads up to talk to someone at Subterranean which has as inventive a series of events as anyone around. Flyover land or not.

Oh, you published a book...

Before this space became the home of Indie Booksellers Top 50 lists it was something else. What, exactly, I am not sure. A soapbox? A virtual venting space? A what? It's hard to even remember--but like everything in the digital world, it is all there for anyone to take a peek at.

I've had a few customers ask for something other than lists so here are some of my ideas again. And, I should note(again), that these are simply my simple thoughts and meanderings and that they do not represent Micawber's entire staff.

I'll begin with a question: what do I/we owe to self-published authors? Almost every day, and sometimes multiple times in a given day, I get a call/e-mail/in-store visit from someone who has published their own work. They most often start with a line of "I am a local artist..." Anyone who truly shops at the store and is someone we actually know by face and name gets a free pass. We always are willing and happy to sell those books. Like many other stores we have some real success stories amongst those kinds of books. In the past few years we've sold 100+ of a few and just had an event three nights ago when we sold 48 copies of a poetry book done locally.

But I'm thinking about the larger issue. The same technology that has introduced e-readers has also enabled either individuals or small companies to print books at a reasonable price. The world of self-publishing is a sort of DYI adventure that I admire in principle. Yet I also see the other side of the coin--not every book works for us in terms of content, style, price, etc.

Lately I have begun to wonder about what I owe to these people/books. Is every e-mail deserving of a response? My quick answer is no. Is every package containing a book worth an answer? No, again, I think. Should a local author get an audience to tell me about his/her book simply by stopping by the store? Another negative is my immediate response--after having dealt with hundreds of these types of requests.

Here are a few simple rules that would probably apply to most stores: call in advance to set up an appointment. Do not drop-in and expect time with an owner/buyer. If you mail a copy of your book do not expect a store to pay return postage. Ask once about a store hosting an event. Do not ask a question when the only possible answer you want is yes. Do not stress your local artist angle unless you know or shop at the store.

I deal with authors on the regular who begin their spiel with total numbers of sales via Amazon and the very simple response is to tell them to contact Amazon.com regarding an event.

List #11 Joseph J. DeSalvo, Jr.

Joseph J. DeSalvo: Faulkner House Books. New Orleans, LA. 70119
The Odyssey and the Iliad Homer
The Aeneid Virgil
Don Quixote Cervantes
Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell
Mansfield Park Jane Austen
Jane Eyre Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights Charlotte Bronte
Middlemarch George Eliot
Nostromo Joseph Conrad
Secret Agent Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
The Red and the Black Stendahl
Pere Goriot Honore Balzac
War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
Death of Ivan Ilyich Leo Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol
Short Stories Anton Chekhov
Moby Dick Herman Melville
The Leopard Giuseppe Lampedusa
The Long Ships Frans G. Bengtsson
Radetzky's March Joseph Roth
Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis
Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
Henderson the Rain King Saul Bellow
Herzog Saul Bellow
Light in August William Faulkner
Absalom Absalom William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
The Moviegoer Walker Percy
Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
Short Stories Hemingway
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
Crossing To Safety Wallace Stegner
History Elsa Morante
The Balkan Trilogy Olivia Manning
Rabbit Angstrom John Updike
Life and Fate Vasily Grossman
Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
Death Comes For the Archbishop Willa Cather
The Good Soldier Ford Maddox Ford
Sophie's Choice William Styron
Out of Africa Isak Dinesen
All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren
The Optimist's Daughter Eudora Welty

Faulkner House is owned by Mr. DeSalvo who was kind enough to mail me his list written in script so beautiful that I will be scanning it soon for all to see. I am also now convinced that his store, with its address at 624 Pirate's Alley, has the coolest address of any bookstore in the world.

List #10 Emma Straub

Emma Straub: BookCourt. Brooklyn, NY. 11201.
1. Middlemarch, George Eliot
2. Stoner, John Williams
3. Emma, Jane Austen
4. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
5. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
6. Martin Dressler, Stephen Millhauser
7. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
8. Like Life, Lorrie Moore
9. Lunch Poems, Frank O'Hara
10. The Great Man, Kate Christensen
11. Little Children, Tom Perrotta
12. The Wife, Meg Wolitzer
13. Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri
14. Ideas of Heaven, Joan Silber
15. Bad Marie, Marcy Dermansky
16. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
17. Everything Matters!, Ron Currie Jr.
18. Skippy Dies, Paul Murray
19. Old School, Tobias Wolff
20. Chocolates for Breakfast, Pamela Moore
21. Cost of Living, Mavis Gallant
22. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
23. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
24. I Remember, Joe Brainard
25. Memento Mori, Muriel Spark
26, Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link
27. New Addresses, Kenneth Koch
28. A Movable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
29. Liars and Saints, Maile Meloy
30. Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner
31. Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer
32. Mystery, Peter Straub
33. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
34. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
35. The Good Solider, Ford Madox Ford
36. True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey
37. Where I'm Calling From, Raymond Carver
38. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
39. You Remind Me of Me, Dan Chaon
40. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
41. Rebecca, Daphne DuMaurier
42. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
43. The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg
44. George and Martha, James Marshall
45. The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
46. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
47. Down the Street, Lynda Barry
48. Entertaining is Fun, Dorothy Draper
49. Jump Book, Phillipe Halsman
50. The Master, Colm Toibin

Emma is the author of a great short story collection "Other People We Married" which we sell at Micawber's. Read more about her at her site and her store's website can be found here

List #9 Emily Pullen

Emily Pullen: Skylight Books. Los Angeles, CA. 90027.

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Mopus by Oisin Curran
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Matilda by Roald Dahl
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
Well by Matthew McIntosh
Hotel World by Ali Smith
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
Nox by Anne Carson
Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
Mother, Come Home by Paul Hornschemeier
Essex County by Jeff Lemire
Mirrors by Eduardo Galeano
The Correspondence Artist by Barbara Browning
Some Things That Meant the World To Me by Joshua Mohr
The Position by Meg Wolitzer
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
Everything Is Its Own Reward by Paul Madonna
Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams
It's Useful to Have a Duck by ISOL
Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
The Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell
AM/PM by Amelia Gray
I, The Divine by Rabih Alameddine
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine by Stanley Crawford
The Slow Fix by Ivan E. Coyote
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larson
Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Narration: Four Lectures by Gertrude Stein
The Jolly Postman by Janet Ahlberg
Signs and Relics by Sylvia Plachy
Detroit Disassembled by Andrew Moore
Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman
Odysseus in America by Jonathan Shay
A New Literary History of America by Greil Marcus (editor)
Zoom by Istvan Banyai
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
The Ultimate Alphabet by Mike Wilks
The Design of Dissent by Milton Glaser
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Flapper by Joshua Zeitz

I've long admired Emily's book selections choosing from the best of the mainstream and introducing me to lots of gems I wouldn't have otherwise found. More of her(and other Skylight booksellers) picks can be found on their site--which comes complete with cool illustrations.

List#8 Matt Lage

Matt Lage: Iowa Book and Co. Iowa City, IA. 52244


Lorrie Moore, The Collected Stories (UK edition)
John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever
Alice McDermott, Charming Billy
Gore Vidal, United States: Collected Essays
Gore Vidal, Palimpsest: A Memoir
Frank O'Connor, Collected Stories
William Trevor, Collected Stories (Boxed, UK)
Alice Munro, Selected Stories
Mavis Gallant, The Collected Stories
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming Pool Library
Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger's Child
Ann Beattie, The New Yorker Stories
David Leavitt, Collected Stories
Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
Edmund White, The Farewell Symphony
John le Carre, The Quest for Karla (Knopf omnibus of Tinker, Tailor
Soldier, Spy; The Honorourable Schoolboy, Smiley's People)
Annie Proulx, Close Range: Wyoming Stories
The Practical Heart by Allan Gurganus
The Short History of a Prince by Jane Hamilton
Collected Stories by Amy Hempel
The Known World by Edward P.Jones
Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville
Underworld by Don Delillo
Best of P.G. Wodehouse (Everyman’s Library)
Atonement by Ian McEwan
No Great Mischief by Alistair Macleod
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
Collected Stories by Wright Morris
Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker (UK ed.)
Untouchable by John Banville
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry
The Half You Didn’t Know: Selected Stories by Peter Cameron (Plume paper)
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
The Early Stories: 1953-1975 by John Updike
Complete Stories by Evelyn Waugh (Everyman Library)
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston
At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill
The Francoeur Trilogy by David Plante (Dutton Obelisk paper)
The Collected Stories by J. F. Powers (NYRB paper)
A Cab at the Door & Midnight Oil by V.S. Pritchett (Modern Library)
Untold Stories by Alan Bennett
Last Orders by Graham Swift
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
The Ripley Novels by Patricia Highsmith (Everyman’s Library)
A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle

This is one of the many cases where I had never met or spoken to the contributor. I had heard, many times, of his name and fine book taste. Prairie Lights is the store everyone talks about in Iowa(and we'll hear from them in a few days) but they ain't the only
game in town. Big thanks go to Steve Horwitz--our Abraham&Associates rep--for always pestering me about getting in touch with Matt.

List #7 Toby Cox

Toby Cox: Three LIves&Company. New York, NY. 10014

WILDERNESS TIPS: STORIES by Margaret Atwood
ANOTHER COUNTRY by James Baldwin
THE FEAST OF LOVE by Charles Baxter
2666 by Roberto Bolano
MYSTERY RIDE by Robert Boswell
THE CHILDREN'S BOOK by A. S. Byatt
THE BEANS OF EGYPT, MAINE by Carolyn Chute
DISGRACE by J.M. Coetzee
HERO by Frederick G. Dillen
THE ROYAL PHYSICIAN'S VISIT by Per Olov Enquist
LOVE MEDICINE by Louise Erdrich
THE WAITRESS WAS NEW by Dominique Fabre
THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
THEN WE CAME TO THE END by Joshua Ferris
THE GOOD DOCTOR by Damon Galgut
MISTER SANDMAN by Barbara Gowdy
LIFE AND FATE by Vasily Grossman
THE DREAM LIFE OF SUKHANOV by Olga Grushin
THE GREAT FIRE by Shirley Hazzard
BALCONY OF EUROPE by Aidan Higgins
THE KNOWN WORLD by Edward P. Jones
SNOW COUNTRY by Yasunari Kawabata
WALK THE BLUE FIELDS: STORIES by Claire Keegan
THE CONQUEROR by Jan Kjaerstad
A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS: STORIES by Yiyun Li
THE CHATEAU by William Maxwell
BY THE LAKE by John McGahern
CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell
THE ICE STORM by Rick Moody
IN OTHER ROOMS OTHER WONDERS: STORIES by Daniyal Mueenuddin
THE DISCOVERY OF HEAVEN by Harry Mulisch
THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE by Haruki Murakami
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED by Tim O'Brien
SNOW ANGELS by Stewart O'Nan
DIVISADERO by Michael Ondaatje
THE ECHO MAKER by Richard Powers
THE SHIPPING NEWS by Annie Proulx
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS by Arundhati Roy
LAST NIGHT: STORIES by James Salter
LIGHT YEARS by James Salter
CIVILWARLAND IN BAD DECLINE: STORIES by George Saunders
LUCKY US by Joan Silber
SHADOWS ON THE HUDSON by Isaac Bashevis Singer
CROSSING TO SAFETY by Wallace Stegner
THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
PEREIRA DECLARES by Antonio Tabucchi
TRIOMF by Marlene van Niekerk
SEPARATE CHECKS by Marianne Wiggins
CLOUDSTREET by Tim Winton
THIS BOY'S LIFE by Tobias Wolff

Here is their website which is purely informational. Which is fine because this store's charm and power is its physical space. I might upset some people by saying this, including co-workers, but Three Lives is pound for pound, inch by inch, my favorite bookstore in the United States. The stock selection is suoerb and a lot of that is due to Toby.

List #6 Liberty Hardy

Liberty Hardy: RiverRun Bookstore. Portsmouth, NH. 03801

THE PLAGUE DOGS by Richard Adams
WINTERGIRLS by Laurie Halse Anderson
CAT'S EYE by Margaret Atwood
THE WASP FACTORY by Iain Banks
THE VAULTS by Toby Ball
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEAD by Kevin Brockmeier
IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote
CLOSE TO SHORE by Michael Capuzzo
ONE BLOODY THING AFTER ANOTHER by Joey Comeau
FIFTH BUSINESS by Robertson Davies
BAD MARIE by Marcy Dermansky
GEEK LOVE by Katherine Dunn
ZEROVILLE by Steve Erickson
THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER by Goethe
THE LOST CITY OF Z by David Grann
CLAIRE DEWITT AND THE CITY OF THE DEAD by Sara Gran
THE FOREVER WAR by Joe Haldeman
THE GONE-AWAY WORLD by Nick Harkaway
UNION ATLANTIC by Adam Haslett
WINTER'S TALE by Mark Helprin
RAT GIRL by Kristen Hersh
HEART-SHAPED BOX by Joe Hill
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE by Shirley Jackson
THE KNOWN WORLD by Edward P. Jones
MISTER PIP by Lloyd Jones
THE DUST OF 100 DOGS by A.S. King
FATHER OF THE RAIN by Lily King
THE ORANGE EATS CREEPS by Grace Krilanovich
DISQUIET by Julia Leigh
AS SHE CLIMBED ACROSS THE TABLE by Jonathan Lethem
LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN by Colum McCann
BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy
LONESOME DOVE by Larry McMurtry
CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell
SKIPPY DIES by Paul Murray
A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND by Flannery O'Connor
BEL CANTO by Ann Patchett
MY NAME IS ASHER LEV by Chaim Potok
JAMESTOWN by Matthew Sharpe
IN HARM'S WAY by Doug Stanton
CANNERY ROW by John Steinbeck
ANATHEM by Neal Stephenson
PERFUME by Patrick Suskind
THE SECRET HISTORY by Donna Tartt
THE TIGER by John Vaillant
ZAZEN by Vanessa Veselka
SLAPSTICK by Kurt Vonnegut
THE LITTLE STRANGER by Sarah Waters
THE MONSTRUMOLOGIST by Rick Yancey

After a little bit of phone-tag Liberty surprised me by getting her list to me the same day we spoke. Her enthusiam for the books she loves is really infectious. I read Zazen by Veselka from Red Lemonade and am now indebted to her for that tip. She is also helping this project ricochet around the internet universe via Twitter and for that I thank her immensely. RiverRun's site is here. I also should say that I first came to know about her via Algonquin's Booksellers Rock series which is one of many great things they feature on their blog

List #5 Libby Cowles

Libby Cowles: Maria's Bookshop. Durango, CO. 81301

Claiming Ground, Laura Bell
Lonely Polygamist, Brady Udall
Women’s Ways of Knowing, Mary Belenkey et al
In a Different Voice, Carol Gilligan
Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie
Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
Owl Moon, Jane Yolen
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
How to Cook Everything, Mark Bittman
A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn
America America, Ethan Canin
Bone People, Keri Hulme
Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl
The Confessions of Max Tivoli, Andrew Sean Greer
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
Bless Me, Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
Anthropology of an American Girl, Hilary Thayer Hamann
One Hundred Names for Love, Diane Ackerman
Operating Instructions, Anne Lamott
Dreaming in Cuban, Cristina Garcia
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Julia Alvarez
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, Anne Fadiman
Howl, Allen Ginsberg
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
Woodswoman, Anne LaBastille
Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh
My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George
D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths, Ingri and Edgar D'Aulaire
Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paolo Freire
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Emperors Children, Claire Messud
Gnomes, Will Huygen
Yellowcake, Ann Cummins
Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv
Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher
Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
A Natural History of Love, Diane Ackerman
The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf
A Separate Peace, John Knowles
Dream Work, Mary Oliver
Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac

People think of Denver or Boulder or Fort Collins when it comes to cool Colorado living but Maria's certainly makes Durango seem like a pretty good option. Their website showcases their passion for books pretty well and under the Maria's Favorites tab you can access all their staff picks and other fun stuff.

Harvard Book Store Top 50

This iconic store has been dealing books in Cambridge Mass. since 1932. Megan Sullivan, their head buyer, was kind enough to share the Top 50 from a staff list that they compiled in 2009. Their virtual home is here You can access the rest of their Top 100 from there.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Lord of the Rings (series) by J.R.R. Tolkien
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
Middlemarch by George Eliot
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Dubliners by James Joyce
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Sea of Poppies Amitav Ghosh
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
His Dark Materials (series) by Philip Pullman
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Earthsea Cycle (series) by Ursula LeGuin
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Histories by Herodotus
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Dealing with Dragons by Patricia Wrede
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

List #3 Michael Boggs

Michael Boggs: Carmichael'sBookstore. Louisville, KY. 40204/40206

This is Louisville's oldest indie and you can see more about them here

Without criteria, I had to make up my own. 1. Classics – If somebody wants to read Gatsby or Grapes of Wrath or Treasure Island, they aren’t going to here about it from me first. 2. There are tons of contemporary books that I am sure others would love, but I disliked. Cf. Infinite Jest or Cloud Atlas (maybe I’m too old). So I have to have really liked it to sell it 3. You have to have to kind of read a customer’s sense of themselves as readers and have all manner of stuff in you bag to recommend. 4. Handselling is all about being democratic and believing you can upgrade a romance reader to The Secret History or Shadow of the Wind or even Winter’s Tale, or a Mickey Spillane fan to Little Drummer Girl or Chinaman’s Chance.


A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
A Winter’s Tale – Mark Halprin
Any Human Heart – William Boyd
At Home - Bill Bryson
Atonement – Ian McEwan
Citizenship Papers – Wendell Berry
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time – Mark Haddon
The Hours – Michael Cunningham
Dispatches - Michael Herr
Into the Wild – Jon Krakauer
Little Bee – Chris Cleave
Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurtry
Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
Paris to the Moon – Adam Gopnik
Path to Power – Robert Caro
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek – Annie Dillard
Rising Tide – John Barry
River of Doubt – Candace Millard
Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Zafon
Smiley's People - John Le Carre
Sophie’s World – Jostein Gardner
The Hair of Harold Roux – Thomas Williams
The Hot Zone – Richard Preston
The Little Drummer Girl – John Le Carre
The Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan
The Orchid Thief – Susan Orlean
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
The Professor & the Madman – Simon Winchester
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Shipping News – Annie Proulx
The Spies of Warsaw – Alan Furst
The Stone Virgin – Barry Unsworth
The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson
Lives of the Monster Dogs - Kirsten Bakis
Way of Ignorance – Wendell Berry
World According to Garp - John Irving
The Stand-Stephen King
The White Album - Joan Didion
Dog of the South - Charles Portis
The Lives of a Cell - Lewis Thomas
Gorky Park - Martin Cruz Smith
Chinaman's Chance - Ross Thomas
Metzer's Dog - Thomas Perry
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
Underworld - Don Delillo
Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sachs
Guns of the South - Harry Turtledove

List #2 Neil Strandberg

Neil Strandberg:Tattered Cover Book Store. Denver, C0 80202

Fiction

The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway
Vanity Fair, Thackery
East of Eden, Steinbeck
Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
Bleak House, Dickens
Ramayana, Valmiki (not really "fiction," as such, but one helluva a story)
History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Fielding
Last of the Mohicans, Cooper
Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas
Three Musketeers, Dumas
Code of the Woosters, Wodehouse; but I really mean all things Wooster
Sot-Weed Factor, Barth
Lolita, Nabakov
Moby Dick; or, The Whale, Melville
Tin Drum, Grass
I, Claudius, Graves
Blood Meridian, McCarthy
White Noise, DeLillo
The English Patient, Ondaatje
Perfume, Suskind
True History of the Kelly Gang, Carey
Remains of the Day, Ishiguro
Things They Carried, O'Brien
Winter's Tale, Helprin
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meany, Irving
Killer Angels, Shaara
Centaur, Updike

Genre

Gorky Park, Smith; but I really mean to say all things Arkady Renko
Lucifer's Hammer, Niven
Cryptonomicon, Stephenson
Snow Crash, Stephenson
Farewell, My Lovely, Chandler; but I really mean to say all things Chandler
Sun of Suns, Schroeder
Windup Girl, Bacigalupi
Hobbit, Tolkien
Lord of the Rings, Tolkien
Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1), Herbert

Non Fiction

Longitude, Sobel
Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science
With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, Sledge
Son of the Morning Star: General Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn, Connell
Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions, Quammen
Making of the Atomic Bomb, Rhodes
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph, Lawrence
Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War, Manchester
Worst Journey in the World, Cherry-Garrard
Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding, Hughes
Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality, Greene
Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Pollan

Here is the mainpage for a store that has long been one of our strongest defenders of free speech and great books.

This is just the beginning...

For the past three or four weeks I have been involved in what has become, quite easily, the most rewarding and fun overall experience of my bookselling career. It began with a customer asking me for ten of my Top 100 books. And oh how I wish I knew her name or how to contact her now and let her know what that not so simple question has led to.

Her question made me think about how my list would differ/be similar to other booksellers across this fine land. So I began to call and e-mail them not knowing what the general response would be. In summary I was shocked to hear from person after person that they were willing, and happy, to contribute. I ended each call or message with the question: "Give me one other person I should talk to." I proceeded from there. So, beginning right now, I will be posting one of the 50 lists each business day.

My question was to list either a Top 50 or 50 favorite books to handsell. Out of print, new, all manner of genres, etc. Everything was fair game. Some booksellers/stores placed their own restrictions and I will list them as appropriate. Also noted is the fact that most people chose to list the books alphabetically by author and not do a ranking. I've done my best to compile them as nearest as possible to the way in which they were sent to me either by e-mail or handwritten letter(bless you, Mr. Joseph DeSalvo). I will also link to the bookstore website or blog whenever possible.

Before I give my own list I need to say that this is not a list of lists of omission. If there is a bookseller out there that would like to join this you can contact me and I will continue this project until its very end. Being involved in this has been the highest honor possible. As of right now I have 20 lists(with a total of 1,000 books) coming from all ages and at least 17 different states. From now on I will be posting them in the order that they arrived. At the very end I will compile the titles mentioned by the most people.

Hans Weyandt: Micawber's Books. St. Paul, MN 55108

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books--Fernando Baez
The Ninemile Wolves--Rick Bass
You Can't Win--Jack Black
Postville--Stephen G. Bloom
On the Yard--Malcolm Braly
Running After Antelope--Scott Carrier
My Antonia--Willa Cather
George and Rue--George Elliott Clarke
Open City--Teju Cole
Newjack--Ted Conover
The Brothers K--David James Duncan
Geek Love--Katherine Dunn
The Farther Shore--Matthew Eck
The Solace of Open Spaces--Gretel Ehrlich
Every Man Dies Alone--Hans Fallada
Going Blind--Mara Faulkner, OSB
Bury Me Standing--Isabel Fonseca
Hell at the Breech--Tom Franklin
Great Plains--Ian Frazier
The Last American Man--Elizabeth Gilbert
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families--Philip Gourevitch
A Writer at War--Vasily Grossman
Reasons To Live--Amy Hempel
What The Living Do--Marie Howe
Seek--Denis Johnson
A Walker in the City--Alfred Kazin
Garden, Ashes--Danilo Kiš
Miniatures--Norah Labiner
The Boat--Nam Le
With Borges--Alberto Manguel
So Long, See You Tomorrow--William Maxwell
Letter to an Imaginary Friend--Thomas McGrath
The Headmaster--John McPhee
Up in the Old Hotel--Joseph Mitchell
All the Living--C.E. Morgan
The Things They Carried--Tim O'Brien
Mystery and Manners--Flannery O'Connor
In the Skin of a Lion--Michael Ondaatje
The Time of Our Singing--Richard Powers
Down in My Heart--William Stafford
Jesse James--T.J. Stiles
The Gangster We Are All Looking For--lé thi diem thúy
The Tummy Trilogy--Calvin Trillin
Maps of the Imagination--Peter Turchi
The Tiger--John Vaillant
The Book of Fathers--Miklós Vámos
A Book of Reasons--John Vernon
Lone Wolf--MaryAnne Vollers
The Essays of E.B. White--E.B. White
In the American Grain--William Carlos Williams

Top 50 from America's indies

Or some of them. First, the backstory. About three weeks ago I had a customer ask me for 10 of my Top 100 books. Initially I thought she meant Micawber's all-time bestsellers. When I started plucking books off the shelves she straightened me out, "No, I mean your personal favorites." Well then--now we had a crazy fun task at hand. So it got me to thinking how cool it would be to compile similar lists from other indie booksellers.

I began to call and e-mail some of my friends from other stores and had them recommend one other bookseller and things began to domino. So I thought, why not get the Top 50 from 20 different people/stores? That would be 1,000 books with some crossover. I'm happy to say that the lists have been trickling in and it is a joy to witness. Starting next week I will be posting one of them here and via our Facebook page each day. If all goes as planned we'll have between 15-25 booksellers sharing their favorites. It will cover fifteen states(or more) and vary wildly in age.

This endeavor has been great fun and has put me in contact with both old bookselling friends and many new ones.

So, bookophiles, stay tuned.