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