| 1. |
the marriage plot
Jeffrey Eugenides - Like many of the heroines of the Victorian novels she favors, Madeline Hanna, Brown University class of 1982 English major, must choose between men: the hungry wanderer Mitchell Grammaticus or the brilliant but troubled Leonard Bankhead. Madeline goes with the latter, sidelining her own intellectual pursuits in favor of riding a manic depressive's roller-coaster through the dawn of semiotics, post-structuralism, identity politics, and psychopharmacology. A coming-of-age novel that's as unapologetically erudite as it is funny, fun, and profound.
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| 2. |
chaos and kingdom
JSB Morse - Imagine the charter city of Ur in which there are no taxes, no forced regulation, and no laws except one—harm no one. It would be a libertarian paradise—a productive, free-market utopia with no equal on Earth. But would it work? Would people behave or fall into a chaotic dog-eat-dog arena in which the strong would simply crush the weak? Jacob Tanner is about to find out. He will take his life-saving pharmaceutical company to Ur in order to escape an overbearing government bureaucracy. But just when Jacob’s drug company becomes profitable, he is confronted with financial dilemmas and a shocking truth about his industry and his business partners. He can prevent the deadly epidemic his drug treats, but in order to do so, he must overcome a corporate conspiracy that stands to prof
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| 3. |
the devil all the time
Donald Ray Pollock - Take a man from Ohio who's worked blue collar, send him for an M.F.A., and set him loose. Pollock, whose debut collection, Knockemstiff, was a knockout, strikes again with a terrifying cast of rural characters: the haunted WWII veteran, the husband and wife serial killers who target young men along the Interstate, the predatory revival preacher and his wheelchair-bound guitar-playing cousin, all tied together with violence, sin, and gorgeous prose into a mesmerizing slice of Americana.
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| 4. |
state of wonder
Ann Patchett - The best two female adversaries in recent memory cut a swath through the Amazon rain forest in Patchett's exotic, intelligent, ambitious, and engaging novel. A straitlaced, sincere research scientist from Minnesota is sent to find and assess the progress of the unorthodox septuagenarian doctor who's gone native while on a fact-finding mission to extend female fertility.
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| 5. |
after the apocalypse
Maureen McHugh - Incisive, contemporary, and always surprising, McHugh's second collection confronts near-future life with an ironic and particular eye. Her characters live with zombies, struggle to make ends meet on the Arizona–Mexico border, and cope with China's descent into capitalism in stories that stretch the boundaries of imagination.
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| 6. |
bossypants
Tina Fey - We know Fey's wit from her writing (and acting) in SNL, 30 Rock, and whatever movie she stars in, but she adds to her wit a disarmingly frank and uncensored account of her life, stitching together the serious and the comic.
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| 7. |
hemingway's boat
Paul Hendrickson - There's never been a biography quite like this one. Hendrickson covers Papa's rise and fall by focusing on his most steadfast companion: his boat, Pilar. She was the stage on which Hemingway fished, brawled, wrote his novels, ranted about his poor reviews, raised his sons, and seduced other men's wives. The stories are rich with contradiction and humanity, and so raw and immediate you can smell the salt air.
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| 8. |
one day i will write about this place
Binyavanga Wainaina - A Kenyan Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, this sublime word-drunk memoir from the Caine Prize–winning author describes a coming-of-age rent by political troubles and suffused by a love affair with language.
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| 9. |
arguably: essays
Christopher Hitchens - As a political, cultural, and literary critic, Hitchens stands alone, as demonstrated by this major collection of mostly recent essays and reviews covering a range of topics, from America's founding fathers to the state of the English language. You don't always have to agree with this fearless polemicist to appreciate his erudite mind.
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| 10. |
catherine the great
Robert K. Massie - Pulitzer-winning biographer Massie—of Nicholas and Alexandra and of Peter the Great—now relates the life of a German princess, Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, who became Empress Catherine II of Russia. Once again Massie delivers, with this masterful, intimate, and tantalizing portrait of a majestic monarch.
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