Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan 80s, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future--or even the present--who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle. Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at self-consciously bohemian Camden College and treats their sexual... (more)

Boy Next Door

by Meg Cabot

To: You (you) From: Human Resources (human.resources@thenyjournal.com) Subject: This Book Dear Reader, This is an automated message from the Human Resources Division of the New York Journal, New York City’s leading photo-newspaper. Please be aware that according to our records you have not yet read this book. What exactly are you waiting for? This book has it all: Humor Romance Cooking tips ... (more)

The Writing Life

by Annie Dillard

With color, irony and sensitivity, Pulitzer prize-winner Annie Dillard illuminates the dedication absurdity, and daring that is the writer's life. As it probes and exposes, examines and analyzes, The Writing Life offers deeper insight into one of the most mysterious of professions.

Autobiography of a Face

by Lucy Grealy

"I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison." At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. When she... (more)

Dusklands

by J. M. Coetzee

Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw

Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw

by Mark Bowden

A tour de force of investigative journalism-this is the story of the violent rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, the head of the Colombian Medellin cocaine cartel. Escobar's criminal empire held a nation of thirty million hostage in a reign of terror that would only end with his death. In an intense, up-close account, award-winning journalist Mark Bowden exposes details never before revealed about the U.S.-led covert... (more)

Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter: Book 1

Guilty Pleasures

by Laurell K. Hamilton

"I don't date vampires. I kill them" My name is Anita Blake. Vampires call me The Executioner. What I call them isn't repeatable. Ever since the Supreme Court granted the undead equal rights, most people think vampires are just ordinary folks with fangs. I know better. I've seen their victims. I carry the scars...But now a serial killer is murdering vampires -- and the most powerful bloodsucker... (more)

The Liar

by Stephen Fry

Fry's hilarious novel has won praise from critics everywhere, and it hit the very top of bestseller lists in England. Its bisexual hero is a diabolically brilliant pathological liar with the wit of a Truman Capote and the moral compunctions of an amoeba.

Getting Even

by Allen Stewart Konigsberg

The classic, with 316,000 copies sold to date.

Bookends: A Novel

by Jane Green

On the heels of her national bestsellers Jemima J and Mr. Maybe , British sensation Jane Green delivers a sparkling tale of old friends reunited and old jealousies rekindled. Catherine Warner and Simon Nelson are best friends: total opposites, always together, and both unlucky in love. Cath is scatterbrained, messy, and–since she had her heart broken a few years back–emotionally closed off. Si is impossibly... (more)

The Boys of My Youth

by Jo Ann Beard

Cousins, mothers, sisters, dolls, dogs, best friends: these are the fixed points in Jo Ann Beard's universe, the constants that remain when the boys of her youth - and the men who replace them - are gone. This widely praised collection of autobiographical essays summons back, with astonishing grace and power, moments of childhood epiphany as well as the cataclysms of adult life: betrayal, divorce, death. It... (more)

Sozaboy (Longman African Writers)

by Ken Saro-Wiwa

Sozaboy describes the fortunes of a young naive recruit in the Nigerian Civil War: from the first proud days of recruitment to the disillusionment, confusion and horror that follows. The author's use of 'rotten English' - a mixture of Nigerian pidgin English, broken English and idiomatic English - makes this a unique and powerful novel.

Eureka Street: A Novel of Ireland Like No Other

Eureka Street: A Novel of Ireland Like No Other

by Robert McLiam Wilson

In a city blasted by years of force and fury, but momentarily stilled by a cease-fire, two unlikely friends search for that most human of needs: love. But of course, a night of lust will do. Jake Jackson and Chuckie Lurgan--one Catholic, one Protestant--navigate their sectarian city and their nonsectarian friendship with wit and style. Chuckie, an unemployed dreamer, stumbles into bliss with a beautiful American... (more)

The Hour of the Star

by Clarice Lispector

The narrative material of this short, almost weightless tale by the late Brazilian writer (19251977) is reminiscent of old-fashioned naturalism, but the intention is far from that. Macabea, a young woman from the backwoods, arrives in bewildering Rio. Homely, ignorant, without skills or experience, she lodges in a shabby tenement in a squalid red-light district. Her transient boyfriend, a strutting lout and sham,... (more)

Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill

by Eddie Izzard

An illustrated humorous book by cross-dressing comedian, Eddie Izzard which contains material from his live shows.

MTV's Real World Chicago

by Alison Pollet

Who didn't realize there were cameras in the bedrooms? Who doesn't think they made real friends? Who got drunk during casting? Who hogged the phone? Who didn't do the dishes? IT'S EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW, BUT DIDN'T THINK TO ASK! The Real World™ blows into the Windy City for one of the most memorable seasons yet. Here's the who's who and what's what on the newest batch of seven strangers:... (more)

The Unfortunate Traveller or, The Life of Jack Wilton by Thomas Nash. Published by MobileReference (mobi)

The Unfortunate Traveller or, The Life of Jack Wilton by Thomas Nash. Published by MobileReference (mobi)

by Thomas Nash

This is an electronic edition of the complete book complemented by author biography. The book was designed for optimal navigation on the Kindle, PDA, Smartphone, and other electronic readers. It is formatted to display on all electronic devices including the Kindle, Smartphones and other Mobile Devices with a small display. ****************** More e-Books from MobileReference - Best Books. Best Price. Best... (more)

by Michael Ondaatje

"Brightly coloured, sweet and painful, bloody-minded and otherworldly, <this book> achieves the status of legend." -Margaret Atwood "Eloquent, oblique, witty, full of light and feeling....Ondaatje's knowledge of the fragility and luck of life is very clear. So, too, is the grace and originality of his prose." -"The New Yorker" "Ondaatje has produced a remarkable book....Shimmering through the haze of heat... (more)

Harry Potter: Book 2

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

by J. K. Rowling

In one of the most hotly anticipated sequels in memory, J.K. Rowling takes up where she left with Harry's second year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Old friends and new torments abound, including a spirit named Moaning Myrtle who haunts the girl's bathroom, an outrageously conceited professor, Gilderoy Lockheart, and a mysterious force that turns Hogwarts students to stone.

The Lovely Bones

by Alice Sebold

On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey. Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and... (more)

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Tags: 2002-2003 reading list

by Bret Easton Ellis