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More Seriously Cool Books
Anna Karenina (Oprah #5): Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition (Oprah's Classics Book Club Selections)Anna Karenina (Oprah #5): Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition (Oprah's Classics Book Club Selections) by Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
Buy used from: £2.42
Forget that fickle, emotionally frigid, cuckolding witch Anna, and read this instead for the beautiful courtship of Kitty and Levin. This Pevear/Volokhonsky translation is sublime.
Fahrenheit 451 (Flamingo modern classics)Fahrenheit 451 (Flamingo modern classics) by Ray Bradbury
Buy new: £4.97 / Used from: £3.12
Like Philip K. Dick, Bradbury's not a particularly elegant writer, but it is the eerily-prescient concepts and ideas that set both apart.
Johnny Got His GunJohnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
Buy new: £7.50 / Used from: £1.51
A short, sharp, shock. Harrowing, but stunning. Everyone (mothers of sons particularly) should read this. Johnny Got His Gun rivals Catch 22 as the greatest anti-war novel ever written.
The Final SolutionThe Final Solution by Michael Chabon
Buy new: £4.99 / Used from: £0.01
Oy Vay! This Chabon boy's got chutzpah! Here he takes one of literature's iconic characters - Sherlock Holmes - and crafts an elegy of decrepitude and failing powers with heart-rending poignance.
The RoadThe Road by Cormac McCarthy
Buy new: £2.96 / Used from: £1.27
Oh-so-bleak, and yet somehow very, very beautiful. It's an apocalyptic novel, yes, but most of all a love story. Less than five pages in it becomes clear you are in the hands of a genius.
All the President's MenAll the President's Men by Bob Woodward
Buy used from: £22.83
Exhilarating investigative journalism in which the stakes couldn't be higher. Watch "Woodstein" chase a money trail all the way to the very top, and tighten the noose on Tricky Dicky himself...
Dracula (Vintage Classics)Dracula (Vintage Classics) by Bram Stoker
Buy new: £3.86 / Used from: £2.20
The Green MileThe Green Mile by Stephen King
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £0.01
Charlotte's WebCharlotte's Web by E.B. White
Buy new: £4.46 / Used from: £0.01
And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie Collection)And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie Collection) by Agatha Christie
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £1.82
Bleak House (Penguin Classics)Bleak House (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens
Buy new: £6.23 / Used from: £0.50
I hesitate to cry this Dickens's finest work, since I've only read four - but surely he can't have written anything greater than this?
Double IndemnityDouble Indemnity by James M. Cain
Buy new: £5.49 / Used from: £0.01
A Spy by NatureA Spy by Nature by Charles Cumming
Buy new: £5.97 / Used from: £0.01
The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other StoriesThe Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories by Ernest Hemingway
Buy new: £3.48 / Used from: £0.01
The title story is simply the best short story I have ever read. Utterly mesmerising. Hemingway is the master of the short story form, and can make one page say what takes other writers ten.
The Big Sleep: An Philip Marlowe Mystery (Penguin Fiction)The Big Sleep: An Philip Marlowe Mystery (Penguin Fiction) by Raymond Chandler
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £0.85
The StandThe Stand by Stephen King
Buy new: £6.97 / Used from: £4.41
The Sound of My Voice (Five Star Paperback)The Sound of My Voice (Five Star Paperback) by Ron Butlin
Buy new: £4.94 / Used from: £2.13
The God DelusionThe God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Buy new: £4.47 / Used from: £2.00
Though Dawkins can come across a mite smug, there's no denying the power of his message, nor the empirical weight behind his argument when set against the fairytale flimsiness of his opponents'.
The Woman in BlackThe Woman in Black by Susan Hill
Buy new: £4.99 / Used from: £2.21
FatherlandFatherland by Robert Harris
Buy used from: £0.01
The Wind-up Bird ChronicleThe Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Buy new: £6.27 / Used from: £2.86
1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Buy new: £5.04 / Used from: £3.43
A Prayer for Owen MeanyA Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Buy new: £6.77 / Used from: £0.01
A real "Love It or Hate It" book - and just to be awkward I neither loved it or hated it. ;-) It's good, but does take an awful long time to make a point that's not as profound as it thinks it is.
To Have and Have NotTo Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
Buy new: £4.49 / Used from: £0.01
The Tenderness of WolvesThe Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
Buy new: £4.15 / Used from: £0.01
I seldom read brand-new titles, but on some instinct I took a punt on this one and fair enjoyed it. A cracking achievement - especially for an agoraphobic who's never set foot in Canada (its setting).