Omnivorous
Discover the best books for omnivorous readers! Explore a curated list of diverse reads spanning genres, tastes, and interests to satisfy every book lover's appetite.
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Stranger in a Strange Land
by Robert A. Heinlein
The complete, uncut version of Robert A. Heinlein’s all-time masterpiece, the brilliant novel that grew from a cult favorite to a bestseller to a science fiction classic. Raised by Martians on Mars, Valentine Michael Smith is a human who has never seen another member of his species. Sent to Earth, he is a stranger who must learn what it is to be a man. But his own beliefs and his powers far exceed the limits of humankind, and as he teaches them about grokking and water-sharing, he also inspires a transformation that will alter Earth’s inhabitants forever...
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ID: 0385335660
(Type: books)
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Nickel and Dimed
by Barbara Ehrenreich
Our sharpest and most original social critic goes "undercover" as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity. Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you int to live indoors. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. You will never see anything -- from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal -- in quite the same way again.
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Obernewtyn
by Isobelle Carmody
Born with enhanced mental powers, Elspeth Gordie faces persecution by her own post-holocaust world, but she must resist dark forces who hope to use her powers to resurrect the apocalypse.
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ID: 0520045505
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Three Men in a Boat
by Jerome K. Jerome
"I had the general symptoms, the chief among them being a disinclination to work of any kind." So begin the hilarious misadventures of a merry, but scandalously lazy band of well-to-do young men-and a plucky and rather world-weary fox terrier named Montmorency-on an idyllic cruise along the River Thames. Feeling seedy, muses one of them dreamily, "What we want is rest." What they find instead is one hapless catastrophe after another. Soggy weather, humiliating dunkings, the irritating behavior of small boats and the "contrariness of teakettles" are just a few of the barbarisms our genteel heroes are forced to endure. But which a delighted reader can only sing, Hooray! First published in 1889, Three Men in a Boat was an instant success, and Jerome has been compared to comic master P.G. Wodehouse.
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ID: 0571199976
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Haroun and the Sea of Stories
by Salman Rushdie
A captivating fantasy novel for readers of all ages, by the author of Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses “This is, simply put, a book for anyone who loves a good story. It’s also a work of literary genius.” —Stephen King Set in an exotic Eastern landscape peopled by magicians and fantastic talking animals, Haroun and the Sea of Stories inhabits the same imaginative space as The Lord of the Rings, The Alchemist, The Arabian Nights, and The Wizard of Oz. Twelve-year-old Haroun sets out on an adventure to restore his father’s gift of storytelling by reviving the poisoned Sea of Stories. On the way, he encounters many foes, all intent on draining the sea of all its storytelling powers. In this wondrously delightful story, Salman Rushdie gives us an imaginative work of extraordinary power and endearing humor that is, at its heart, an illumination of the necessity of storytelling in our lives.
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A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • A "A beautifully ragged, laugh-out-loud funny and utterly unforgettable book" (San Francisco Chronicle) that redefines both family and narrative. • From the bestselling author of The Circle. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. This exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.
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White Teeth
by Zadie Smith
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The blockbuster debut novel from "a preternaturally gifted" writer (The New York Times) and author of On Beauty and Swing Time—set against London's racial and cultural tapestry, reveling in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, and embracing the comedy of daily existence. Zadie Smith’s dazzling debut caught critics grasping for comparisons and deciding on everyone from Charles Dickens to Salman Rushdie to John Irving and Martin Amis. But the truth is that Zadie Smith’s voice is remarkably, fluently, and altogether wonderfully her own. At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith. “[White Teeth] is, like the London it portrays, a restless hybrid of voices, tones, and textures…with a raucous energy and confidence.” —The New York Times Book Review
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ID: 0553270141
(Type: books)
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ID: 0060937319
(Type: books)
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The Last Unicorn
by Peter S. Beagle
INCLUDES A NEW INTRODUCTION BY PATRICK ROTHFUSS Experience one of the most enduring classics of the twentieth century and the book that The Atlantic has called “one of the best fantasy novels ever.” The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone... ...so she ventured out from the safety of the enchanted forest on a quest for others of her kind. Joined along the way by the bumbling magician Schmendrick and the indomitable Molly Grue, the unicorn learns all about the joys and sorrows of life and love before meeting her destiny in the castle of a despondent monarch—and confronting the creature that would drive her kind to extinction.... In The Last Unicorn, renowned and beloved novelist Peter S. Beagle spins a poignant tale of love, loss, and wonder that has resonated with millions of readers around the world. “Peter S. Beagle illuminates with his own particular magic.”—Ursula K. Le Guin