Benn's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 27 Mar 2014 06:08:50 -0700 60 Benn's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Martian 18007564
Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error� are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills � and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit � he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

]]> 384 Andy Weir 0804139024 Benn 0 currently-reading 4.41 2011 The Martian
author: Andy Weir
name: Benn
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> The Martian Chronicles 76778
The Martian Chronicles tells the story of humanity’s repeated attempts to colonize the red planet. The first men were few. Most succumbed to a disease they called the Great Loneliness when they saw their home planet dwindle to the size of a fist. They felt they had never been born. Those few that survived found no welcome on Mars. The shape-changing Martians thought they were native lunatics and duly locked them up.

But more rockets arrived from Earth, and more, piercing the hallucinations projected by the Martians. People brought their old prejudices with them � and their desires and fantasies, tainted dreams. These were soon inhabited by the strange native beings, with their caged flowers and birds of flame.

Contents:
Rocket Summer
Ylla
The Summer Night
The Earth Men
The Taxpayer
The Third Expedition
-And the Moon Be Still As Bright
The Settlers
The Green Morning
The Locusts
Night Meeting
The Shore
Interim
The Musicians
Way in the Middle of the Air
The Naming of Names
Usher II
The Old Ones
The Martian
The Luggage Store
The Off Season
The Watchers
The Silent Towns
The Long Years
There Will Come Soft Rains
The Million Year Picnic]]> 182 Ray Bradbury 0553278223 Benn 4 4.16 1950 The Martian Chronicles
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Benn
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1950
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Mister Wonderful: A Love Story]]> 8793349 The New York Times Magazine, now collected and with forty pages of new material.

Meet Marshall. Sitting alone in the local coffee place. He’s been set up by his friend Tim on a blind date with someone named Natalie, and now he’s just feeling set up. She’s nine minutes late and counting. Who was he kidding anyway? Divorced, middle-aged, newly unem­ployed, with next to no prospects, Marshall isn’t ex­actly what you’d call a catch. Twenty minutes pass.
A half hour. Marshall orders a scotch. (He wasn’t going to drink!) Forty minutes.

Then, after nearly an hour, when he’s long since given up hope, Natalie appears � breathless, apologiz­ing profusely that she went to the wrong place. She takes a seat, to Marshall’s utter amazement.

She’s too good to be true: attractive, young, intel­ligent, and she seems to be seriously engaged with what Marshall has to say. There has to be a catch.

And, of course, there is.

During the extremely long night that follows, Marshall and Natalie are emotionally tested in ways that two people who just met really should not be. Not, at least, if they want the prospect of a second date.

A captivating, bittersweet, and hilarious look at the potential for human connection in an increasingly hopeless world, Mister Wonderful more than lives up to its name.

]]> 77 Daniel Clowes 0307378136 Benn 4 3.81 2011 Mister Wonderful: A Love Story
author: Daniel Clowes
name: Benn
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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]]> Wilson 7074482
Meet Wilson, an opinionated middle-aged loner who loves his dog and quite possibly no one else. In an ongoing quest to find human connection, he badgers friend and stranger alike into a series of onesided conversations, punctuating his own lofty discursions with a brutally honest, self-negating sense of humor. After his father dies, Wilson, now irrevocably alone, sets out to find his ex-wife with the hope of rekindling their long-dead relationship, and discovers he has a teenage daughter, born after the marriage ended and given up for adoption.Wilson eventually forces all three to reconnect as a family—a doomed mission that will surely, inevitably backfire.

In the first all-new graphic novel from one of the leading cartoonists of our time, Daniel Clowes creates a thoroughly engaging, complex, and fascinating portrait of the modern egoist—outspoken and oblivious to the world around him.Working in a single-page-gag format and drawing in a spectrumof styles, the cartoonist of GhostWorld, Ice Haven, and David Boring gives us his funniest and most deeply affecting novel to date.]]> 80 Daniel Clowes 1770460071 Benn 4 3.75 2010 Wilson
author: Daniel Clowes
name: Benn
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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]]> Bottomless Belly Button 2143109 Bottomless Belly Button is a graphic novel comedy-drama that follows the dysfunctional adventures of the Loony Family. When the parents announce their divorce, the family comes together at their beach house for a week. Dennis, the eldest son, is having marriage troubles of his own, and searches for clues, trap doors, and secret tunnels. Claire, the middle child, is a single mother with a troubled 16-year-old daughter, Jill. The youngest child, Peter, is a hack filmmaker suffering from paralyzing insecurities who establishes an unorthodox romance with a mysterious day care counselor at the beach.
Black & white illustrations with some color.]]> 720 Dash Shaw 1560979151 Benn 4 4.08 2008 Bottomless Belly Button
author: Dash Shaw
name: Benn
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln]]> 14475543 188 Noah Van Sciver 1606996193 Benn 3 3.61 2012 The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln
author: Noah Van Sciver
name: Benn
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2013/01/01
date added: 2014/03/27
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]]> The Devil All the Time 10108463 The Devil All the Time follows a cast of characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrifi­cial blood he pours on his “prayer log.� There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial kill­ers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right.]]> 261 Donald Ray Pollock 038553504X Benn 4 4.13 2011 The Devil All the Time
author: Donald Ray Pollock
name: Benn
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2012/01/01
date added: 2014/03/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]]> 7082 244 Philip K. Dick Benn 4 4.08 1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Benn
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at: 2012/01/01
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]]> The Thin Man 80616 The Thin Man is a murder mystery that doubles as a sophisticated comedy of manners.]]> 201 Dashiell Hammett 0679722637 Benn 4 3.92 1934 The Thin Man
author: Dashiell Hammett
name: Benn
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1934
rating: 4
read at: 2013/01/01
date added: 2014/03/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith]]> 10847
A multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. This is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.

Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders. At the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this "divinely inspired" crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

Krakauer takes readers inside isolated communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who answer only to God. Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five "plural wives," several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and preach that any day now the world will be swept clean in a hurricane of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents.

Weaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism’s violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism. The result is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.]]> 400 Jon Krakauer 0330419129 Benn 5 4.01 2003 Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
author: Jon Krakauer
name: Benn
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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]]> The Killer Inside Me 298663
But behind the platitudes and glad-handing lurks a monster the likes of which few have seen. An urge that has already claimed multiple lives, and cost Lou his brother Mike, a self-sacrificing construction worker who fell to his death on the job in what was anything but an accident. A murder that Lou is determined to avenge--and if innocent people have to die in the process, well, that's perfectly all right with him.

In The Killer Inside Me, Thompson goes where few novelists have dared to go, giving us a pitch-black glimpse into the mind of the American Serial Killer years before Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, and Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho, in the novel that will forever be known as the master performance of one of the greatest crime novelists of all time.]]> 244 Jim Thompson 0679733973 Benn 4 3.88 1952 The Killer Inside Me
author: Jim Thompson
name: Benn
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1952
rating: 4
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]]> The Hot Rock (Dortmunder, #1) 596576 287 Donald E. Westlake 0446677035 Benn 3 3.93 1970 The Hot Rock (Dortmunder, #1)
author: Donald E. Westlake
name: Benn
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1970
rating: 3
read at: 2013/01/01
date added: 2014/03/27
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]]> Ant Colony 17978256 The debut graphic novel from a dazzling newcomer with a singular, idiosyncratic style

In the few short years since he began his pamphlet-size comic book series Lose, Michael DeForge has announced himself as an important new voice in alternative comics. His brash, confident, undulating artwork sent a shock wave through the comics world for its unique, fully formed aesthetic.

From its opening pages, Ant Colony immerses the reader in a world that is darkly existential, with false prophets, unjust wars, and corrupt police officers, as it follows the denizens of a black ant colony under attack from the nearby red ants. On the surface, it’s the story of this war, the destruction of a civilization, and the ants� all too familiar desire to rebuild. Underneath, though, Ant Colony plumbs the deepest human concerns—loneliness, faith, love, apathy, and more. All of this is done with humor and sensitivity, exposing a world where spiders can wreak unimaginable amounts of havoc with a single gnash of their jaws.

DeForge’s striking visual sensibility—stark lines, dramatic color choices, and brilliant use of page and panel space—stands out in this volume.]]> 112 Michael DeForge 177046137X Benn 4 4.09 2014 Ant Colony
author: Michael DeForge
name: Benn
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2014/01/01
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]]> Very Casual 17623871 152 Michael DeForge 0987963074 Benn 4 4.00 2013 Very Casual
author: Michael DeForge
name: Benn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2013/01/01
date added: 2014/03/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Life Begins at Incorporation: Cartoons and Essays]]> 17858993
From wandering the halls of a church-run haunted house in Ohio to meeting in Afghanistan with victims of America’s War on Terror to speculating on the secret lives of homophobes, Bors ridicules the people and problems plaguing this fair nation.

Never has reading about economics and mass shootings been this enjoyable!

240 pages Full color]]> 229 Matt Bors 0988927101 Benn 4 4.11 2013 Life Begins at Incorporation: Cartoons and Essays
author: Matt Bors
name: Benn
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2013/01/01
date added: 2014/03/27
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]]> Geek Love 13872 Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out � with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes � to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There's Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family's most precious � and dangerous � asset.

As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.]]> 348 Katherine Dunn 0375713344 Benn 5 3.96 1989 Geek Love
author: Katherine Dunn
name: Benn
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1989
rating: 5
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]]> The Dharma Bums 23492
Published just one year after On The Road , this is the story of two men enganged in a passionate search for Dharma or truth. Their major adventure is the pursuit of the Zen Way, which takes them climbing into the High Sierras to seek the lesson of solitude.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 187 Jack Kerouac 0143039601 Benn 3
Kerouac's automatic writing seems more like an excuse for not editing his work, which results in sentence structure and lazy word repetition pulling the reader out of the text.

The spirituality of the book is just so much hokum.

That being said, there are parts of true beauty here and they redeem Dharma Bums. When Kerouac finds his rhythm, it totally kills it.]]> 3.87 1958 The Dharma Bums
author: Jack Kerouac
name: Benn
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1958
rating: 3
read at: 2014/03/25
date added: 2014/03/26
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Dharma Bums is at its best when Kerouac is hitchhiking, hopping trains, and running amok in cities. When his Ray is hanging out with friends, it becomes tiresome right quick, as his friends are not as interesting or wacky as he thinks they are.

Kerouac's automatic writing seems more like an excuse for not editing his work, which results in sentence structure and lazy word repetition pulling the reader out of the text.

The spirituality of the book is just so much hokum.

That being said, there are parts of true beauty here and they redeem Dharma Bums. When Kerouac finds his rhythm, it totally kills it.
]]> <![CDATA[The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives]]> 296996
In BRIEF LIVES, Delirium, youngest of the extended family known as The Endless, prevails upon her brother Dream to help find their missing sibling, Destruction. Their subsequent odyssey through the waking world, and their final confrontations with Destruction--as well as the resolution of Dream's painful relationship with his son, Orpheus--will change the Endless forever.

BRIEF LIVES is the seventh volume of eleven in THE SANDMAN LIBRARY. These books can be read in order or as individual volumes.


Description from back cover]]> 256 Neil Gaiman 1563891387 Benn 4 4.50 1993 The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Benn
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1993
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/03/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life]]> 773858
Emmy and Grammy Award winner, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestsellers Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Martin has always been a writer. His memoir of his years in stand-up is candid, spectacularly amusing, and beautifully written.

At age ten Martin started his career at Disneyland, selling guidebooks in the newly opened theme park. In the decade that followed, he worked in the Disney magic shop and the Bird Cage Theatre at Knott's Berry Farm, performing his first magic/comedy act a dozen times a week. The story of these years, during which he practiced and honed his craft, is moving and revelatory. The dedication to excellence and innovation is formed at an astonishingly early age and never wavers or wanes.

Martin illuminates the sacrifice, discipline, and originality that made him an icon and informs his work to this day. To be this good, to perform so frequently, was isolating and lonely. It took Martin decades to reconnect with his parents and sister, and he tells that story with great tenderness. Martin also paints a portrait of his times-the era of free love and protests against the war in Vietnam, the heady irreverence of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late sixties, and the transformative new voice of Saturday Night Live in the seventies.

Throughout the text, Martin has placed photographs, many never seen before. Born Standing Up is a superb testament to the sheer tenacity, focus, and daring of one of the greatest and most iconoclastic comedians of all time.]]> 207 Steve Martin 1416553649 Benn 4 3.87 2007 Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
author: Steve Martin
name: Benn
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2013/06/28
date added: 2013/06/28
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]]> The Gum Thief 386043 The first and only story of love and looming apocalypse set in the aisles of an office supply superstore.

In Douglas Coupland's ingenious new novel—sort of a Clerks meets Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf—we meet Roger, a divorced, middle-aged aisles associate at Staples, condemned to restocking reams of 20-lb. bond paper for the rest of his life. And Roger's co-worker Bethany, in her early twenties and at the end of her Goth phase, who is looking at fifty more years of sorting the red pens from the blue in aisle 6.

One day, Bethany discovers Roger's notebook in the staff room. When she opens it up, she discovers that this old guy she's never considered as quite human is writing mock diary entries pretending to be her: and, spookily, he is getting her right.

These two retail workers then strike up an extraordinary epistolary relationship. Watch as their lives unfold alongside Roger's work-in-progress, the oddly titled Glove Pond, a Cheever-era novella gone horribly, horribly wrong. Through a complex layering of narratives, The Gum Thief reveals the comedy, loneliness, and strange comforts of contemporary life.
Coupland electrifies us on every page of this witty, wise, and unforgettable novel. Love, death and eternal friendship can all transpire where we least expect them ...and even after tragedy seems to have wiped your human slate clean, stories can slowly rebuild you.]]> 275 Douglas Coupland 1596911069 Benn 0 3.51 2007 The Gum Thief
author: Douglas Coupland
name: Benn
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2013/06/28
date added: 2013/06/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly]]> 33313 A deluxe, annotated edition of Kitchen Confidential to celebrate the life of Anthony Bourdain, featuring new photo inserts

Over two decades ago, the New Yorker published a now infamous article, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,� by then little-known chef Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain spared no one’s appetite as he revealed what happens behind the kitchen door. The article was a sensation, and the book it spawned, the now iconic Kitchen Confidential, became an even bigger sensation and megabestseller. Frankly confessional, addictively acerbic, and utterly unsparing, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business.

Fans will love to return to this deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade, laying out Bourdain’s more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine. Including a handwritten introduction and annotations done by Bourdain about a decade after the book was originally published, this edition also features previously unpublished photos to accompany the now-classic text.]]> 312 Anthony Bourdain 0060899220 Benn 5 4.17 2000 Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
author: Anthony Bourdain
name: Benn
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2013/06/28
date added: 2013/06/28
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]]> X'ed Out 7814774
What’s going on? To say any more would spoil the freaky, Burnsian fun, especially because X’ed Out, unlike Black Hole, has not been previously serialized, and every unnervingly meticulous panel will be more tantalizing than the last...]]> 56 Charles Burns 0307379132 Benn 4 3.82 2010 X'ed Out
author: Charles Burns
name: Benn
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2013/06/28
date added: 2013/06/28
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]]> The Best American Comics 2010 7915861 352 Neil Gaiman 0547241771 Benn 3 3.71 2010 The Best American Comics 2010
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Benn
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2010/09/01
date added: 2013/06/28
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]]> You Can't Win 174374 Junky. But it's time we got wise to this book, which is in itself a remarkably wise book - and a ripping true saga. It's an amazing journey into the hobo underworld: freight hopping around the still wide open West at the turn of the 20th century, becoming a member of the "yegg" (criminal) brotherhood and a highwayman, learning the outlaw philosophy from Foot-and-a-half George and the Sanctimonious Kid, getting hooked on opium, passing through hobo jungles, hop joints and penitentiaries. This is a chunk of the American story entirely left out of the history books - it's a lot richer and stranger than the official version. This new edition also includes an Afterword that tells some of what became of Black after he wore out the outlaw life and washed up in San Francisco, wrote this book and reinvented himself.]]> 279 Jack Black 1902593022 Benn 5 4.36 1926 You Can't Win
author: Jack Black
name: Benn
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1926
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/06/28
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]]> Bartleby the Scrivener 114230 Moby-Dick�Bartleby the Scrivener is simply one of the most absorbing and moving novellas ever. Set in the mid-19th century on New York City's Wall Street, it was also, perhaps, Herman Melville's most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce finally just said, "I would prefer not to"?

The tale is one of the final works of fiction published by Melville before, slipping into despair over the continuing critical dismissal of his work after Moby-Dick, he abandoned publishing fiction. The work is presented here exactly as it was originally published in Putnam's magazine—to, sadly, critical disdain.]]> 64 Herman Melville 0974607800 Benn 4 3.91 1853 Bartleby the Scrivener
author: Herman Melville
name: Benn
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1853
rating: 4
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date added: 2011/04/07
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]]> RE/Search #11: Pranks! 702567 240 V. Vale 0940642107 Benn 4 4.40 1987 RE/Search #11: Pranks!
author: V. Vale
name: Benn
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/01/02
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]]> <![CDATA[The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire]]> 1948003
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi set out to describe the nature of George Bush's America in the post-9/11 era and ended up vomiting demons in an evangelical church in Texas, riding the streets of Baghdad in an American convoy to nowhere, following a trail of pork through the halls of Congress, and falling into the rabbit hole of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

He discovered in his travels across the country that the resilient blue state/red state narrative of American politics had become irrelevant. A large and growing chunk of the American population was so turned off--or radicalized--by electoral chicanery, a spineless news media, and the increasingly blatant lies from our leaders ("they hate us for our freedom") that they abandoned the political mainstream altogether. They joined what he calls The Great Derangement.

Taibbi tells the story of this new American madness by inserting himself into four defining American subcultures:
� The Military, where he finds himself mired in the grotesque black comedy of the American occupation of Iraq;
� The System, where he follows the money-slicked path of legislation in Congress;
� The Resistance, where he doubles as chief public antagonist and undercover member of the passionately bonkers 9/11 Truth Movement; and
� The Church, where he infiltrates a politically influential apocalyptic mega-ministry in Texas and enters the lives of its desperate congregants.

Together these four interwoven adventures paint a portrait of a nation dangerously out of touch with reality and desperately searching for answers in all the wrong places. Funny, smart, and a little bit heartbreaking, The Great Derangement is an audaciously reported, sobering, and illuminating portrait of America at the end of the Bush era.

"The funniest angry writer and the angriest funny writer since Hunter S. Thompson roared into town."
-- James Wolcott

"�[A] scabrous, hilarious vivisection of our disintegrating nation. …Taibbi shines a light on the corruption, absurdities, and idiot pieties of modern American politics. Beneath his cynical fury, though, are flashes of surprising compassion for the adrift credulous souls who are taken in by it all."
-- Michelle Goldberg]]> 281 Matt Taibbi 0385520344 Benn 4 3.93 2008 The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire
author: Matt Taibbi
name: Benn
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2010/02/05
date added: 2010/02/05
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]]> No Logo 647 No Logo employs journalistic savvy and personal testament to detail the insidious practices and far-reaching effects of corporate marketing—and the powerful potential of a growing activist sect that will surely alter the course of the 21st century. First published before the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, this is an infuriating, inspiring, and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money, marketing, and the anti-corporate movement.

As global corporations compete for the hearts and wallets of consumers who not only buy their products but willingly advertise them from head to toe—witness today's schoolbooks, superstores, sporting arenas, and brand-name synergy—a new generation has begun to battle consumerism with its own best weapons. In this provocative, well-written study, a front-line report on that battle, we learn how the Nike swoosh has changed from an athletic status-symbol to a metaphor for sweatshop labor, how teenaged McDonald's workers are risking their jobs to join the Teamsters, and how "culture jammers" utilize spray paint, computer-hacking acumen, and anti-propagandist wordplay to undercut the slogans and meanings of billboard ads (as in "Joe Chemo" for "Joe Camel").

No Logo will challenge and enlighten students of sociology, economics, popular culture, international affairs, and marketing.

"This book is not another account of the power of the select group of corporate Goliaths that have gathered to form our de facto global government. Rather, it is an attempt to analyze and document the forces opposing corporate rule, and to lay out the particular set of cultural and economic conditions that made the emergence of that opposition inevitable." —Naomi Klein, from her Introduction]]> 528 Naomi Klein 0312421435 Benn 4 3.89 2000 No Logo
author: Naomi Klein
name: Benn
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2010/02/05
date added: 2010/02/05
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]]> The Fountainhead 2122
This modern classic is the story of intransigent young architect Howard Roark, whose integrity was as unyielding as granite...of Dominique Francon, the exquisitely beautiful woman who loved Roark passionately, but married his worst enemy...and of the fanatic denunciation unleashed by an enraged society against a great creator. As fresh today as it was then, Rand’s provocative novel presents one of the most challenging ideas in all of fiction—that man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress...

“A writer of great power. She has a subtle and ingenious mind and the capacity of writing brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly...This is the only novel of ideas written by an American woman that I can recall.”—The New York Times]]> 704 Ayn Rand Benn 2 3.87 1943 The Fountainhead
author: Ayn Rand
name: Benn
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1943
rating: 2
read at: 2010/02/05
date added: 2010/02/05
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]]> Skinny Legs and All 9370 422 Tom Robbins 1842430343 Benn 3 4.07 1990 Skinny Legs and All
author: Tom Robbins
name: Benn
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1990
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/03/09
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]]> Still Life with Woodpecker 9566 277 Tom Robbins 184243022X Benn 4 4.05 1980 Still Life with Woodpecker
author: Tom Robbins
name: Benn
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1980
rating: 4
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]]> Honey Don't 9080 400 Tim Sandlin 1594480222 Benn 2 3.43 2003 Honey Don't
author: Tim Sandlin
name: Benn
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2003
rating: 2
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date added: 2009/03/09
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]]> Western Swing 9077 368 Tim Sandlin 1573226319 Benn 3 3.89 1989 Western Swing
author: Tim Sandlin
name: Benn
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1989
rating: 3
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date added: 2009/03/09
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]]> Sex and Sunsets 125153 272 Tim Sandlin 1573226289 Benn 4 3.88 1987 Sex and Sunsets
author: Tim Sandlin
name: Benn
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at:
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]]> <![CDATA[Social Blunders (GroVont Trilogy, #3)]]> 125154
Sandlin provides his bumbling hero with an appropriately quirky past: it's 1984, Sam is 33 and his second wife has just left him. He lives in North Carolina with his 19-year-old daughter, born to him and an eighth-grade classmate. (The earlier parts of Sam's life were chronicled in Skipped Parts and Sorrow Floats.) Sam never knew his birth father's identity: his mother claims to have been gang-raped by five high-school football players, which has left Sam with an abhorrence of men and of conventional sex as well. The impending divorce puts Sam in a mind to get his life together, so he spontaneously introduces himself to four out of five of his possible dads (and big oops to the unsuspecting widow of the fifth). He fails to consider the repercussions this will have in the men's families; he's attacked by two of his possible half-brothers, seduced by his could-be stepmother and charmed by his potential half-sister. To say that Sam brings on his own calamities would be an understatement, yet his absurd logic in matters of romance, lust and paternity is oddly endearing.

The characters in this third installment of Sandlin's GroVont Trilogy don't spend much time in GroVont, Wyo. In fact, Sam doesn't escape west until after the climax of his tawdry tale. Still, Sam would be a literal riot in any state, and, as rendered by Sandlin, his voice is an effective blend of flippancy and compassion.

-Publishers Weekly]]> 336 Tim Sandlin 1573225886 Benn 4 4.01 1995 Social Blunders (GroVont Trilogy, #3)
author: Tim Sandlin
name: Benn
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1995
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Sorrow Floats (GroVont Trilogy, #2)]]> 125155
After attempting suicide and being thrown out by her philandering husband, she meets Lloyd and Shane, two recovering alcoholics who have devised a scheme to smuggle Coors beer to the East Coast. Longing to be reunited with her eight-year-old daughter Shannon in North Carolina (Sandlin chronicled Shannon's birth in Skipped Parts ), Maurey decamps on an unlikely odyssey, pulling a horse trailer full of beer behind a broken-down old ambulance, sipping Yukon Jack from the bottle as her companions search for AA meetings. Maurey is not yet ready to deal with her alcoholism or her reluctance to be loved, but the hardships of the road and the bonds that unite this group of refugees (others join them along the way) will change that.

Maurey's wry, cocksure voice evokes both her cowgirl roots and the novel's '70s setting. Despite the bickering, sarcasm, cynicism and personal tragedy that season the lives of his colorful, credible characters, Sandlin fashions a convincing tale of redemption.

-Publishers Weekly]]> 416 Tim Sandlin 1573226041 Benn 4 4.00 1992 Sorrow Floats (GroVont Trilogy, #2)
author: Tim Sandlin
name: Benn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Skipped Parts (GroVont Trilogy, #1)]]> 9078 400 Tim Sandlin 1573228397 Benn 4 3.85 1991 Skipped Parts (GroVont Trilogy, #1)
author: Tim Sandlin
name: Benn
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1991
rating: 4
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]]> Dirty Work 377994
With great vision, humor, and courage, Brown writes mostly about love in a story about the waste of war.]]> 247 Larry Brown 1565125630 Benn 4 4.18 1989 Dirty Work
author: Larry Brown
name: Benn
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1989
rating: 4
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]]> Joe 377993
Joe Ransom is a hard-drinking ex-con pushing fifty who just won’t slow down--not in his pickup, not with a gun, and certainly not with women. Gary Jones estimates his own age to be about fifteen. Born luckless, he is the son of a hopeless, homeless wandering family, and he’s desperate for a way out. When their paths cross, Joe offers him a chance just as his own chances have dwindled to almost nothing. Together they follow a twisting map to redemption--or ruin.]]> 368 Larry Brown 1565124138 Benn 3 4.18 1991 Joe
author: Larry Brown
name: Benn
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1991
rating: 3
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]]> Big Bad Love 539933 228 Larry Brown 0679734910 Benn 4 4.11 1990 Big Bad Love
author: Larry Brown
name: Benn
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1990
rating: 4
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date added: 2009/03/09
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review:

]]> Going After Cacciato 3446 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

Winner of the 1979 National Book Award, Going After Cacciato captures the peculiar mixture of horror and hallucination that marked this strangest of wars.

In a blend of reality and fantasy, this novel tells the story of a young soldier who one day lays down his rifle and sets off on a quixotic journey from the jungles of Indochina to the streets of Paris. In its memorable evocation of men both fleeing from and meeting the demands of battle, Going After Cacciato stands as much more than just a great war novel. Ultimately it's about the forces of fear and heroism that do battle in the hearts of us all.]]> 351 Tim O'Brien 0767904427 Benn 4 3.91 1978 Going After Cacciato
author: Tim O'Brien
name: Benn
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1978
rating: 4
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]]> Heart of Darkness 4900
A reflection on corruptive European colonialism and a journey into the nightmare psyche of one of the corrupted, Heart of Darkness is considered one of the most influential works ever written.]]> 188 Joseph Conrad 1892295490 Benn 4 3.43 1899 Heart of Darkness
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Benn
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1899
rating: 4
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]]> A Tale of Two Cities 17171 396 Charles Dickens 1404336362 Benn 4 3.62 1859 A Tale of Two Cities
author: Charles Dickens
name: Benn
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1859
rating: 4
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]]> Hater (Hater, #1) 263460
A modern take on the classic “apocalyptic� novel, Hater tells the story of Danny McCoyne, an everyman forced to contend with a world gone mad, as society is rocked by a sudden increase in violent assaults. Christened “Haters� by the media, the attackers strike without warning and seemingly without reason. Within seconds, normally rational, self-controlled people become frenzied, vicious killers. As the carnage mounts, one thing soon is clear: everyone, irrespective of race, gender, age, or class, has the potential to become either a Hater or a victim. At any moment, even friends and family can turn on one another with violent intent. In the face of this mindless terror, all McCoyne can do is secure his family, seek shelter, and watch as the world falls apart. But when he bolts the front door, the question remains: Is he shutting the danger out or locking it in?

© 2009 Blackstone Audio]]> 244 David Moody 0955005167 Benn 3 3.64 2006 Hater (Hater, #1)
author: David Moody
name: Benn
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2006
rating: 3
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]]> Let Me Finish 1080752 192 Udo Grashoff 1560259450 Benn 3 3.62 2004 Let Me Finish
author: Udo Grashoff
name: Benn
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2004
rating: 3
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date added: 2008/11/25
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]]> <![CDATA[It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News]]> 816159 288 Drew Curtis 1592402917 Benn 3 3.61 2007 It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News
author: Drew Curtis
name: Benn
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 3
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]]> Hard Boiled 59982 Winner of comics' prestigious Eisner Award!

Carl Seltz is a suburban insurance investigator, a loving husband, and devoted father. Nixon is a berserk, homicidal tax collector racking up mind-boggling body counts in a diseased urban slaughterhouse. Unit Four is the ultimate robot killing machine - and the last hope of the future's enslaved mechanical servants. And - somehow - they're all the same psychotic entity. Frank Miller and Geof Darrow have created a visual masterpiece!]]> 128 Frank Miller 1840237511 Benn 3 3.72 1990 Hard Boiled
author: Frank Miller
name: Benn
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1990
rating: 3
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]]> Elektra: Assassin 707742 264 Frank Miller 0871353091 Benn 3 3.93 1986 Elektra: Assassin
author: Frank Miller
name: Benn
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1986
rating: 3
read at:
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review:

]]> Hell and Back (Sin City, #7) 300678 320 Frank Miller 1593072996 Benn 2 4.02 1999 Hell and Back (Sin City, #7)
author: Frank Miller
name: Benn
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1999
rating: 2
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]]> <![CDATA[Sin City, Vol. 6: Booze, Broads, and Bullets (Sin City, #6)]]> 59966 160 Frank Miller 1593072988 Benn 3 3.87 1998 Sin City, Vol. 6: Booze, Broads, and Bullets (Sin City, #6)
author: Frank Miller
name: Benn
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1998
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[Sin City, Vol. 5: Family Values (Sin City, #5)]]> 419104 128 Frank Miller 159307297X Benn 3 3.87 1997 Sin City, Vol. 5: Family Values (Sin City, #5)
author: Frank Miller
name: Benn
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1997
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again]]> 52367
The Dark Knight returns once again with a vitality unseen since the first years of his war on crime.  Together with his army of Bat-soldiers, including Carrie Kelley—formerly Robin, and now the new Catgirl—the Dark Knight wages a new war on a diseased world that's become completely lost.

The Dark Knight Strikes Again features appearances by such DC icons as Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Martian Manhunter, the Atom, the Question and more.  But are they still the World's Greatest Heroes or part of the conspiracy?

This incredible volume, designed by multiple award-winner Chipp Kidd, features a new introduction by Miller commenting on returning to the world he created fifteen years ago.  The book includes the complete 3-part story, plus numerous sketches and other never-before-seen material.]]> 248 Frank Miller 1563899299 Benn 4 3.19 2001 Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again
author: Frank Miller
name: Benn
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2001
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Sin City, Vol. 4: That Yellow Bastard (Sin City, #4)]]> 59978 That Yellow Bastard, the fourth Sin City graphic novel, Miller's experiment with yellow ink is also a tremendous success. The setup is simple. On the last day before he retires, Hartigan, an old cop, gets a call about an 11-year-old girl who has been kidnapped by a lunatic. Hartigan has got just one more thing to do before he retires: save the girl. Saving her is the easy part, because Hartigan has uncovered something really bad that is not going to stop until it catches up with him. That Yellow Bastard is nerve-racking to the very end.]]> 240 Frank Miller Benn 4 4.23 1996 Sin City, Vol. 4: That Yellow Bastard (Sin City, #4)
author: Frank Miller
name: Benn
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1996
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Sin City, Vol. 2: A Dame to Kill For (Sin City, #2)]]> 59969 208 Frank Miller 1593072945 Benn 4 4.18 1993 Sin City, Vol. 2: A Dame to Kill For (Sin City, #2)
author: Frank Miller
name: Benn
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1993
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Sin City, Vol. 3: The Big Fat Kill (Sin City, #3)]]> 419103 184 Frank Miller 1593072953 Benn 3 4.12 1994 Sin City, Vol. 3: The Big Fat Kill (Sin City, #3)
author: Frank Miller
name: Benn
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1994
rating: 3
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]]> 300 59952
Collects: 300 #1-5]]> 88 Frank Miller 1569714029 Benn 2 3.98 1999 300
author: Frank Miller
name: Benn
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1999
rating: 2
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]]> <![CDATA[Sin City Volume 1: The Hard Goodbye]]> 392297 Note: Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here.

Worth dying for. Worth Killing for. Worth going to hell for. Amen.

It's a lousy room in a lousy part of a lousy town. But Marv doesn't care. There's an angel in the room. She says her name is Goldie. A few hours later, Goldie's dead without a mark on her perfect body, and the cops are coming before anyone but Marv could know she's been killed. Somebody paid good money for this frame...

The first volume of the crime-comic megahit that introduced the now-infamous character Marv and spawned a blockbuster film returns in a newly redesigned edition, with a brand-new cover by Frank Miller—some of his first comics art in years! With a new look generating more excitement than ever before, this third edition is the perfect way to attract a whole new generation of readers to Frank Miller's masterpiece!

Frank Miller (1957�) is an American writer, artist & film director, notable for the singular works product of his unique and sometimes twisted mind. He is as famous as he his infamous for his film noir-style comic book stories. Besides being one of the most widely-recognized and popular creators in comics, he is also one of the most influential comics creators of his generation. His most notable works include 'Sin City' (1991), 'The Dark Knight Returns' (1986), 'Batman Year One' (1987) and '300' (1999).

Edition MSRP: $17â°â° US (ISBN 1-59307-293-7)
Printed in Canada]]> 208 Frank Miller 1593072937 Benn 3 4.17 1991 Sin City Volume 1: The Hard Goodbye
author: Frank Miller
name: Benn
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1991
rating: 3
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]]> Batman: Year One 59980 The Dark Knight Returns!

In 1986, Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli produced this groundbreaking reinterpretation of the origin of Batman—who he is and how he came to be.

Written shortly after The Dark Knight Returns, Miller's dystopian fable of Batman's final days, Year One set the stage for a new vision of a legendary character.

This edition includes the complete graphic novel, a new introduction by writer Frank Miller and a new illustrated afterword by artist David Mazzucchelli. Completing this collection are over 40 pages of never-before-seen developmental material such as character and layout sketches, sample script pages, sketches and more that provide a glimpse into the making of this contemporary classic.

This volume collects Batman #404â€�407.±Ő±Ő> 144 Frank Miller 1401207529 Benn 4 4.24 1988 Batman: Year One
author: Frank Miller
name: Benn
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1988
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Batman: The Dark Knight Returns]]> 59960
Crime runs rampant in the streets, and the man who was Batman is still tortured by the memories of his parents' murders. As civil society crumbles around him, Bruce Wayne's long-suppressed vigilante side finally breaks free of its self-imposed shackles.

The Dark Knight returns in a blaze of fury, taking on a whole new generation of criminals and matching their level of violence. He is soon joined by this generation's Robin—a girl named Carrie Kelley, who proves to be just as invaluable as her predecessors.

But can Batman and Robin deal with the threat posed by their deadliest enemies, after years of incarceration have made them into perfect psychopaths? And more important, can anyone survive the coming fallout of an undeclared war between the superpowers—or a clash of what were once the world's greatest superheroes?

Over fifteen years after its debut, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns remains an undisputed classic and one of the most influential stories ever told in the comics medium.

Collecting Batman: The Dark Knight Returns #1-4]]> 197 Frank Miller 156389341X Benn 4 4.26 1986 Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
author: Frank Miller
name: Benn
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1986
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This and Other Things That Strike Me as Funny]]> 5625 239 Bob Newhart 1401302467 Benn 3 3.75 2006 I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This and Other Things That Strike Me as Funny
author: Bob Newhart
name: Benn
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2006
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[I Am America (And So Can You!)]]> 611298 Congratulations--just by opening the cover of this book you became 25% more patriotic.

From Stephen Colbert, the host of television's highest-rated punditry show The Colbert Report, comes the book to fill the other 23½ hours of your day. I Am America (And So Can You!) contains all of the opinions that Stephen doesn't have time to shoehorn into his nightly broadcast.

Dictated directly into a microcassette recorder over a three-day weekend, this book contains Stephen's most deeply held knee-jerk beliefs on The American Family, Race, Religion, Sex, Sports, and many more topics, conveniently arranged in chapter form.

Always controversial and outspoken, Stephen addresses why Hollywood is destroying America by inches, why evolution is a fraud, and why the elderly should be harnessed to millstones.

You may not agree with everything Stephen says, but at the very least, you'll understand that your differing opinion is wrong.

I Am America (And So Can You!) showcases Stephen Colbert at his most eloquent and impassioned. He is an unrelenting fighter for the soul of America, and in this book he fights the good fight for the traditional values that have served this country so well for so long.

Please buy this book before you leave the store.

About the Author
Stephen Colbert is America.

Description from book jacket]]> 230 Stephen Colbert 0446580503 Benn 2 3.90 2007 I Am America (And So Can You!)
author: Stephen Colbert
name: Benn
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2007
rating: 2
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]]> <![CDATA[America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction]]> 706 The Daily Show, and his coterie of patriots, deliver a hilarious look at American government.

American-style democracy is the world's most beloved form of government, which explains why so many other nations are eager for us to impose it on them. But what is American democracy? In America (The Book), Jon Stewart and The Daily Show writing staff offer their insights into our unique system of government, dissecting its institutions, explaining its history and processes, and exploring the reasons why concepts like one man, one vote, government by the people, and every vote counts have become such popular urban myths. Topics include: Ancient Rome: The First Republicans; The Founding Fathers: Young, Gifted, and White; The Media: Can it Be Stopped?; and more!

]]> 228 Jon Stewart 0713998946 Benn 4 4.00 2004 America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
author: Jon Stewart
name: Benn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Areas of My Expertise: An Almanac of Complete World Knowledge Compiled with Instructive Annotation and Arranged in Useful Order]]> 24807 256 John Hodgman 1594482225 Benn 4 3.80 2005 The Areas of My Expertise: An Almanac of Complete World Knowledge Compiled with Instructive Annotation and Arranged in Useful Order
author: John Hodgman
name: Benn
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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]]> The Crying of Lot 49 2794 The Crying of Lot 49 opens as Oedipa Maas discovers that she has been made executrix of a former lover's estate. The performance of her duties sets her on a strange trail of detection, in which bizarre characters crowd in to help or confuse her. But gradually, death, drugs, madness, and marriage combine to leave Oedipa in isolation on the threshold of revelation, awaiting the Crying of Lot 49.]]> 152 Thomas Pynchon 006091307X Benn 3 3.70 1966 The Crying of Lot 49
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Benn
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1966
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest]]> 332613 9780451163967

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy � the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.]]> 325 Ken Kesey Benn 5 4.20 1962 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
author: Ken Kesey
name: Benn
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1962
rating: 5
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]]> Ode to Kirihito 209571
From pregnant vistas of the Japanese countryside to closed rooms full of sin and redemption, Tezuka astounds for more than eight hundred continuous pages, his art in turn easefully concise and flamboyantly experimental, his inquiry into our most repugnant instincts and prospects for overcoming them unflinchingly serious. Incorporating elements of the often lurid and adult-oriented “gekiga� style for the first time, Tezuka entered into his fruitful late period with this work.

A promising young doctor, Kirihito Osanai visits a remote Japanese mountain village to investigate the source of the latest medical mystery. While he ends up traveling the world to discover what it takes to be cured of such a disease, a conspiracy back home attempts to explain away his absence. Hinging upon his fate are those of his loved an unstable childhood friend and colleague trapped between factions of the medical establishment that nurtured him; a fiancée emotionally transformed by Kirihito’s mysterious disappearance; and a stranger who becomes his guardian angel, a sensual circus-act performer with volatile psychological secrets.

From plutocratic Taipei and racially divided South Africa to backwater Arabia and modern Osaka, ambition and desire beckon “normal men� to behave uglier than any beast. Riveting our attention on deformity and its acceptance like The Elephant Man by David Lynch, Ode to Kirihito examines the true worth of human beings through and beyond appearances.]]> 832 Osamu Tezuka 1932234640 Benn 3 4.05 1970 Ode to Kirihito
author: Osamu Tezuka
name: Benn
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1970
rating: 3
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]]> Buddha, Vol. 8: Jetavana 160070
Tezuka himself was a humanist rather than a Buddhist, and his magnum opus is not an attempt at propaganda. Hermann Hesse's novel or Bertolucci's film is comparable in this regard; in fact, Tezuka's approach is slightly irreverent in that it incorporates something that Western commentators often eschew, namely, humor.]]> 364 Osamu Tezuka 1932234632 Benn 5 4.39 1983 Buddha, Vol. 8: Jetavana
author: Osamu Tezuka
name: Benn
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1983
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Buddha, Vol. 7: Prince Ajatasattu]]> 160068
Tezuka himself was a humanist rather than a Buddhist, and his magnum opus is not an attempt at propaganda. Hermann Hesse's novel or Bertolucci's film is comparable in this regard; in fact, Tezuka's approach is slightly irreverent in that it incorporates something that Western commentators often eschew, namely, humor.]]> 420 Osamu Tezuka 1932234624 Benn 5 4.35 1983 Buddha, Vol. 7: Prince Ajatasattu
author: Osamu Tezuka
name: Benn
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1983
rating: 5
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]]> Buddha, Vol. 6: Ananda 160067
When Ananda and his bandit buddy attack the Fire Shrine of the Brahmin brothers Kassapa, it is none other than the Awakened One who happens by. Buddha must confront his eternal enemy, Mara, before he can open the eyes of arrogant priests and hardened criminals.]]> 360 Osamu Tezuka 1932234616 Benn 5 4.33 1983 Buddha, Vol. 6: Ananda
author: Osamu Tezuka
name: Benn
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1983
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Buddha, Vol. 5: Deer Park (Buddha, #5)]]> 160065 350 Osamu Tezuka 1932234470 Benn 5 4.35 1983 Buddha, Vol. 5: Deer Park (Buddha, #5)
author: Osamu Tezuka
name: Benn
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1983
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Buddha, Vol. 4: The Forest of Uruvela (Buddha, #4)]]> 230714 370 Osamu Tezuka 1932234462 Benn 5 4.35 1983 Buddha, Vol. 4: The Forest of Uruvela (Buddha, #4)
author: Osamu Tezuka
name: Benn
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1983
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Buddha, Vol. 3: Devadatta (Buddha, #3)]]> 160064 322 Osamu Tezuka 1932234454 Benn 5 4.27 1983 Buddha, Vol. 3: Devadatta (Buddha, #3)
author: Osamu Tezuka
name: Benn
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1983
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Buddha, Vol. 2: The Four Encounters (Buddha #2)]]> 160063
Tezuka himself was a humanist rather than a Buddhist, and his magnum opus is not an attempt at propaganda. Hermann Hesse’s novel or Bertolucci’s film is comparable in this regard; in fact, Tezuka’s approach is slightly irreverent in that it incorporates something that Western commentators often eschew, namely, humor.]]> 411 Osamu Tezuka 1932234446 Benn 5 4.25 1983 Buddha, Vol. 2: The Four Encounters (Buddha #2)
author: Osamu Tezuka
name: Benn
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1983
rating: 5
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date added: 2008/11/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Buddha, Vol. 1: Kapilavastu (Buddha #1)]]> 209577
Tezuka himself was a humanist rather than a Buddhist, and his magnum opus is not an attempt at propaganda. Hermann Hesse's novel or Bertolucci's film is comparable in this regard; in fact, Tezuka's approach is slightly irreverent in that it incorporates something that Western commentators often eschew, namely, humor.]]> 400 Osamu Tezuka 193223456X Benn 5 4.18 1972 Buddha, Vol. 1: Kapilavastu (Buddha #1)
author: Osamu Tezuka
name: Benn
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1972
rating: 5
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date added: 2008/11/25
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[FUBAR F---ed Up Beyond All Recognition: Soldier Slang of World War II (General Military)]]> 472774
This book is a detailed survey of the slang of WWII as used and evolved by US, German and Commonwealth fighting men and women. It lists hundreds of these distictive and evocative words with their definitions and origins, but and also includes contemporary cartoons and images, transporting the reader back through the decades into the world of the WWII warrior.]]> 296 Gordon L. Rottman 1846031753 Benn 4 3.75 2007 FUBAR F---ed Up Beyond All Recognition: Soldier Slang of World War II (General Military)
author: Gordon L. Rottman
name: Benn
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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date added: 2008/11/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Little Man: Short Strips, 1980-1995]]> 269354 "One of the medium's brilliant mavericks." --Time.com

The Little Man: Short Strips, 1980-1995 is a collection of short-story works by the celebrated and bestselling Louis Riel cartoonist Chester Brown. From his early experimental comedic surrealism to his later autobiographical and essay strips, we see not a major talent in development but a fully realized storytelling virtuoso. Included are his early autobiographical stories "Helder" (a story about a young man's tentativeness when pursuing a woman), "Showing Helder" (a blow-by-blow account of the construction of the previous story), and "Danny" (a strangely compelling moment-by-moment account of Brown waking up and trying to avoid contact with a fellow rooming-house tenant). Other standouts are Brown's controversial essay on schizophrenia (specifically his own mother's) and various medical views on this baffling disease, and the title story, "The Little Man," a Freudian classroom romp fantasy by a adolescent Brown that ties into the schizophrenia essay in a surprising way. The acclaimed compendium, culled mostly from his groundbreaking comic book series Yummy Fur, provides a fascinating insight into Brown's psyche; he rounds out the collection with exacting notes on each story.
]]> 184 Chester Brown 1896597130 Benn 3 3.70 1998 The Little Man: Short Strips, 1980-1995
author: Chester Brown
name: Benn
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1998
rating: 3
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]]> The Playboy 269355 172 Chester Brown 0969670117 Benn 4 3.78 1990 The Playboy
author: Chester Brown
name: Benn
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1990
rating: 4
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date added: 2008/11/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Ed the Happy Clown (A Yummy Fur Book)]]> 551094
A LONG-OUT-OF-PRINT CLASIC BY A MASTER OF UNDERGROUND COMICS
In the late 1980s, the idiosyncratic Chester Brown (author of the muchlauded Paying for It and Louis Riel) began writing the cult classic comic book series Yummy Fur. Within its pages, he serialized the groundbreaking Ed the Happy Clown, revealing a macabre universe of parallel dimensions. Thanks to its wholly original yet disturbing story lines, Ed set the stage for Brown to become a world-renowned cartoonist.

Ed the Happy Clown is a hallucinatory tale that functions simultaneously as a dark roller-coaster ride of criminal activity and a scathing condemnation of religious and political charlatanism. As the world around him devolves into madness, the eponymous Ed escapes variously from a jealous boyfriend, sewer monsters, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and a janitor with a Jesus complex. Brown leaves us wondering, with every twist of the plot, just how Ed will get out of this scrape.

The intimate, tangled world of Ed the Happy Clown is definitively presented here, repackaged with a new foreword by the author and an extensive notes section, and is, like every Brown book, astonishingly perceptive about the zeitgeist of its time.
]]> 198 Chester Brown 0921451040 Benn 5 3.99 1989 Ed the Happy Clown (A Yummy Fur Book)
author: Chester Brown
name: Benn
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1989
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography]]> 269353 "It has the thoroughness of a history book yet reads with the personalized vision of a novel." -Time


Chester Brown reinvents the comic-book medium to create the critically acclaimed historical biography Louis Riel, winning the Harvey Awards for best writing and best graphic novel for his compelling, meticulous, and dispassionate retelling of the charismatic, and perhaps insane, nineteenth-century MĂ©tis leader. Brown coolly documents with dramatic subtlety the violent rebellion on the Canadian prairie led by Riel, who some regard a martyr who died in the name of freedom, while others consider him a treacherous murderer.
]]> 272 Chester Brown 1894937899 Benn 5 3.87 2003 Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography
author: Chester Brown
name: Benn
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[I Never Liked You: A Comic Strip Narrative]]> 269356 In one of the best graphic novels published in recent years, Chester Brown tells the story of his alienated youth in an almost detached, understated manner, giving the book an eerie, dream-like quality. For the new 2002 definitive softcover edition Brown has designed new layouts for the entire book, using "white" panel backgrounds instead of the black pages of the first edition.
]]> 200 Chester Brown 1896597149 Benn 4 3.78 1994 I Never Liked You: A Comic Strip Narrative
author: Chester Brown
name: Benn
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1994
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken: A Picture Novella]]> 86142 An Acknowledged Classic returns gorgeously re-designed.

In his first graphic novel, It's a Good Life, if You Don't Weaken—one of the best-selling D & Q titles ever—Seth pays homage to the wit and sophistication of the old-fashioned magazine cartoon. While trying to understand his dissatisfaction with the present, Seth discovers the life and work of Kalo, a forgotten New Yorker cartoonist from the 1940s. But his obsession blinds him to the needs of his lover and the quiet desperation of his family. Wry self-reflection and moody colours characterize Seth's style in this tale about learning lessons from nostalgia. His playful and sophisticated experiment with memoir provoked a furious debate among cartoon historians and archivists about the existence of Kalo, and prompted a Details feature about Seth's "hoax".]]> 176 Seth 189659770X Benn 4 3.79 1998 It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken: A Picture Novella
author: Seth
name: Benn
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Wimbledon Green: The Greatest Comic Collector in the World]]> 409913 From the critically acclaimed cartoonist of Clyde Fans and It's A Good Life comes a humorous graphic novel on the obsession of comic-book collecting.

Taking a break from the serialization of his saga Clyde Fans and the design of The Complete Peanuts, critically acclaimed cartoonist and illustrator Seth creates a farcical world of the people whose passion lies in the need to own comic books and only in pristine, mint condition.

Meet Wimbledon Green, the self-proclaimed world's greatest comic-book collector who brokered the world's best comic-book deal in the history of collecting. Comic-book retailers, auctioneers, and conventioneers from around North America, as well as Green's collecting rivals, weigh in on the man and his vast collection of comic books. Are Green's intentions honorable? Does he truly love comics or is he driven by the need to conquer? Lastly, is he really even Wimbledon Green?

A charming and amusing caper where comic-book collecting is a world of intrigue and high finance. Part riotous chase, part whimsical character sketch, Wimbledon Green looks at the need to collect and the need to reinvent oneself.
]]> 128 Seth 1896597939 Benn 4 3.89 2005 Wimbledon Green: The Greatest Comic Collector in the World
author: Seth
name: Benn
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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]]> Zine Yearbook 9 (Zines) 5577037 216 Joe Biel 1934620076 Benn 4 4.00 2008 Zine Yearbook 9 (Zines)
author: Joe Biel
name: Benn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Zine Yearbook: An Annual Collection of Excerpts from the Best Zines Publishing Today, Vol. 7]]> 842158 200 Jason Kucsma 1887128670 Benn 4 3.86 2003 The Zine Yearbook: An Annual Collection of Excerpts from the Best Zines Publishing Today, Vol. 7
author: Jason Kucsma
name: Benn
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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]]> Billy Budd and Other Stories 125870 Tales of compelling power by one of America's greatest writers

Stung by the critical reception and lack of commercial success of his previous two works, Moby-Dick and Pierre, Herman Melville became obsessed with the difficulties of communicating his vision to readers. His sense of isolation lies at the heart of these later works. "Billy Budd, Sailor," a classic confrontation between good and evil, is the story of an innocent young man unable to defend himself against a wrongful accusation. The other selections here--"Bartleby," "The Encantadas," "Benito Cereno," and "The Piazza"--also illuminate, in varying guises, the way fictions are created and shared with a wider society.

In his introduction Frederick Busch discusses Melville's preoccupation with his "correspondence with the world," his quarrel with silence, and why fiction was, for Melville,"a matter of life and death."

Bartleby --
The piazza --
The Encantadas --
The bell-tower --
Benito Cereno --
The paradise of bachelors and the tartarus of maids --
Billy Budd, sailor.]]> 416 Herman Melville 0140390537 Benn 4 3.58 1782 Billy Budd and Other Stories
author: Herman Melville
name: Benn
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1782
rating: 4
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]]> Don Quixote 3836
With its experimental form and literary playfulness, Don Quixote has been generally recognized as the first modern novel. The book has been enormously influential on a host of writers, from Fielding and Sterne to Flaubert, Dickens, Melville, and Faulkner, who reread it once a year, "just as some people read the Bible."]]> 1023 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Benn 4 3.86 1615 Don Quixote
author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
name: Benn
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1615
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories: Volume 2]]> 3340854 Ivan Brunetti returns with a new selection of 20th and 21st-century comic creations by some of the most original artists in the medium

Comic art is a vital, highly personal art form in which change—rapid and unpredictable—is the norm. In this exciting new anthology, comic artist Ivan Brunetti focuses on very recent works by contemporary artists engaged in this world of change. These outstanding cartoonists, selected by Brunetti for their graphic sophistication and literary style, are both expanding and transforming the vocabulary of their genre.

The book presents contemporary art comics produced by 75 artists, along with some classic comic strips and other related fine art and historical materials. Brunetti arranges the book to reflect the creative process itself, connecting stories and art to each other in surprising ways: nonlinear, elliptical, sometimes whimsical, even poetic. He emphasizes continuity from piece to piece, weaving themes and motifs throughout the volume.

As gorgeously produced as Brunetti’s previous anthology of graphic fiction, this book does full justice to the creative work of Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Charles Burns, Gary Panter, and the other prominent or emerging comic artists who are currently at work at the cutting edge of their medium.]]> 400 Ivan Brunetti 0300126719 Benn 2 3.88 2008 An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories: Volume 2
author: Ivan Brunetti
name: Benn
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2008
rating: 2
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]]> Haw! 515860 Black humorous gag cartoons, which Brunetti describes as "each one less morally excusable than the next." Features one-panel gags certain to ostracize anyone from their co-workers when hung in an office cubicle. HAW! is not for the young or weak of heart!]]> 96 Ivan Brunetti 1560974354 Benn 4 4.17 2001 Haw!
author: Ivan Brunetti
name: Benn
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2001
rating: 4
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]]> Misery Loves Comedy 515861 172 Ivan Brunetti 1560977922 Benn 4 3.93 2007 Misery Loves Comedy
author: Ivan Brunetti
name: Benn
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories (Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, & True Stories, Volume 1)]]> 102616 Schizo, offers a best-of anthology of contemporary art comics, along with some classic comic strips and other historical materials that have retained a “modernâ€� sensibility. As with Chris Ware’s selections for his best-selling ˛Ńł¦ł§·É±đ±đ˛Ô±đ˛â’s anthology, Brunetti’s choices make for a highly personal book (“my criteria were simple: these are comics that I savor and often revisitâ€�) that serves as a broad historical overview of the medium and a round-up of some of today’s best and most interesting North American comic artists. Included here are works from such well-known artists as Robert Crumb, Kim Deitch, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Ben Katchor, Charles Burns, Gary Panter, Seth, Phoebe Gloeckner, Daniel Clowes, Lynda Barry, Joe Sacco, and Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, as well as many other pioneers whose names may be less familiar.
Brunetti offers selections from the works of more than seventy-five avant-garde comic artists.  His selections are arranged by genre and grouped thematically. Luxuriously produced and printed in four-color throughout, the book is a must-have for collectors, aficionados, readers of comics, and those generally interested in cutting-edge art and literature.]]> 400 Ivan Brunetti 0300111703 Benn 5 4.00 2006 An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories (Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, & True Stories, Volume 1)
author: Ivan Brunetti
name: Benn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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]]> Capacity 4964203 336 Theo Ellsworth 0979960924 Benn 5 4.31 2008 Capacity
author: Theo Ellsworth
name: Benn
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2008
rating: 5
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]]> Wormdye 3519793 128 Eamon Espey 0979960916 Benn 4 3.67 2008 Wormdye
author: Eamon Espey
name: Benn
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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date added: 2008/11/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal]]> 1097
Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from California's subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many fast food's flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths -- from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate.
(back cover)]]> 383 Eric Schlosser 0060838582 Benn 5 3.75 2001 Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
author: Eric Schlosser
name: Benn
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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]]> Double Nickels on the Dime 50215 106 Michael T. Fournier 0826427871 Benn 4 3.84 2007 Double Nickels on the Dime
author: Michael T. Fournier
name: Benn
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America]]> 1869
Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.]]> 240 Barbara Ehrenreich 0805063897 Benn 4 3.65 2001 Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
author: Barbara Ehrenreich
name: Benn
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2001
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking]]> 101249 Good Eats presents a special edition of his innovative, instructional cooking guide that features various cooking techniques accompanied by a "master" recipe for each technique, and provides a vast array of food-related tips and advice.]]> 288 Alton Brown 1584790830 Benn 4 4.11 2002 I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking
author: Alton Brown
name: Benn
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2002
rating: 4
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]]> Leaves of Grass 27494 624 Walt Whitman Benn 5 4.12 1855 Leaves of Grass
author: Walt Whitman
name: Benn
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1855
rating: 5
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]]> Lulu Eightball V1 1911223 96 Emily Flake 0978656903 Benn 5 4.59 2005 Lulu Eightball V1
author: Emily Flake
name: Benn
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Future Generation: The Zine-Book for Subculture Parents, Kids, Friends & Others]]> 1051442 The Future Generation in 1990. She was a young anarchist punk rock mother who didn't feel that the mamas in her community had enough support, so she began delivering articles on radical parenting to her compañeras in an age before the Internet made such a thing easy.

Now, for the first time, 16 years of her zine and parenting writing life come together. This zine-book uses individual issues as chapters, focuses on personal writing, and retains the character of a zine that changed over the years growing from her daughter s birth to teenagehood and beyond. Personal and political; ideas and actions; the intimacy of a zine meets the arching reach of a book.]]> China Martens 0978656911 Benn 4 4.00 2007 The Future Generation: The Zine-Book for Subculture Parents, Kids, Friends & Others
author: China Martens
name: Benn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[I Keee You!!! A Collection of Overheards]]> 747220 112 Benn Ray 097865692X Benn 4 4.08 2006 I Keee You!!! A Collection of Overheards
author: Benn Ray
name: Benn
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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]]>