"young adult" books you (and your young adults, if any) really ought to read

[sisyphusshrugged]

Seventh Raven, Peter Dickinson

Flush and Hoot, Carl Hiaasen

A Hat Full of Sky, Terry Pratchett

Grown adult books you ought to read: it's out of print, but if you're female and you work in a corporate environment (or if you're not One Of The Guys and you work in a corporate environment), you really ought to seek out a copy of Games Mother Never Taught You, by Betty Lehan Harragan. If enough of you order it, some wise soul may put it back in print, and that would be a very good thing.

For the out-of-print books (Seventh Raven and Games), I strongly recommend that you search abebooks.com. an online association of independent booksellers whose listings appear at Amazon and BN.com priced at multiple hundred percent of what they cost if you buy directly.

Also you get to support independent book stores even if there aren't any near you. It's a beautiful thing.

Comments

[vuzh.livejournal.com]

I hereby plug my friend Cecil Castellucci, a swell YA writer, who has written two books: "Queen of Cool" and "Boy Proof", and who is a swell friend here on LJ by the name of ribinder

[neonnurse.livejournal.com]

ABE sticks it to its booksellers, though, and you are still not buying directly from the seller. A good way to hunt down and buy books is to start at bookfinder.com, which is a search engine, free to users and sellers alike, that will pull info on all available copies of a book (I like to click on Show More Options and use the classic display, but it's good either way.)

Once you spot what looks like a good copy at a good price, you can click through and often find a link to contact the seller directly, so they can sell it straight to you, if you prefer. (Some people like to go ahead and go through Amazon, etc, because they feel more secure buying from a known company.)

Another method is to hunt on Froogle. The guy who runs a hosting service for lots of booksellers I know has all their personal websites set up so that their wares get picked up on Froogle searches. That's another excellent way to buy directly from the seller, which does usually save you money, since they don't have to pay 10-15% of the sale price to the site.

[(Anonymous)]

"Harragan". I wouldn't be pedantic about spelling, but the computerized indexes at my local library won't find "Betty Lehan Harrigan".

Thanks for the recommendation; I'll read it as soon as I can.

-ArC

I had several copies...

[(Anonymous)]

Of "Games Mother Never Taught You" but ended up lending them out through the years and never got them back. I agree, it's a great book.

- Susie