1. A Small Place, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

By Jamaica Kincaid (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, $12.00) This is the most forthright, excoriating, downright honest, clear, precise, and lovely attack on the romanticization of poverty by the privile

2. Nourishing Traditions, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Cooking)

By Sally Fallon (New Trends Publishing, $27.00) This book completely changed how I think about food. I have never eaten anything from it that I didn't like--biscuits to 'kraut. It has amazing bits of

3. The Shadow of Sirius, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Poetry)

by W. S. Merwin (Copper Canyon, $16.00) The breath is what I keep coming back to in Merwin; his pacing is impeccable.  Also, the softening affect he has on the world.  If you didn't get ou

4. Healing with Whole Foods, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Nonfiction)

by Paul Pitchford (North Atlantic Books, $35) This is a comprehensive book about food that ennobles me, and makes me set goals far beyond my reach.  When I am sick, or want to feel more alive,

5. Great Expectations, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by Charles Dickens (Penguin, $8.00) If you have never read this aloud, you should.  I began reading it to a friend, and she actually laughed out loud.  In fact, we both laughed so hard at

6. Go Down, Moses, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by William Faulkner (Vintage, $12.95) This amazing interweaving of stories builds the history of the South from the mid-19th century up to a more recognizably contemporary time through a single fam

7. So Long, See You Tomorrow, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by William Maxwell (Vintage, $12.95) My dad gave me this book and told me that it would help me gain an understanding of boys' friendships.  After reading it, I cannot imagine the ache and let

8. The Monster Loves His Labyrinth: Notebooks, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Poetry)

by Charles Simic (Ausable, $14.00) Fragments as good as poems, thoughts framed by words.  These are nuggets, conjuring whole cities, whole wars, in a few sentences.  It is a treat to see t

9. Grapefruit, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Art and Design)

by Yoko Ono (Simon & Schuster, $18.00) I love the openness of her mind in these tiny pieces.  Just thinking about the proposed actions challenges how one sees the world.  Don't miss th

10. Death with Interruptions, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by Jose Saramago (Harcourt, $24.00) A quirky little book in which Death, a thoughtful and overworked female, decides to take some time off.  I loved the pace and quiet of this book, a meditatio

11. Fairy Tales for Computers, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

edited by Edith McKeon Abbott (The Eakins Press) This books is a quirky little gem whose chief appeal is in the audacity and brilliance of its compiler.  The forward alone is worth it.  Ge

12. Lustmord: Sexual Violence in Weimar Germany, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Nonfiction)

by Maria Tatar (Princeton University Press, $27.95) This book explores sex and violence in relationship to the art of Weimar Germany, but that is a small way to put it; Tatar focuses her astonishi

13. The Lais of Marie De France , Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by Glyn S. Burgess, Keith Busby, trans. (Penguin, $13.00) The flatfooted narrative style of medieval storytelling will blow you away. For instance: "He paid no heed to the danger involved

14. Dancing in the Streets, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Nonfiction)

by Barbara Ehrenreich (Holt Paperback, $16.00) This book explores the role that public ritual ecstasy, and its repression, have played in human history. It actually made me want to start d

15. The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Nonfiction)

by Amelia Jones (Routledge, $43.95) I love dipping into this book and reading an essay or two at a time.  They always offer something provocative, engaged, and absorbing.  The essay that

16. Knitprovisation, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Art and Design)

by Cilla Ramnek (St. Martin's Griffin, $21.95) This is a wacky and inspiring look at making. What I love most is that there is no preciousness in it, no careful measuring, no right way. Whether

17. The Folding Cliffs, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by W. S. Merwin (Random House, $16.95) This is a book deeply rooted in landscape, in which memory becomes landscape and stories are held by trees and birds. It's a simultaneously devastatin

18. Dracula, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by Bram Stoker (Random House, $10.95)   There's a reason we've been trying to drain this story for the last century. I thought I would be bored; I thought I wouldn't be scared; I thought

19. Wide Sargasso Sea, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Fiction)

by Jean Rhys (W. W. Norton, $13.95) Written because what was missing from English literature of a certain time was what was happening in the Carribean. Second sons went there and came back, but the

20. Storming the Gates of Paradise, Written by: Rebecca
(Staff Picks/Nonfiction)

by Rebecca Solnit (University of California Press, $16.95) These wonderful essays about land and politics are sharp, clear, and deeply moving. I can feel both the hope and the degradation of Amer