I laughed so hard at these books that I had to watch where I was reading them.
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Charles Dickens paid his first visit to the United States in 1842 and he kept a journal.
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This is a photo essay of America during a time long gone.
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Everyone should own a good dictionary and I've always found this one to be the best.
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This is simply THE definitive book on the art of bending sheet metal.
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When I visited Dublin in January, 2003, I spent time in the General Post Office. There, they have a series of paintings on the walls that depict the Easter Rising of 1916. When I got home I realized that I didn't fully understand what had happened then, and what had led to it, so I got this book and I educated myself. Morgan Llywelyn is a wonderful novelist.
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Ishmael Beah tells the story of the vicious boy soldiers of Sierra Leone, and how they came to be that way.
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In search of the perfect Irish bar. Fun stuff!
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Bill Bryson, one of my favorite writers, was sitting around one day when he realized that he didn't know how they figured out how much our planet weighs.
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This one is right up there with "The Long Walk" (which is further down the list).
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Bill Bryson is my all-time favorite travel writer.
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I've loved John Irving's writing since I discovered his novel "The World According to Garp" while I was taking an English course in night school.
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This is a wonderful little primer that will give you a good sense of the elements of architecture.
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A friend recommended this one to me and I have to tell you that it's a subject I had never considered.
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This one comes HIGHLY recommended by my friends who work in the "cool" side of the business
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This book covers all of life and it's a very powerful novel.
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Mr. Faulkner is a tough read because he uses this steam-of consciousness technique, and the dialogue is very Southern.
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Be forewarned, this book contains 1,192 pages and every one of those pages is going to make you think.
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A great American novel. Babbitt strives to conform
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A book about the failed dreams of the homesteaders who traveled to the Montana prairie during the 1930s.
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This is a wonderful American novel.
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A beautifully written, very disturbing book about a little girl growing up wrong.
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This is one of the most unusual, and beautifully written, novels I have ever come across.
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Three novels under one cover - a great deal! And these are dark novels, all in the Raymond Chandler style.
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Mr. Saramago won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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Simply the best book ever written about an American city by the finest journalist of his time.
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For those who live in COLDER places! Brrrrrrr.
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After a friend got wind that this one was on its way to the publisher and recommended it to me, I ordered a copy and waited about six months for it to arrive (it was newly published).
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There are patron saints for just about every profession.
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What is about iPods that makes so many people want one?
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A man and a dog in the frozen North - a story of love and loyalty.
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All four of my daughters used this book in High School.
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If you want to laugh while learning, get yourself a copy of Catapult.
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I read it in high school, of course.
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There's a good chance you'll hate this one.
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Robert Service was born in 1874 and spent most of his life as a vagabond poet slogging through Arctic wastelands in search of gold.
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William Schwarz is my age and he grew up very near where I did here on the Isle of Long.
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What we have here is a collection of short stories, each about three-pages long, and all about life in the west of Ireland.
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A travel book (sort of) about the people of China and what makes them tick.
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Simply the best book I've ever read on creativity.
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I read this book when I was in the fifth grade and loved it.
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I took the Dale Carnegie Course when I was 21 years old and it changed my life.
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Years ago, I did a seminar in Montana and made some new friends.
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I read this book a million times to Kelly, Meghan, Colleen and Erin.
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This was Mr. Dickens' favorite book.
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This is the first in a series of crime novels revolving around sports agent, Myron Bolitar, and his VERY interesting friends.
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This short novel is so beautifully written and so complex that it calls for more than one reading
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If you're a New Yorker you're going to love this one.
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The author drives the elderly Dr. Tom Harvey, former pathologist, across America.
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This is a delightful little novel that will make you stop in your tracks and think about time.
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A most amazing true story that began in the summer of 1914 when Ernest Shackleton and his crew set off on the Endurance to cross Antarctica.
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Read this one after you've read Country Driving.
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Gorgeous writing and a true page-turner.
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A beautiful book about a flawed man.
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Written in 1884, the hero of this book is a square that lives in Flatland, a place where there are only two dimensions, length and width.
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Something terrible happened during the winter of 1918, and I'm willing to bet that you never learned about it in school - or even heard about it once you graduated. I didn't.
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This is about the best text I've found for troubleshooting and repairing furnaces.
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I've long loved New York City history, and Pete Hamill has always been one of my favorite newspaper columnists and novelists.
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Sheri Koones called me one day and we talked about houses and heating and she told me about her book.
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Despite the title, this one has nothing to do with heating systems.
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If you ever have to run a meeting and you're looking to liven it up a bit, check out this book.
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Nearly a love story, but not quite.
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First, I have to tell you that my daughter Kelly is a "Domer" and that's the reason why I first picked up this book.
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My friend Bill Curry, one of the most successful wholesalers I know recommended this book
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Some time ago, Susan Messer came to The Wall on this site and asked us a lot of questions about steam boilers, and what might happen if things went terribly wrong.
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Perhaps the most perfect novel ever written.
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I've known Dick Koral for most of my working life.
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As far as I'm concerned, Bern Nagengast knows more about heating, refrigeration, and ventilation history than anyone else in America.
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If it's heat pumps you're interested it, Heating Handbook
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I read this as a young man, and reread it on the 60th anniversary of the event.
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I picked this up when I realized that I didn't know much about the Father of our Country.
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Garrison Keillor has a beautiful way with words.
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If you're a kid, I hope you read and love this book as much as I did when I was a kid.
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This one's about sisterhood and family, generations and conflict.
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I've read everything book Tom Wolfe has written and I especially enjoyed this one because it's so rich in language.
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An autobiography of Ms. Angelou up to age 16 and the birth of her son
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If you've ever watched "A Christmas Story" on TV during the holidays you've heard the wonderful voice of Jean Shepherd.
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I recently discovered Mr. Cook and I’m looking forward to savoring his other novels.
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If you feel that you already know enough about electricity then this book is NOT for you.
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Here's a story about a guy who simply never gives up.
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A brilliant telling of an American story.
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Written in 1917 by the famous muckraker, this book has the power to break your heart, but while doing so, it will also give you valuable insight into how the heating industry came to be.
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Take this book and your young son or daughter out into a breezy Sunday afternoon.
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A wonderful recounting of the great man's early life as a riverboat pilot - and a lot of insight into the early days of steam. A delightful book!
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For anyone who has ever loved a certain bar, and the special people who inhabit the place.
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There's a church in Palermo, Italy where . . .
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This is a BIG novel (1,126 pages) that begins with the Ice Age and ends in 1997.
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I've had the pleasure of being able to spend time with John Beckett and I found him to be an inspiration.
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Good stuff, written in plain-English with clear drawings.
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You may know Stephen Crane from The Red Badge of Courage.
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This remarkably researched book reads like a fine novel.
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Remember that class you slept through in High School? You wondered why the heck you had to learn all that wacky math, especially when you knew you were NEVER going to use it.
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My daughter, Kelly, was living in Dublin for a year and when she came home to visit she brought this book with her and left it with me.
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All sorts of tips and short-cuts that will make your construction work more accurate - especially when you're working alone.
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This is a remarkable book that fractured many of the myths I have always believed.
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If you've read and enjoyed any of the books that I've recommended here that have to do with getting ideas you should add this one to your list as well.
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John is my colleague at Plumbing & Mechanical magazine, and I think his book is one of the best I've seen on the subject of hydronic heating.
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A detective story that reads like Raymond Chandler, with the added delight that the lead character has Tourette's Syndrome.
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Claude C. Hopkins was America's first great advertising man.
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Samantha Abeel has a learning disability that affects her ability to learn sequentially.
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When this book first became available, here's what my friend "Hot Rod" Rohr wrote on The Wall: "I just received my NFPA 54-1999 National Fuel Gas Code Handbook. Wow! ...
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First-hand account of what the Nazis did.
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Frederick Forsyth has written some masterful suspense novels, but here he presents a series of delicious short stories that I guarantee will have you on the edge of your seat.
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My daughter, Meghan, and I often read the same book together. Meg usually chooses the book and she hasn't steered us wrong yet.
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This is about HOW they did it, and it's a heck of a story.
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They based the film, "There Will Be Blood," on this 1927 novel, but don't expect to read the same story here.
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My cousin Jim, who is both a professional engineer AND a lawyer, sent me this book a few years back.
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A short book (67 pages) that says much.
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I wish everyone would read this wonderful book at least once.
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As far as I'm concerned, Mike Royko was the greatest newspaper columnist who ever sat down to tell a story in 900 words.
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The only book ever to be written about The Spanish Influenza, during its immediate aftermath.
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If you're in business you are missing the boat if you don't read and then REREAD this book.
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This is the man who came up with the Peter Principle ("In all organizations, all members will rise to the level of their own incompetency.")
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This is one of those astonishing little books that makes me shake my head in wonder over the time the author must have spent putting it together.
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The author prefaces his book by defining the word "plainsong." Plainsong - the unisonous vocal music used in the Christian church from the earliest times; any simple and unadorned melody on air.
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I've wandered around both Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy and this novel made my memories that much richer because it brings the people back to life.
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A must-read for anyone in the HVAC business.
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The folks who write these Complete Construction Series books do a fine job of explaining things.
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My daughter Kelly spent a semester in London and returned with this book, which she handed me and declared to be "the funniest book in the whole world."
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Bring patience, an easy chair and a notebook to this sweeping novel of England.
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My friend, Arlene Puentes, Home Inspector Extraordinaire, sent me a copy of this book. I read it on a Northwest flight to and from Minneapolis from my home in New York.
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What a read this one is! It's the TRUE story of a treasure hunt. It begins with a very detailed telling of the sinking of the Central America, which went down in a hurricane off Virginia in 1857.
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A must read for everyone in the trades.
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Suppose you ran a contest for architects where you challenged each of them to design the best home they could while keeping the size under 1,250 square feet.
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An absolutely fabulous "Could have been" novel about the Cold War that will have you turning pages long into the night.
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I was curious to learn what sort of writing Mrs. Stephen King did so I picked up this book.
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If you're involved with marketing, you'll love this book.
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If you don't live in New York you probably won't get it. If you do live in New York you'll love it.
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"A maiden no more!" Poor Tess gets taken advantage of by one of English literature's greatest cads (I love that word), and alas, she is never again the same.
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Bob Dollar sets out for the Texas panhandle as the agent for a hog-farm conglomerate. He tries to swindle the locals into selling their property to the company, but he tells them that it's for high-end homes, not hog farms.
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What an extraordinary program this is! Imagine taking a house in London and turning it back to exactly the way it was in 1900.
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Daniel Carter Beard helped found the Boy Scouts of America.
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This book was written for kids, but it's also for grown-ups.
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I liked this one because Stephen Dobyns does such a fine job of showing what happens to a small town when some of the children began to disappear. Neighbors turn against each other and the ones who are odd are the ones who are get the worst of it at first - and then it spreads.
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Beautiful writing, and not at all politically correct, so beware.
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Here we have a telling of man's struggle (and it's a thick-headed one) against nature.
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Life's too short to read unabridged classics.
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I loved this book. It's two true stories in one.
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The "E" in the title stands for Entrepreneur. I first read Michael Gerber's book when I was new to business and found I was bobbing like a cork in the North Atlantic.
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Before you sit down to write ANYTHING for your company, do yourself a favor and read this book.
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Because I have such a wild imagination, I used to get myself absolutely sick while flying. And with the work I do, I'm in the air a lot.
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From the guy who brought us "Tuesdays With Morrie" comes another provocative book that will make you think, and if you're like me, also make you hope that there's more than just a good story here.
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Tragic comic stuff from one of my favorite writers. John Irving never lets me down.
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I read this one before seeing the movie.
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So here's what you should do. Get this book and then go find yourself a child. Put the kid on your lap and read him or her 'The Gift of the Magi.'
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My daughter Meghan gave me this one the day she finished it and said, "You have to read this. It's like a ride on a roller coaster."
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A novel about business, and so much more than it seems.
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I wasn't sure I'd like this one because I loved the original, and I can watch the films over and over again, but what Mark Winegardner did was fill in many of the back stories.
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I can't get enough of Nelson DeMille's novels.
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Read this book and you will never look at a tree in the same way again.
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Otto Bettmann is the founder of the Bettmann Archive in New York City. This is one of the world's greatest picture libraries. This book contains many of those pictures - all from turn-of-the-century America.
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An outstanding book about the pandemic of 1918/19 that so influenced the way we heat buildings.
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Morgan Llywelyn has written a number of beautiful novels about Irish history, and I've enjoyed and learned from each one of them.
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If you've never read Michael Connelly you're in for a treat.
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This is the story of four women, four daughters and two countries.
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My eldest daughter, Kelly, gave me this novel when it first came out and told me that I just had to read it.
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Mary Karr really puts the "fun" in dysfunctional.
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Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunder Bolt Kid: A Memoir is a hilarious romp through the 1950s.
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A short and wonderful novel about love and faith.
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Morgan Llywelyn is the James Mitchner of Irish history.
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Slavomir Rawicz was captured in Poland by the Soviets in 1939 and sent to Siberia. He escaped with a few others and then made his way on foot over 1,000 miles of mountains and desert to freedom.
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Possibly the funniest book ever written about small-town America.
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A novel from the fertile imagination of Mr. Doctorow, one of my favorite authors.
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Annie Dillard always leaves me spellbound by her prose.
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This is an excellent book that will convince you of the value of continuing education to a professional's career.
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From where do ideas come? May not be from where you think they come!
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Don't bother with this one unless you're a SERIOUS reader.
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At some point in your life (at LEAST once), you should read the Bible from cover to cover.
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I think that if you're old enough, and if you're able to bring the perspecitve of life to this novel, you will find parts that are so astonishingly beautiful that they will haunt you for years.
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What if Charles Lindbergh had defeated F.D.R. for the presidency in 1940, and then decided to not go to war against Germany and Japan?
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"God doesn't punish us. He just grants us lives long enough so that we punish ourselves."
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This is an extraordinary book that tells the story of the research that made the rapid developments in central heating possible
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A beautiful book about a man and his son surviving on the road during a nuclear winter. A haunting story of love, and hope.
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This book may disturb you. I hope it does.
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This is a tiny book (written and illustrated in 1929) about a carpenter who decides to specialize in privies.
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This is a story about a boy who can't speak, but who can see ghosts.
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This is amazing research into an event of which I had never heard.
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This is a VERY valuable book that will give you great insight into how trends start and spread like epidemics.
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When Janice Papolos was writing her book she called me a bunch of times and we talked about steam and hot water heating systems for hours. I found her to be delightfully curious, and she asked all the right questions.
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This is a strange little tale that's told through the voices of a VERY young brother and sister.
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Fire up the imagination of some little kid. Who knows? You may have a future astronaut on your hands!
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This is a serious book that will have you giggling out loud.
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Growing up on Long Island, just a few miles from Sagamore Hill, I've been a fan of Teddy Roosevelt's for most of my life.
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This is one of the most visual books I've ever read. It's also one that had me smacking myself in the forehead over and over again.
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Colin Smith, a Brit, wrote this one for Americans.
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Mr. Larson wrote, The Devil in the White City, another of those books that I couldn't put down. He has a fine way of mingling two separate stories into one.
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From the collapse of the walkways at the Kansas City Hyatt Recency Hotel, to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that tore itself apart on a mildly windy day in 1940, and everything in between, this book will hold your attention from the first page to the last.
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A classic, and one you probably read in high school.
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Trafficis a very good read. It's a bit tedious throughout, but then a surprise will pop up and really catch your attention. In that way, Traffic is just like, well, traffic.
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This is one of those books that you read and then immediately lend to a friend.
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You can get a lot out of an old steam system
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This one comes highly recommended by a reader. Here's what he had to say:
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A very, very tough, but extraordinary book.
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Which teaches exactly what the title states, and very well!
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An Irish tale that will touch your heart
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This provocative book is just FILLED with wisdom.
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Ever wonder what goes on inside a major political campaign?
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Successful people often develop bad habits. Comes from being so successful.
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This one will stop and make you think, whether you're a woman or a man.
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Kent Haruf also wrote Plainsong, which I liked more than I liked this earlier novel.
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I read this one in an hour and then passed it around to the rest of the family to read, enjoy, and learn from.
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Thanks to Roy Settgas from coming to this list, and then telling me I must read this one. I'm glad I listened!
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You know the story about the one-armed paperhanger?
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My Canadian friend, Jack Ennis Martin, sent me a copy of this book for Christmas. His friend, Rick Ranson, had written it about his experiences working on the Distant Early Warning system (a relic of the Cold War) in way-Northern Canada, and on drill ships in the Arctic Ocean.
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If you'd like to write better than you do now get this book, study it, and do the exercises.
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This is another one of those books that taught me how to come up with ideas.
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You CAN'T be too careful, especially after reading these descriptions of how dozens of real folks have managed to launch themselves into the Great Beyond by doing things that were none too bright.
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