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"After so many years, and so many lists, you might think the task of choosing the 10 Best Books would get easier. If only. The sublime story collections alone created agonies of indecision. So did the superb literary biographies we read - and deeply admired. But in the end the decisions had to be made."

In the summer of 2009, Miranda July was struggling to finish writing a screenplay. During her increasingly long lunch breaks, she began to obsessively read the PennySaver, the iconic classifieds booklet. Who was the person selling the "Large leather Jacket, $10"? It seemed important to find out - or at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay. Accompanied by photographer Brigitte Sire, July crisscrossed Los Angeles to meet a random selection of sellers, glimpsing 13 surprisingly moving and profoundly specific realities, along the way shaping her film, and herself, in unexpected ways.

Video blog. Discuses photography and poetry. Literary Arts.

A wonderfully told story of the pain of individuals using each other for their own purposes. I enjoyed this book very much and as the author diligently builds upon two people using each other to satisfy their loneliness and then the numbness of the suffering that is created from such a codependent relationship. The unfortunate pain of almost redemption but never resolution at the end of the book left me feeling the way I should feel: a bit saddened for both of the characters.

A review of the book by Derren Brown called tricks of the mind.A must for any fan of his!

Google Book Search lets you download books, but only if they're in public domain, like Hamlet. All the other books are available as a limited preview or as a snippet view in Google Book Search. You could download the image corresponding to each page of a book or you could automatize the process using a download manager. Another option is to use Google Book Downloader, a third-party Windows tool that downloads the pages from Google Book Search using several proxies and merges the images in a PDF file. Google Book Downloader will only retrieve the pages that are available online, so you won't be able to download entire books in most cases. The application requires .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and it's not very clear if it breaks the terms of use for Google Book Search.