Beyond the usual suspects

It was about 8:30 on a recent Wednesday night. The woman in the store was on the young end of middle age. She said she used to live in Durham, had moved to D.C. But she still made a point of coming into The Regulator every time she was in town. She especially loved getting book recommendations from us. We always directed her to such good reading.

So Dave Felton, Elliot and I were on the spot. We picked up Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Lee Smith's On Agate Hill, and Haven Kimmel's The Used World. The woman listened to our spiels with interest, but then, one at a time, she put each of the books back on the shelves. These all sound quite good, she said, but I would probably come across them at a number of other bookstores. I'm looking for some books that I'm only going to find out about at The Regulator.

Well. All right. A reader with a sense of adventure! She walked out of the store with Zeroville by Steve Erickson, The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall, and The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill. Thinking later about other "well below the radar" titles I could have recommended, I came up with Jon McGregor's If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and John Crowley's underground masterpiece, Little, Big.

Looking for adventure? Pick up any of these titles, or ask a Regulator for a recommendation. This kind of thing is fun!

Tom