Book picks similar to
The Geek by Alice Louise Ramirez


9
mm-saucy
o-moist-market-paper-bags-o
v-hip-v

A Life Full of Holes


Driss ben Hamed Charhadi - 1964
    The powerful story of a shepherd and petty trafficker struggling to maintain hope as he wrestles with the grim realities of daily life, it is the first novel ever written in the Arabic dialect Moghrebi, faithfully recorded and translated into English by Bowles. Straightforward yet rich in complex emotions, it is a fascinating inside look at an unfamiliar culture—harsh and startling, yet interwoven with a poignant, poetic beauty.

The System of Dante's Hell


Amiri Baraka - 1965
    A pungent and lyrical portrait of mid-'60s black protest."-- Kirkus Reviews With a new introduction by Woodie King Jr.This 1965 novel is a remarkable narrative of childhood and youth, structured on the themes of Dante's Inferno: violence, incontinence, fraud, treachery. With a poet's skill Baraka creates the atmosphere of hell, and with dramatic power he reconstructs the brutality of the black slums of Newark, a small Southern town, and New York City. The episodes contained within the novel represent both states of mind and states of the soul--lyrical, fragmentary, and allusive.

The Waltz Invention


Vladimir Nabokov - 1966
    Nabokov tells us in "The Waltz Invention" that our salvation today rests on a perfect understanding of the human heart. "The Waltz Invention," written when only a handful of scientists were concerned with atomic possibilities, could have been read as a puzzling, incredible fantasy in those days, but of course today a man like Waltz is at the center of our nightmares. We had better have a realistic understanding especially of a tyrant's heart in our fissionable age, MR. Nabokov says. Salvator Waltz is in possession of an infernal machine. He can operate it at will; and the machine is hidden away from all eye in the symbolical country of which Waltz is a citizen. With the same intricate levels of brilliancy as Vladimir Nabokov's other world acclaimed tales, "The Waltz Invention" write in a play form in 1938, is a classic tragedy and a comedy.

Strange Doings


R.A. Lafferty - 1972
    276 pages, 1972, SBN 684-12530-7; New York, America and Canada

Hello Summer, Goodbye


Michael G. Coney - 1975
    It had its differences; its ice goblins, its curious furry lorrin, its thickening water, and its unearthly tides, but for a young man like Alika-Drove thinking of a vacation by the sea these oddities were the norm.But this vacation was different. Rax was coming into the ascendant and Rax, that cold second sun, was the equivalent of evil, of Satan and of Hell. And as its time drew near everything began to get warped and sinister...until for Alika-Drove it would be either the harsh brutal end of his innocence or the end of his world forever.

Blind Voices


Tom Reamy - 1978
    Campbell, Jr., Award for best young science fiction writer. One summer day in the 1920s, Haverstock's Traveling Curiosus and Wondershow rides into a small Midwestern town. Haverstock's show is a presentation of mysterious wonders: feats of magic, strange creatures, and frightening powers. Three teenage girls attend the opening performance that evening which, for each, promises love and threatens death. The three girls are drawn to the show and its performers-a lusty centaur, Angel the magical albino boy, the rowdy stage hands-but frightened by the enigmatic owner, Haverstock. The girls at first try to dismiss these marvels as trickery, but it becomes all too real, too vivid to be other than nightmare reality. Each feels the force of the show and its power to alter everyday lives: Francine is drawn embarrassingly to the centaur, Rose makes an assignation with one of the hands and gets in trouble, and Evelyn is fascinated by the pathetic, mysterious Angel, The Boy Who Can Fly, and together they plan escape. No stranger or more disturbing vision of the dark side of carnival life has been handled with such grace or conviction since Bradbury's vintage period. With a poet's mastery of language Reamy brings his circus of characters to a startling, fantastic conclusion. ABOUT THE AUTHOR TOM REAMY, at the time of his sudden death, was one of the most popular young writers in the Science Fiction field in recent years. His style is in the fantastic tradition of Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury, and BLIND VOICES, his only novel, demands comparison to such masterpieces as Bradbury's Dandelion Wine or Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Subliminal Seduction


Wilson Bryan Key - 1973
    PSYCHOLOGICALLY POWERFUL COVERT MIND CONTROL METHODS REVEALED: This innovative book teaches radically Potent Covert Seduction Secrets on how to attract and seduce women or men with subliminal mind control techniques.

Music and Imagination


Aaron Copland - 1952
    He urges more frequent performance and more sensitive hearing of the music of new composers. He discusses sound media, new and old, and looks toward a musical future in which the timbres and intensities developed by the electronic engineer may find their musical shape and meaning. He considers the twentieth-century revolt against classical form and tonality, and the recent disturbing political interference with the form and content of music. He analyzes American and contemporary European music and the flowering of specifically Western imagination in Villa-Lobos and Charles Ives. The final chapter is an account, partially autobiographical, of the composer who seeks to find, in an industrial society like that of the United States, justification for the life of art in the life about him. Mr. Copeland, whose spectacular success in arriving at a musical vernacular has brought him a wide audience, will acquire as many readers as he has listeners with this imaginatively written book.

How I Wrote Certain of My Books


Raymond Roussel - 1935
    His unearthly style based on elaborate linguistic riddles and puns fascinated the Surrealists and famously influenced the composition of Marcel Duchamp's -Large Glass, - but also affected writers as diverse as Gide, Robbe-Grillet and Foucault (author of a book-length study of Roussel). The title essay of this collection is the key to Roussel's method, and it is accompanied by selections from all his major works of fiction, drama and poetry, translated by his New York School admirers John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch and Harry Mathews, and the painter and author Trevor Winkfield. Ashbery writes that Roussel's work is -like the perfectly preserved temple of a cult which has disappeared without a trace... we can still admire its inhuman beauty, and be stirred by a language that seems always on the point of revealing its secret.-

The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People


Irving Wallace - 1976
    Each entry describes the subject's fame and achievements, and within this context examines their sexual activities. The entries are preceded by over 50 lists of sexual characteristics in which the subjects of the biographies are listed under such headings as mother-fixated, masochists and sadists, and endurance and staying power. Characters featured include Henry VIII, Napoleon Bonaparte, Catherine the Great, Marilyn Monroe, Janis Joplin and Mozart.

Crompton Divided


Robert Sheckley - 1978
    Separated at an early age from two conflicting personalities, Alistair Crompton has decided on a daring scheme to reintegrate himself. But installed in different bodies and despatched to different planets, his two other selves have developed lives of their own: Loomis, who is completely self-indulgent and amoral; and Stack, vicious and impulsive. Both are direct opposites to the original Alistair; and their eventual reunion seems unlikely and highly dangerous....

Still Holding


Bruce Wagner - 2003
     In his most ambitious book to date, Still Holding, Wagner immerses readers in post-September 11 Hollywood, revealing as much rabid ambition, rampant narcissism, and unchecked mental illness as ever. He infiltrates the gilded life of a superstar actor/sex symbol/practicing Buddhist, the compromised world of a young actress whose big break comes when she's hired to play a corpse on Six Feet Under, and the strange parallel universe of look-alikes -- an entire industry in which struggling actors are hired out for parties and conventions to play their famous counterparts. Alternately hilarious and heartfelt, ferocious and empathetic, Still Holding is Bruce Wagner's most expertly calibrated work.

Day of the Guns


Mickey Spillane - 1965
    This is a PRE-ISBN edition.A tough-guy mystery to please even the most bloodthirsty of fans

The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death


Daniel Pinkwater - 1982
    Walter and Winston set out to rescue the inventor of the Alligatron, a computer developed from an avocado which is the world's last defense against the space-realtors.

Zappa the Hard Way


Andrew Greenaway - 2010
    In 1988 Frank Zappa toured with a twelve-piece band that had rehearsed for months, learned a repertoire of over 100 songs and played an entirely different set each night. It is why, in Zappa's own words, it was -the best band you never heard in your life- - a reference to East Coast American audiences who never got the chance to see this particular touring ensemble. Zappa appointed bass player Scott Thunes to rehearse the group in his absence. In carrying out this role, Thunes was apparently abrasive, blunt and rude to the other members and two factions quickly developed: Thunes and stunt guitarist Mike Keneally on the one side; the remaining nine band members on the other. The atmosphere deteriorated as the tour progressed through America and on to Europe. Before leaving Europe, Zappa told the band that there were ten more weeks of concerts booked in the USA and asked them: -If Scott's in the band, will you do the tour?- With the exception of Keneally, they all said -no-. Rather than replace Thunes, Zappa cancelled almost three months of concerts and never toured again - claiming to have lost $400,000 in the process. 'Zappa The Hard Way' documents that tour. If you think touring can be fun, think again! Yes there were groupies and the usual paraphernalia associated with rock 'n' roll, but there was also bitterness and skulduggery on a scale that no one could imagine. Author Andrew Greenaway has interviewed the surviving band members and others associated with the tour to unravel the goings on behind the scenes that drove Zappa to call a halt to proceedings, despite the huge personal financial losses. This paperback edition includes a foreword by Zappa's sister Candy, and an afterword by Pauline Butcher, Zappa's former secretary and author of 'Freak Out! My Life With Frank Zappa', 'Zappa The Hard Way' might just be the best book you've never read in your life!