Book picks similar to
Shindai: The Art of Japanese Bed-Fighting by Ellen Schumaker


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Meditations in Green


Stephen Wright - 1983
    It is a kaleidoscopic collage that whirls about an indelible array of images and characters: perverted Winky, who opted for the army to stay off of welfare; eccentric Payne, who’s obsessed with the film he’s making of the war; bucolic Claypool, who’s irrevocably doomed to a fate worse than death. Just to mention a few. And floating at the center of this psychedelic spin is Spec. 4 James Griffin. In country, Griffin studies the jungle of carpet bomb photos as he fights desperately to keep his grip on reality. And battling addiction stateside after his tour, he studies the green of household plants as he struggles mightily to get his sanity back. With mesmerizing action and Joycean interior monologues, Stephen Wright has created a book that is as much an homage to the darkness of war as it is a testament to the transcendence of art.

The Magic Wagon


Joe R. Lansdale - 1986
    Narrator Buster Fogg's family is wiped out by a twister in an early sequence described with surreal verve. Buster hitches on with Billy Bob Daniels, a patent-medicine pusher and trick shooter who claims to be the illegitimate son of Wild Bill Hickock, joining an entourage consisting of a kindly ex-slave named Albert, and Rot Toe, the wrestling ape. Adventures on the road, which include swiping the mummified remains of Billy Bob's "pa" and swindling settlers with their concoction of watered-down whiskey, stoke personal tensions that only aggravate troubles when their wagon rolls into Mud Creek and Billy Bob is called out by Texas Jack, a dime-novel desperado who, legend says, intimidated even Wild Bill.Lansdale's affection for the classic western is never in doubt, although he spends much of the novel skillfully deflating the romance of heroic reputations made as much by luck and exaggeration as by skill with a gun. The true charm of the story, though, is in its telling, which melds laconic humor, colorful colloquialisms and outrageous figures of speech into a Twainesque tall tale. This novel endures as a modern western classic. Published in a small print run with limited distribution.- From Publisher's Weekely

The Serpent


Jane Gaskell - 1963
    Is she a Goddess? Cija herself believes that she is. For 17 years her mother, the Dictatress, has kept her imprisoned in a tower. She releases her, with one object in view: to seduce Zerd, the snake-scaled "Dragon-General" of an occupying army, then stab him to death. Thru the forests of the sling-using Fouls, among the reptile birds, in lands where half-human hybrids are kept as pets, Cija travels with the Northern Army. In the great vicious City of the South, Zerd makes plans with the Southerners to attack the fabulous Continent of Atlan, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Cija escapes & is pursued. She finds a lover; there is fighting between the Northern & Southern armies; she suffers rape at the hands of two very different men... This fantastic story of love, jealousy & sudden death is unlike anything you have ever read. It grips the imagination from start to finish.

Zod Wallop


William Browning Spencer - 1995
    "Gotta get moving," Rock said. A couple of hundred million years went by. A rock is always slow to take action. A rock watches an oak grow from a sapling to a towering tree, and it's a flash and a dazzle in the mind of a rock. What was that? Rock thinks. Or maybe, Huh?That's how Zod Wallop starts. Harry Gainesborough wrote and drew the story three years ago, before his daughter drowned. Now he writes nothing. Raymond Story read Zod Wallop while he was a patient at Harwood Psychiatric. Now the book means everything to him - so much so that he'd like to meet its author and live out its events. In fact, Zod Wallop means so much to Raymond that he has taken great pains to escape the institution and is now journeying to Harry Gainesborough's house with his young wife, Emily, in tow.These odd doings alone would be enough to unsettle Harry, but they're compounded by other coincidences. Bizarre coincidences. Occurrences that lead Harry to believe that Zod Wallop is actually happening.

Son of Man


Robert Silverberg - 1971
    This classic, now finally back in print, sweeps us--and Clay, the main character--into Earth's far-away future. It's a time when no one has heard of Shakespeare, Mozart, or Darwin, and when the planet is inhabited by beings of great intelligence, ambivalent sexuality, and extraordinary powers. Clay embarks on a panoramic journey, encompassing a billion years, and comes to understand that the era from which he came is nothing more than a minute fiber in the band of time.

An Infinite Summer


Christopher Priest - 1979
    

Monkey on a Stick: Murder, Madness and the Hare Krishnas


John Hubner - 1988
    Two investigative journalists, John Hubner and Lindsey Gruson, masterfully document the staggering number of crimes tied to the Hare Krishnas and the work of the dedicated cop determined to see justice in this fascinating and terrifying true crime story.Description from Google Books

Crucifax


Ray Garton - 1988
    Garton has a way with teenage boredom, atmospheric small town isolation, incest, drug abuse, and over the top violence and he has managed to create a modern remake of the story of the Pied Piper with a sinister character, Mace (who wears a crucifax around his neck a crucifix with an axlike blade on it) appearing on the scene, seducing mixed up kids with his siren song of pleasure, power, and indulgence, all leading to a horrifically unsettling climax of death and destruction. And then there are the ratlike things that do the piper s bidding . . .

The Wild


Whitley Strieber - 1991
    By the author of The Wolfen and Communion. Reissue.

The Devil's Advocate


Taylor Caldwell - 1952
    All he had to do was sacrifice that fragile thing called integrity. Instead Andrew Durant chose a different path. Against him were ranged the mighty forces of the Establishment. At stake was all he was and could ever hope to be. Here, from the magnificent pen of one of the greatest and most spellbinding storytellers of our days, is one of her most unforgettable novelistic triumphs - the searing, soaring story of an idealistic man in a world of corruption, battling to save both himself and the beautiful woman who had become a helpless pawn in a gigantic game of power and perveristy.

Very Special People


Frederick Drimmer - 1971
    It is in tip-top condition having been housed in a smoke-free environment since its publication. It is in mint condition

Loving John


May Pang - 1983
    This is her story of life with John and Yoko.

Prophet of Death: The Mormon Blood-Atonement Killings


Pete Earley - 1991
    Reprint. NYT.

Up and Down with the Rolling Stones


Tony Sanchez - 1979
    A biography of the Rolling Stones.

The Sporting Club


Thomas McGuane - 1968
    Two old friends strike up an old feud filled with dangerous games on the vast preserve of their hunting club in this rollicking story of boyhood rivalries pushed to the limit.