Book picks similar to
Oh! by Mary Robison
fiction
novels
bought-used
tbr-humour
The Collected Fanzines
Harmony Korine - 2008
Before those books, he and fellow artist Mark Gonzales put together limited run fanzines showcasing their bitingly satirical and wildly inappropriate collages and language pieces to be sold out of the Alleged and Andrea Rosen galleries in New York City. This boxed set contains replicas of all eight zines, perfectly reproduced, with a bonus poster added to the package.
My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist
Mark Leyner - 1990
It is voiced in first-person by an anonymous narrator often using jargon, broken grammar and punctuation with a poetry-like structure. The narration shifts quickly from random idea to idea with little to no connectivity between them, typically giving vivid descriptions of abstract situations. The narrative styles in the book vary significantly as well, with no apparent solid identity to the narrator itself. Some characters and ideas emerge suddenly and disappear without explanation.Within this form incorporate elements of science fiction, cyberpunk, tabloid journalism, and advertising slogans. Due to its use of pop-culture references (e.g. to kung-fu films) and literary allusions it requires knowledge of (then) current affairs. Leyner resorts to irony and humor as a means of interplay with traditional realism.-Wikipedia
Fuzzy Memories
Jack Handey - 1996
The author shares memories of his improbable past, from a parent-centered Thanksgiving, to playing hooky (and taking notes), to maintaining a termite farm.
With the Flow
Joris-Karl Huysmans - 2003
It is published here with the short story The Retreat of Monsieur Bougran. M. Folantin is a government employee who is overwhelmed by the quotidian misery of life. The story follows his quixotic quest for enjoyment as he goes to a restaurant, to the cinema, and to a prostitute—but ultimately finds that nothing can relieve him of his disgust and boredom with the business of living. Joris–Karl Huysmans, art critic and author of Against Nature, is a leading figure in France’s Decadent Movement.
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris Summary & Study Guide
BookRags - 2010
61 pages of summaries and analysis on Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.This study guide includes the following sections: Plot Summary, Chapter Summaries & Analysis, Characters, Objects/Places, Themes, Style, Quotes, and Topics for Discussion.
Tracer
Frederick Barthelme - 1985
Martin, in the middle of a divorce, is seeking solace. But settles in for some rest and rehabilitation with his soon-to-be ex-sister-in-law.
Reginald Perrin Omnibus
David Nobbs - 1990
This omnibus brings together the first three Reginald Perrin novels containing a lifetime's outrageous and hilarious adventures.When we first meet Reggie, he is sick to death with selling exotic ices at Sunshine Desserts. Driven to desperation by the rat race and the unpunctuality of Britain's trains, Reggie's small eccentricites escalate to the extreme, until finally he leaves the unacceptable face of capitalism behind by driving off in a stolen motorised jelly. In his pursuit of the unconventional, he devotes himself to faking his own death, opening a shop devoted to selling completely useless goods, and setting up a commune strictly for the middle-class and middle-aged.Join Reggie, who didn't get where he is today without some help from some memorable supporting characters, in one man's quest to avoid an everyday existence.
Elect H. Mouse State Judge
Nelly Reifler - 2013
Mouse State Judge.Two young girl are abducted and held hostage by a band of religious fanatics. The girls' anxious father, a politician on the eve of an important election, has reasons of his own not to go to the police, so he hires a pair of shady private eyes to investigate. All the elements of a classic noir—except that the kidnapped girls are mice, the abductors are Sunshine Family dolls, and the detectives are Barbie and Ken. Part 1970s childhood dreamscape, part Raymond Chandler, this is a world both familiar and transformed. Sex shops, illicit affairs, spies, political hypocrisy, and dangerous zealots may coexist with Barbie and Ken's acrobatic poolside sex, but the crises of faith that Nelly Reifler's characters face are as real as our own. Elect H. Mouse State Judge is an unusual—and masterful—blend of irony and tenderness, and a moving portrayal of a father trying and failing to do the right thing.
The Natural Man
Ed McClanahan - 1983
"Others have observed the natural man in the American condition before, but nobody has done it with such good humor. Ed McClanahan's good humor both sharpens his eye and gentles his vision. I don't know where else, now, you would find workmanship that is at once so meticulous and so exuberant" - Wendell Berry.
Krazy Kat
Jay Cantor - 1987
She sees the bricks he hurls at her head as tokens of love, and each day Ignatz arranges a cunningly different method of delivery for his missile. But when Ignatz and Krazy witness the mega-brick explosion in the desert, Krazy becomes depressed, and refuses to perform. To coax her back to work so they can regain their lost limelight, Ignatz invents his own brand of psychotherapy, orchestrates her kidnapping, and tries to seduce Krazy with promises of stardom from a Hollywood producer. As the mouse confronts the Kat with bewildering new concepts like sex, death, and politics, Ignatz and Krazy begin yearning to become round, for a fullness of body and spirit beyond their two-dimensional realm.Forming an altogether witty and winning counterpoint to George Herriman’s classic comic strip, Jay Cantor’s kinetic novel has become a classic in its own right, one of those masterpieces that creates its own unforgettable universe.
More Kinky Friedman
Kinky Friedman - 1993
The three novels included in this volume are Musical Chairs, Frequent Flyer, and Elvis, Jesus & Coca-Cola.
Alice in Bed
Cathleen Schine - 1983
Her legs won’t move (the pain coming in “hot waves, like acute embarrassment”). She’s in traction that looks to her like a late-night TV gadget (“It slices! It dices! It mashes! It whips!”). Dr. Witherspoons (famous attending physician to famous football teams) can’t find cause or cure…In this wryly comic and exhilarating first novel, Cathleen Schine gives us a young, sassy, appealing girl suddenly struck down and fighting back; the year she spends recovering; and the odd, crowded life that buzzes around her: her parents divorcing (her father apologetically off to Vancouver to a new bride, a new life)… her mother, well-meaning and well-appointed (except for her new-found beau, who wears a diamond pinky ring), suddenly by herself, representing Family, sitting with Alice, every day, all day (starting and abandoning endless needlepoints), comforting and irritating her daughter… the specialists flown in for consultation (“The Dr. O’Solomon who wrote Cement and the Orthopod” and Dr. Onnen, who limps), patronizing and prodding her… her nurses fussing and her two doctor-lovers hovering around her—Dr. Davis (bearing violets, quoting Shakespeare, going all sultry) and Dr. Fresser, genuine Israeli hypnotist extraordinaire, authority on pain, barging into her room, his presence “filling the place like a pinball machine,” but able to induce in his patient moments of true calm…Alice—on the surface involved, touched, even amused—participating in the life of her family, her fellow patients, her nurses, her doctor-lovers, yet all the while instinctively focusing every ounce of her real strength on the recovery of her freedom, the recapturing of what she once took for granted: motion.Here is a novel that expresses within its exuberant humors a sense of the eternal contest between the randomness of fate and the resilience of personality.A remarkable book. An impressive debut.
No One Can Do Anything Worse to You Than You Can
Sam Pink - 2012
You will feel at home eating your own heart off a commemorative plate featuring a picture of your corpse.You won't learn anything except that, "No one can do anything to you that's worse than what you're already thought to yourself. No one can do anything worse to you than the things you've already done. No one can do anything worse to you than you can."
Person/a
Elizabeth Ellen - 2017
Told in four volumes over seven years, with emails, g-chats, and an ‘interview’ with Lydia Davis (and a nod to Ms. Davis’s The End of the Story), the style of Person/a is often experimental, pushing the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, obsession and mental instability, female independence and a loyalty to current and former lovers, but with the ultimate loyalty being to oneself or one's writing, and is there a difference? and should we be ashamed?