Book picks similar to
Look! Look! Feathers by Mike Young


fiction
short-stories
contemporary
poetry

Divorcer


Gary Lutz - 2011
    DIVORCER is a collection of seven harrowing and hyperprecise short stories about ruinous relationships and their aftershocks.

The Really Funny Thing About Apathy


Chelsea Martin - 2010
    In THE REALLY FUNNY THING ABOUT APATHY, Chelsea Martin's charming but merciless prose employs mathematical paradoxes and theories of infinity to examine the inner workings of the bored and culturally over-stimulated while they idly consider the meaning of life. Overwhelmed and assaulted by their own inner monologues, these characters stumble through a series of external events, obsessing over the possible connections and ultimately assigning deep meaning to them.

Other Kinds


Dylan Nice - 2012
    They are stories about the woods, houses hidden in the gaps between mountains. Behind them, the skeletons of old and powerful machines rust into the slate and leaves. Water red with iron leeches from the empty mines and pools near a stone foundation. The boy there plays in the bones because he is a child and this will be his childhood. He watches while winter comes falling slowly down over the road. Sometimes he remembers a girl, her hair and the perfume she wore. These are stories about her and where she might have gone. He waits for sleep because in the next story he will leave. The boy watches an airplane blink red past his window. From here, you can't hear its violence.

Young Americans


Jordan Castro - 2012
    Then open up Young Americans, seems obvious what Jordan Castro is doing is revolutionary, he expressing emotions through poetry that have never been done before. The style, the way the subject matter is portrayed, even the meter, are new." - Noah Cicero (author of The Human War, The Insurgent, and more)“If you are a person who doesn’t really know what they are doing and you would like to read about another person who doesn’t really know what they are doing either, I recommend reading this poetry book. I enjoyed reading these poems. Or something.” - Chris Killen (author of The Bird Room)“I read these poems three times in one night, then put the duvet over my head and held my knees for a while. It’s good when something makes sense. I really really liked these poems.” - Ben Brooks (author of Grow Up)

Beautiful Blemish


Kevin Sampsell - 2005
    In the short story collection Beautiful Blemish, Sampsell dives deep into the human psyche to reveal the layers of secret desire, loneliness and hope buried in our hearts. The stories in Beautiful Blemish display an American voice that mixes humor, experimentation, and unflinching pathos to full effect.

Baby Geisha


Trinie Dalton - 2012
    The result is a kind of everyday fantastic. Dalton nails the Walserian trick of evincing a sincerity nearly indistinguishable from irony. The effect is a poised instability, more uncanny than the magic the stories sometimes describe."-Bookforum"Dalton handles her narratives with a deft skill and a keen, distinct, confident voice that never eases up, never ceases to surprise, leaving readers happy to experience her intriguing world up close. Just the way we like it."-Brooklyn Rail"[The stories] feel like brilliant sexual fairy tales on drugs. Dalton writes of self-discovery and sex with a knowing humility and humor."-Interview Magazine"'Pura Vida,' about an emotionally unavailable journalist on assignment to cover a sloth clinic in Costa Rica, is a standout, its final moment between woman and sloth arriving with breathtaking lightness, like the first flower of spring. Other memorable outings include trips to the Missouri Ozarks ("Wet Look"), the Alps ("Shrub of Emotion"), and the Painted Desert ("Baby Geisha"), with men and women on the verge of, but never quite reaching, psycho-sexual breakthroughs."-Los Angeles Magazine Critic's Pick"[Baby Geisha] pokes fun, it's satirical, there's an underlying delicious irony to it, and the telling parts are the ones where Dalton coins names, cuts down trees with her paragraphs, gives us just a touch of the absurd... Dalton's skill as a writer, and above all her expertise in choosing words that play into a darker cultural picture--an offsetting of America's natural high!--are not to be missed here."-FanzineBaby Geisha is a collection of thirteen sexually-charged stories that roam from the Coney Island Ferris wheel to the Greek Isles.True to Trinie Dalton's form, the stories in Baby Geisha are distinctly imagined while also representing a more grounded approach in the author's style. There's the Joan Didion-obsessed starving journalist of "Pura Vida," struggling to maintain a relationship with her performance artist sisters (or anyone, for that matter), on assignment in Costa Rica to write an article on sloth-hugging. "Millennium Chill" is about a woman who discovers that her body heat is mysteriously linked to that of an elderly beggar.Baby Geisha serves to support Dalton's reputation as a remarkable stylist and a very original artist.

The Collected Works of Noah Cicero Vol. I


Noah Cicero - 2013
    I" contains the early masterpieces by the greatest minimalist writer ever to hail from Youngstown, Ohio. Collecting Noah Cicero's most acclaimed and popular works, this volume includes the short novels "The Human War" (soon to be a major motion picture), "The Doomed," "The Condemned," and "Burning Babies," along with rare novellas and short stories that have not been available to the public in years. Stark in their beauty, raw in their sadness, and driven by a desperate compulsion to save - and be saved by - humanity, "The Collected Works of Noah Cicero Vol. I" highlights what it is to be young and poor in America. Buy this book and learn why freedom is good. Buy this book and become beautiful. Buy this book and know that the distance between you and happiness is the distance between you and the nearest Denny's. So get in the car and drive.

Self-Help


Lorrie Moore - 1985
    Filled with the sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language Moore has become famous for, these nine glittering tales marked the introduction of an extravagantly gifted writer.

Samuel Johnson Is Indignant


Lydia Davis - 2001
    A couple suspects their friends think them boring; a woman resolves to see herself as nothing but then concludes she's set too high a goal; and a funeral home receives a letter rebuking it for linguistic errors. Lydia Davis once again proves in the words of the Los Angeles Times "one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction."

Pee on Water


Rachel B. Glaser - 2010
    "Rachel Glaser has written a game-changer. I have a couple of rules about things I allow myself to like. Rachel breaks all of them and her stories leave me hunting for my rule book. Where is my rule book? Damn her. Bless her. Say what you will. PEE ON WATER is a new way to breathe"--Giancarlo DiTrapano.

Black Light


Kimberly King Parsons - 2019
    In this debut collection of enormously perceptive and brutally unsentimental short stories, Parsons illuminates the ache of first love, the banality of self-loathing, the scourge of addiction, the myth of marriage, and the magic and inevitable disillusionment of childhood.Taking us from hot Texas highways to cold family kitchens, from the freedom of pay-by-the-hour motels to the claustrophobia of private school dorms, these stories erupt off the page with a primal howl—sharp-voiced, bitter, and wise. Black Light contains the type of storytelling that resonates somewhere deep, in the well of memory that repudiates nostalgia.

Praying Drunk


Kyle Minor - 2014
    A man crushes pills on the bathroom counter while his son watches from the hallway; missionaries clumsily navigate an uprising with barbed wire and broken glass; a boy disparages memorized scripture, facedown on the asphalt, as he fails to fend off his bully. From Kentucky to Florida to Haiti, these seemingly disparate lives are woven together within a series of nested repetitions, enacting the struggle to remain physically and spiritually alive throughout the untamable turbulence of their worlds. In a masterful blend of fiction, autobiography, and surrealism, Kyle Minor shows us that the space between fearlessness and terror is often very small. Long before Praying Drunk reaches its plaintive, pitch-perfect end, Minor establishes himself again and again as one of the most talented younger writers in America.

My Father's Tears and Other Stories


John Updike - 2009
    High-school class reunions, in “The Walk with Elizanne” and “The Road Home,” restore their hero to youth’s commonwealth where, as the narrator of the title story confides, “the self I value is stored, however infrequently I check on its condition.” Exotic locales encountered in the journeys of adulthood include Morocco, Florida, Spain, Italy, and India. The territory of childhood, with its fundamental, formative mysteries, is explored in “The Guardians,” “The Laughter of the Gods,” and “Kinderszenen.” Love’s fumblings among the bourgeoisie yield the tart comedy of “Free,” “Delicate Wives,” “The Apparition,” and “Outage.”In sum, American experience from the Depression to the aftermath of 9/11 finds reflection in these glittering pieces of observation, remembrance, and imagination.

No One Belongs Here More Than You


Miranda July - 2007
    Screenwriter, director, and star of the acclaimed film Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a startling, sexy, and tender collection.

Public Library and Other Stories


Ali Smith - 2015
    With this brilliantly inventive collection, Ali Smith joins the campaign to save our public libraries and celebrate their true place in our culture and history.