Customer Comments

If you got an Oscar Wilde impersonator high and had them write fortune cookies, they might sound like these. Some profundity, some insipid life stuff collecting like algae blooms on the slick surface of a dream.

The acrobatic meta narration of fairy tales in contrast with modern New York hipster teenagers has its moments ... of charm, of eye rolling earnest name dropping of whatever band, book, contemporary touchstone while meandering the forests of an AI generating familial road story with murderous ideations of the collective unconscious.

I feel this is a book for straight people who have never seen/heard of Paris is Burning. The baby gays coming up on RuPaul's Drag Race who speak exclusively in "gagged, tea, shade" should definitely give this a perusal, but as many novels inhabiting the nascent AIDs ruination of New York, this feels very incomplete.

A truly weird novella, stretching a fantastic short story into the realm of almost a novel, but still retaining its bizarre phantasmagorical mist. Acidic humour, LSD in the suburbs banality in a shotgun pellet burst into your chest. This tiny weirdo emerges from the depths fortutiously with the release of "Shape of Water" (totally and categorically unrelated) to forever remind us that villains are we, hairless bipeds with charming vocabularies and endless infatuation with our supposed magnificience on the cosmos and the food chain. Is there anything more monstrous than the suburbs? The dark humour cracking like fine china under the weight of expectations both banal and ordained by the convention of wedded bliss.

Trust No Aunty has it all: recipes, advice, gorgeous and hilarious illustrations. This how-to-guide navigates the East meets West dynamics with a 21st century and feminist edge.

An astringently mordant glimpse of obsessions attempting to fill the widening, endless holes of manufactured desire with ... a merman. Bleakly, ridiculously, hilariously illustrating selfcare culture, heteronormative mating rituals for less youthful females, academia, online dating - this is a beach read for someone who may or may not casually consume pharmaceuticals not prescribed to them, or indulge in mild kleptomania, or for those looking for something in between masturbatory naps stretching the shadows marking time of a passing afternoon.

There's not an analogue for toxic masculinity; more the insidious expansive mist of expectation for women. Emotional labor hardly claws the surface of beading blood. This incisive character study leaves "why" and tiny bodies in its wake.

Split and briny, oysters and hearts. Few places inspire environment as character like Florida. Sure New York proliferates the good schools and manners of the urbane world traveler mired in Salinger forsaken dialogue mining for a heart of substance and a line of gin soaked wit. Florida is the expanse of divorced parents, rehab bound gagged and discarded, childhood stretched and bent like gum in summer. This collection was truly excellent; young voices that I hope will become smokier, louder, and a bit less weary.

I really wanted this in audio, read by the author, but the wait was unbearable enough so I just READ it in my approximation of her voice. It's a face paced slow burn (curse the easy and obvious fire related adjectives, but they are there). You'll finish quickly, mesmerized at the pace and unraveling of a decades old mystery brought back into focus. Enjoy!

An exquisitely arranged life of trivia, heartache, loss, and joy swirling through an open window in a fast car on an empty highway.

A gorgeous and affecting tribute to a New York that is no longer. A memoir of a grease smudged fantastical chaos-riddled hole in the wall lovingly sketched by a lifer.

Satan serving teenage hijinx, with compelling stories and dark imagery.

No bullshit coping mechanisms masquerading as snarky advice.

Witty, insightful beach read highlighting the patriarchy, slut-shaming, and identity.

The wait was brutal, the payoff was glorious, and the thrill of ANOTHER one looming in hopefully the not so near future...

Far more enjoyable than the previous and obvious tie-in with the "did we REALLY need this" third season, this is a gently closing of the red curtains for both the Black Lodge and the show.

An utterly gorgeous punch to the throat. The turbulence of the sixties refracted through the Holocaust, horror comix, and the grotesquerie of adolescence are all beautifully rendered through exquisite illustration and sophisticated storytelling.

Rather than the comparisons that are being made between this and other (better?) books, I'd settle on the author not being sure what he wanted either and tried to make this several things instead of sticking with one goodish thing. The almost supernatural rupture during adolescence, the ruination of friendships as we rend our flesh and burst forth as less a fully formed adult and more a gelatinous and cruel putty setting as age hardens us like clay.

Both economical and philosophical, Weiner's literary debut (though I will admit I find Mad Men to be a Great American Novel) converges like the infamous freshman thought experiment with two colliding trains. The lingering unease after you close the book is reason enough to pick it up and endure it all over again.

Pastiche and nostalgia riding an abandoned miner cart into the darkness. You know the premise and the legally different but not really distinction in this homage(?) to a gang of young detectives and their dog of yesteryear. While there is some fun to be had, the winking nudge infinity loop does grow weary. The explosive reveal is much like an actual firework; build-up, noise, and then a puff of smoke.

The size, length, and charming illustrations make this a must have physical object for your office or home library. It's a wonderful reminder that being strange and working hard for yourself can ensure a unique sort of freedom. John Waters has made a career out of storytelling. His stand-up, his novels, and of course, his films, have a manic glee of obsession riding shotgun with structured anarchy. He is the best kind of famous, best kind of celebrity.

A less politicized Rebecca Solnit, this deceptively dense collection ranges from poet who died almost 1,000 years ago to Taylor Swift. It's all over the place in the best possible way, because that's what love allows.

Personal and affecting prose stripping meat off the bone and asking you to stay a little longer.

"Just as other ideas lately have shed onion skins to reveal a wet heart..." The writing is elegiac, smoke rings around a solidly told story of young lust, expectation, and the inevitable.

An engaging intellectual analysis of the concurrence of feminism, witchcraft as practice, lance, and commerce, and potency of language hovering in the periphery of sex positivity.

The elegant phrasing and the focused examination of misogyny glittering like blood in the sand. The intersection of highbrow, lowbrow, and nobrow celebrities of literature and popular music through the lens of Massey's experiences.

A superficial glance of the swirling abyss above, below, and contained within the soporific sphere of the human mind that causes it to dull and glisten with interest and attention.

Comedy comes from darkness, so when people use "darkly funny" I suppose that means you are going to spelunk into someone's psyche and hope you don't hit the ground. This novel gives you all the Bad Santa, Harold and Maude, Life Aquatic tragicomedy. There are puns, death, and Vicodin!

Though a bit uneven, the pacing and underlying themes of the all encompassing patriarchy propel this novel into a long sinking think well after you have closed the pages.

These are exquisite. Precise, dark, humourous exchanges.

Sharp lines that occasionally draw blood, much like irregular ice cubes interfering with the pure alcohol inhalation of a last call happy hour.

Lines like snapshots of moments fat with promise and cruelty and acutely aware of its disappearing grace.

Such a gorgeous gut-punch of a novel. Tender and bleak and over too quickly.

Superbly written with a dense story of connection and loss filtered through both remembrance and consequence.

These are some dark and savage tales. Greasy, naked emotion that rubs like sandpaper and saltwater.

The ache of childhood reminiscing burns like cheap bourbon. The eyes water and the sting burns in the back of your neck as shame eases down your limbs. It's dark, the father memoir with enough nuance and strangeness to anchor the common ache of childhood tainted by megalomania, narcissism, and bullying.

Tender is so apropos for the tone and theme of this novel. Another T-Word that comes to mind is tragic. The nascent longing mingled with desire that CANNOT be reciprocated, with the all too knowing and reprehensible feelings of possession and cache. What a beautiful book, Jaysus.

A well written modern day horror story about attachment, obsession, and violence. A beach read worthy of Jaws fans.

A 40s noir rife with cigarette smoke and predictable alleyways. That being said, it is a fun read with danger, mysterious women (arent they all), and men who are unable to articulate their feelings so they hit things.

What an incredible collection of deceptively simple thoughts and articulations that converge to caress your throat and tighten your chest, or perhaps the other way around

Dual narratives of class warfare waged within, the definition of outsider re-worked for a country club, and an ambiguous ending in which nature asserts her dominance.

The poetic language complements the eponymous environment in which we meet our violent, mystical cast. Nature, especially the treacherous and strange shore, replete with southern wildness and nuance, provides the necessary character to house the sweeping tales of women and the feral men around them. The body as synecdoche for nature, consequence and lineage are a sweating literary glass of bourbon on a sticky summer evening.

The gaps in between the bigger bits of this novel I found to be the most satisfying. The theme of identity, fame, and strangely, feeling sorry for wealthy white men all coalesce into this narrative of security and what the end is and what it will cost and what you will piss away in order to learn that.

These hyper realistic short stories are the scent of lightning in an upcoming storm. The hot rain distorting the sun, Hinton's novel, certain to appear from the intensity and purpose of these stories, will be the calm petrichor that comforts the isolation of zany southern citizenship. The alligators vacating sewers, smoking cigarettes and dragging limbs across the lonely interstate 75.

An incisive and hilarious novel about race. As in who wins and who watched and how there is no way to fix such a broken system. With humor comes clarity, and this darkly hilarious novel packs plenty of heat.

Bleak, intellectual descent into the vagaries of the small town dynamics made insular and claustrophobic. X-Files and Twin Peaks without the charm of government employees, this novel contains the fetid darkness of a town resigned to profane distractions. Keating's prolix descriptions of the macabre class warfare and the various machinations of despair, vice, and grim pronouncements of terminally unvarying life weave a delightfully dark and erudite indictment of modernity in perpetuity.

Absolutely flawless lines that comprise an intricate and engaging story around an enigmatic cypher mistaken for genius. Compulsively readable and certainly unforgettable. A powerful examination of identity, creativity, and ultimately, the self

An extended metaphor of gravity; exuding and expanding an orbit of dependency and illness. Sharp, sterile insights generated with a hum of amphetamines and self denial.

High brow, low brow knowhow. Hive mind recall of Latin, literature, and the sacred pop lyric bubble burst flow into your brain and out of your mouth like ice cream sundae school.

Personal, affecting, dark, gorgeous... all of these apply to this incisive and brief examinations of ever expanding body count of FAME. Feminine, bold, ephemeral: analogous to the Hollywood starlets portrayed.

Repetitive at times, there are some great stories hidden among the "they were alrights" and "Kurt was a normal guy" type anecdotes. For all that has been wrung out of that man, there are a few salient bits about the community at large, and the diverse inhabitants of a misunderstood "explosion" out of the Pacific Northwest.

Dark. Absurd. Violent. As a fan of Night Vale and literature, I enjoyed (most) of these short horror shows. The hyper tuned domesticity pulses to an unbearable pitch.

Amuse bouche notwithstanding, these nuggets burn with the intensity of "larger" works.

Novels have the ability, and some the responsibility, to provide illumination for paths darkened by ignorance, avoidance, and flimsily construed lines of separation. The beauty of language arranged around hideous and toxic environs invites the reader to get their hands dirty while the comfort of words eases them into the deep crevasse of unfamiliar horrors. Some prefer the misdirection of the supernatural to inject socially aware tropes. Few allow their illumination to be lit by a blowtorch, rather than lightning. This is their novel. The murky and unrelenting temperatures of the American South provide synecdoche for the emotional weather of race relations and narratives on a timeline that frustratingly appears unchanging. The stark unspoken quotidian conditions endured by many are deftly rendered in this important novel. Familial ties, resilience, self destruction and the constant satellite of guilt tether the characters with their particular gravity in a constellation that resembles a crow. I couldn't put this down and now that I'm done, I'm pressing this gorgeous paperback unto anyone capable of withstanding the blowtorch that allows this novel to glow

Hurtling towards the destruction of domestic fiction. The concise chipping away of time and affection, the transformation that dissolves relationships like acid rain in an industrial city.

Such a dark and clever tease of a read. The modern world rendered into survey answers and the detritus of the purge of empty surfeit desires.

Juliet Capulet and Laura Palmer have proven that dead teenage girls generate an audience. Celeste Ng uses one as well to illustrate and examine the kaleidoscope of grief through the permutations of time and narrator. The prosaic humiliations will resonate with any age, as shattered glass informs a stone cast in haste. The familiar fractured family may remind you of the Virgin Suicides, the Ice Storm, the Secret Friend, with good reason. The spider webbing of past regrets inflicted on the present generation is powerful for its catharsis and relatibility; the plot points reading as family history.

The scariest part of this book was how the ending could be so predictable when the premise was so fantastic. Disappointment aside, the glitteringly inexplicable violence of a time traveling misogynist peppered with insightful one liners makes for an exciting Saturday night. There are some missteps in the formulaic mismatch of old/young boy/girl that are forgivable, yet unnecessary. Reach exceeding grasp in the case of a fascinating premise but safe execution.

Better in concept than execution, this short story collection provides a VERY mixed bag of talent and skill. Kevin Powell and Katherine Dunn were worth it, as they often are.

I found this while shelving books at the library (where I am employed) and passed an easy Friday reading this at the desk. I had no expectations for this and was pleasantly surprised when I laughed uproariously and Instragrammed select paragraphs to my moderately amused followers. Dysfunction has never looked so sunny. Must be the desert air.

Obsessive love can be excellent fodder for a novel. In this case, it was not. The immaturity, the college allusions to Foucault/Lacan etc, and naturally THE POTENTIAL are all par for the course when reading about college, but Choi accidentally uses synecdoche to illustrate her points. There are flashes of brilliance, usually in a well crafted sentence, but her dialog and characterization of every character except the protagonist are paltry and disappointing. The last quarter of the novel felt phon(i)ed in.

I would have to create several shelves to accommodate the incredible depth of strange and non linear processes contained within. I'm too lazy to do that, but I'm hopeful you will be tempted to devour and quickly discard this beautiful glimpse of honest, varied, insanity.

I want to buy several copies of this and give them to people I love who live faraway. That is hardly an endorsement, per se, but really, this is an excellent compendium of underrated history and salacious historical tidbits. There are recipes, anecedotes, and history. I loved it. I need it. I need to give it to others.

This would have worked better as an essay, because even the brilliance of Hallelujah sounds like a circle jerk for 200 pages. I get it, it's like the first time you have sex in that everyone has something to say about it. Everyone feels the need to embellish, enunciate, exclaim. This is just a perfect song. Leonard Cohen is a genius. Rufus Wainwright is an adorable prince. Jeff Buckley is the great unknown because dying young gives you that glow. There is too much trivia, and as someone who enjoys trivia, perhaps it's just boring? And there's WAY TOO MUCH amanda palmer.

Read this again in January, 2014. This book is incredible. The poetic nature of a disintegrating relationship in Hayes' capable, elegant voice. "Or even possibly a gentle attempt to hang myself from some convenient chandelier, would have satisfied her that I was truly in love." "Sometimes, hating the violent dispossession of my which love brought on, I would wish to be elsewhere" "Too much feeling, finally, makes us experience a sensation of unreality as acute as never having felt at all." "when everything remains suspended and anticipatory, and the snow falls through the air of a city whose ugliness is temporarily obscured, and the cab itself seems to exist inside a magical circle of quiet heat and togetherness and motion; and i suppose, for that moment, it is beautiful: the snow, and everything" "a simple sequence of pleasures that would not seriously change my life or interfere with my work, that would fill the emptiness of my long evenings and ease the pressures of my loneliness, and give me what i suppose i really thought of as the nicest amusement in all the amusement park: the pleasure of love." I could go on and on with these quotations. Absolutely gorgeous prose, clear eyed about the specific dysfunction love affords.