Taylor Koekkoek

Bought new, read once. Like new condition, no markings or annotations on inside or outside. 

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Montana

Stories

A raw and remarkable debut story collection concerning substance abuse, societal alienation, and doomed romance from a writer whose work has appeared in prestigious literary journals including The Paris Review. An amusement park employee overdoses after eating the gel of a fentanyl patch. Two homeless men discover the body of a drowned woman. A sister encounters a dangerous stranger while driving her brother to rehab. Ex-lovers seek to rekindle their relationship with the aid of an earthquake. In the nine masterful stories that comprise Thrillville, USA, debut author Taylor Koekkoek depicts Americans living on the margins of society, seeking escape from isolation and underemployment in drugs, booze, and self-destructive relationships. While the action is set largely in the rural Pacific Northwest, the characters’ malaise and disaffectedness is endemic of the country as a whole. The title takes its name from the aforementioned amusement park, but Thrillville is as much a state of mind as an actual place—a sardonic commentary on contemporary America consumed by opioid addiction, social media obsession, wealth inequality and political polarization. Yet as haunting as these stories are, they are not hopeless. Gorgeously written, they share a transcendental quality—an acknowledgment of and appreciation for the beauty in all things, even the most profane and grotesque.

Thrillville, USA

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#hardcover #fiction #novel #michaelhornburg #bongwater

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

A Novel

"Bongwater is a novel that wavers along the solar eclipse of the American Dream, a neo-Beat, grungeoisie love story that has all the authenticity and none of the pretension of its forerunners, a book that will be for the slacker generation of the nineties what Bright Lights, Big City was for the wannabe eighties." "Set mainly under the sodden gray skies of Portland, Oregon, the novel renders the intimate lives of a subculture whose cast-off expectations have left its members all the more exposed. Vaguely troubled, and with an edge of palpable longing, there is David, a filmmaker whose esoteric projects fail to find an audience before they go up in flames; a flamboyant, retroglam gay couple whose squat David moves into; Courtney, David's beautiful, brokenhearted roommate, who flees to the East Village and takes up with a new boyfriend, Tommy, a paranoid rock star; and Mary, a young stripper with an unlimited sense of adventure. They circulate lazily on the perimeters of society, their days structured around a cup of coffee, scoring a little weed, jobs that come and go. Coalescing at all-night parties that flood the air with music, they indulge with absentminded passion in local intrigue and the broken promises of love." "Young, rebellious, and vulnerable, Michael Hornburg's unforgettable characters trace the subtle outlines of a misunderstood generation. Moving from Portland to New York City and back again, and written in precise, startlingly original prose, Bongwater is in the tradition of the Beat classics The Subterraneans and The Dharma Bums."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Bongwater

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#paperback #fiction #contemporary #debut #monicadrake #clowngirl #chuckpalahniuk #fightclub

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Clown Girl lives in Baloneytown, a seedy neighborhood where drugs, balloon animals, and even rubber chickens contribute to the local currency. Against a backdrop of petty crime, she struggles to live her dreams, calling on cultural masters Charlie Chaplin, Kafka, and da Vinci for inspiration. In an effort to support herself and her layabout performance-artist boyfriend, Clown Girl finds herself unwittingly transformed into a "corporate clown," trapping herself in a cycle of meaningless, high-paid gigs that veer dangerously close to prostitution. Monica Drake has created a novel that riffs on the high comedy of early film stars — most notably Chaplin and W. C. Fields — to raise questions of class, gender, economics, and prejudice. Resisting easy classification, this debut novel blends the bizarre, the humorous, and the gritty with stunning skill.

Clown Girl

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#virginiedespentes #vernonsubutex #france #french #translated #kingkongtheory #paperback #fiction #series #despentes

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL 2018**

WHO IS VERNON SUBUTEX?

An urban legend.

A fall from grace.

The mirror who reflects us all.

Vernon Subutex was once the proprietor of Revolver, an infamous music shop in Bastille. His legend spread throughout Paris. But by the 2000s his shop is struggling. With his savings gone, his unemployment benefit cut, and the friend who had been covering his rent suddenly dead, Vernon Subutex finds himself down and out on the Paris streets.

He has one final card up his sleeve. Even as he holds out his hand to beg for the first time, a throwaway comment he once made on Facebook is taking the internet by storm. Vernon does not realise this, but the word is out: Vernon Subutex has in his possession the last filmed recordings of Alex Bleach, the famous musician and Vernon's benefactor, who has only just died of a drug overdose. A crowd of people from record producers to online trolls and porn stars are now on Vernon's trail.

Translated from the French by Frank Wynne

"Thrilling, magnificently audacious" Irish Times
"Brimming with sex, violence and deviant behaviour" Sunday Times
"Virginie Despentes's Vernon Subutex trilogy is the zeitgeistiest thing I ever read" NELL ZINK

Vernon Subutex One

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#paperback #fiction #stephaniekuehnert #mtv #mtvbooks

Ballads are the kind of songs that Kara McNaughton likes best. Not the clichéd ones where a diva hits her dramatic high note or a rock band tones it down a couple of notches for the ladies, but the true ballads: the punk rocker or the country crooner reminding their listeners of the numerous ways to screw things up. In high school, Kara helped maintain the "Stories of Suburbia" notebook, which contained newspaper articles about bizarre, tragic events from suburbs all over America, and personal vignettes that Kara dubbed "ballads" written by her friends in Oak Park, just outside of Chicago. But Kara never wrote her own ballad. Before she could figure out what her song was about, she left town suddenly at the end of her junior year. Now, four years later, Kara returns to her hometown to face the music, needing to revisit the disastrous events that led to her leaving, in order to move on with her life. Intensely powerful and utterly engaging, Ballads of Suburbia explores the heartbreaking moments when life changes unexpectedly, and reveals the consequences of being forced to grow up too soon.

Ballads of Suburbia

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Good condition, some sticker residue on back cover. 
#fiction #clash #clashbooks #lindsaylerman

I'm From Nowhere follows Claire as she mourns the sudden death of her husband. She has no child, no job, no agency. She confronts a dying planet and an emerging sense of self. She puts herself in the hands of men--some of her oldest friends--who may have come to save her, a contemporary Penelope with a raft of suitors and unspent erotic capital. Is it possible for a woman to reclaim her life and set its terms without succumbing to suicide or submission?At once intimate and sprawling, this book is an examination of the stories we are told--and the stories we tell ourselves--about identity, permanence, and meaning in our beautiful, hostile world.

I'm from Nowhere

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#paperback #nonfiction #health #nature #food #michaelpollan #howtochangeyourmind

some sticker residue and cover nicks

A Natural History of Four Meals

"Outstanding . . . a wide-ranging invitation to think through the moral ramifications of our eating habits." —The New Yorker One of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year and Winner of the James Beard Award Author of How to Change Your Mind and the #1 New York Times Bestseller In Defense of Food and Food Rules What should we have for dinner? Ten years ago, Michael Pollan confronted us with this seemingly simple question and, with The Omnivore’s Dilemma, his brilliant and eye-opening exploration of our food choices, demonstrated that how we answer it today may determine not only our health but our survival as a species. In the years since, Pollan’s revolutionary examination has changed the way Americans think about food. Bringing wide attention to the little-known but vitally important dimensions of food and agriculture in America, Pollan launched a national conversation about what we eat and the profound consequences that even the simplest everyday food choices have on both ourselves and the natural world. Ten years later, The Omnivore’s Dilemma continues to transform the way Americans think about the politics, perils, and pleasures of eating.

Lara Koebke

@ceremonyofwords

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Taylor Koekkoek

Thrillville, USA

Michael Hornburg

Bongwater

Monica Drake; Chuck Palahniuk (Introduction by)

Clown Girl

Virginie Despentes; Frank Wynne (Translator)

Vernon Subutex One

Stephanie Kuehnert

Ballads of Suburbia

Lindsay Lerman

I'm from Nowhere

Michael Pollan

The Omnivore's Dilemma

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Taylor Koekkoek

Thrillville, USA

Michael Hornburg

Bongwater

Monica Drake; Chuck Palahniuk (Introduction by)

Clown Girl

Virginie Despentes; Frank Wynne (Translator)

Vernon Subutex One

Stephanie Kuehnert

Ballads of Suburbia

Lindsay Lerman

I'm from Nowhere

Michael Pollan

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Get The App