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Almost Transparent Blue

Ryu Murakami · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Less Than Zero

Bret Easton Ellis · 208 pages

Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980's, this coolly mesmerizing novel is a raw, powerful portrait of a lost generation who have experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age, in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money a place devoid of feeling or hope. Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of limitless

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The Death of Sweet Mister

Daniel Woodrell · 208 pages

"Shuggie Akins is a lonely fat boy of thirteen. His mother, Glenda, teases him with her sexual provocations. His father, Red, is a brutal man with a short fuse who mocks and despises his son. Into this mix comes Jimmy Vin Pearce with his shiny green T-bird and his smart city clothes. It isn't long before he and Glenda begin a torrid affair. What follows is violent, shocking, and totally unpredicta

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Dirty Havana Trilogy

Pedro Juan Gutierrez · 400 pages

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Post Office

Charles Bukowski · 160 pages

"It began as a mistake." By middle age, Henry Chinaski has lost more than twelve years of his life to the U.S. Postal Service. In a world where his three true, bitter pleasures are women, booze, and racetrack betting, he somehow drags his hangover out of bed every dawn to lug waterlogged mailbags up mud-soaked mountains, outsmart vicious guard dogs, and pray to survive the day-to-day trials of sad

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Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids

Kenzaburo Oe · 189 pages

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Crank

Ellen Hopkins · 537 pages

Kristina is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. Then she meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild ride turns into a struggle for her mind, her soul---her life.

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Snakes and Earrings

Hitomi Kanehara · 128 pages

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Fight Club

Chuck Palahniuk · 208 pages

A man who struggles with insomnia meets a colorful extremist, and they create a secret organization together. Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation’s most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the base

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Junky

William S. Burroughs · 158 pages

A semi-autobiographical account, narrated in a matter-of-fact manner, of the author’s life as a drug addict. The story ranges from the backstreets of New York to a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kentucky, the bars of New Orleans and on to Mexico, recounting the difficulties of obtaining drugs, financial problems and homosexual encounters. Burroughs significantly stretched the boundaries of publis

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One of the Boys

Daniel Magariel · 172 pages

"A riveting and emotionally harrowing debut about two young brothers and their physically and psychologically abusive father--One of the Boys is 160 perfect, stunning pages by a major new talent. The three of them--a twelve-year-old boy, his older brother, their father--have won the war: the father's term for his bitter divorce and custody battle. They leave their Kansas home and drive through the

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De Niro's Game

Rawi Hage · 280 pages

In the Christian part of Beirut, torn by civil war, two befriended young men make a different choice about whether to flee or join the fight.

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The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Yukio Mishima · 150 pages

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea  tells the tale of a band of savage thirteen-year-old boys who reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call "objectivity." When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealize the man at first; but it is not lo   ...more

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Wake in Fright

Kenneth Cook · 197 pages

The controller stood back. 'Right, ' he said. 'Spin 'em!' The man flipped the piece of wood and the coins spun up into the air above his head and dropped down on to the carpet. There was silence. Wake in Fright tells the tale of John Grant's journey into an alcoholic, sexual and spiritual nightmare.

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All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque · 236 pages

This is the testament of Paul Bäumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army of World War I. These young men become enthusiastic soldiers, but their world of duty, culture, and progress breaks into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. Through years of vivid horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the hatred that meaninglessly pits young men of the s

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Angels

Denis Johnson · 217 pages

Angels puts Jamie Mays--a runaway wife toting along two kids--and Bill Houston--ex-Navy man, ex-husband, ex-con--on a Greyhound bus for a dark, wild ride cross country. Driven by restless souls, bad booze, and desperate needs, Jamie and Bill bounce from bus stations to cheap hotels as they ply the strange, fascinating, and dangerous fringe of American life. Their tickets may say Phoenix, but their

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I Who Have Never Known Men

Jacqueline Harpman · 207 pages

A work of fantasy, I Who Have Never Known Men is the haunting and unforgettable account of a near future on a barren earth where women are kept in underground cages guarded by uniformed groups of men. It is narrated by the youngest of the women, the only one with no memory of what the world was like before the cages, who must teach herself, without books or sexual contact, the essential human emot

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Steps

Jerzy Kosinski · 142 pages

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A Million Little Pieces

James Frey · 430 pages

"The most lacerating tale of drug addiction since William S. Burroughs' Junky." --The Boston Globe"Again and again, the book delivers recollections that leave the reader winded and unsteady. James Frey's staggering recovery memoir could well be seen as the final word on the topic."--San Francisco Chronicle"A brutal, beautifully written memoir."--The Denver Post"Gripping . . . A great story . . . Y

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Canada

Richard Ford · 420 pages

After his parents are arrested and imprisoned for robbing a bank, fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons is taken in by Arthur Remlinger who, unbeknownst to Dell, is hiding a dark and violent nature that interferes with Dell's quest to find grace and peace on the prairie of Saskatchewan.

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The Notebook

Agota Kristof · 160 pages

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The Push Man and Other Stories

Yoshihiro Tatsumi · 224 pages

"Over four decades ago, Yoshihiro Tatsumi expanded the horizons of comics story-telling by using the visual language of manga to tell gritty, literary short stories about the private lives of everyday people. He has been called "the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics" and has influenced generations of cartoonists, but, until now, the majority of his work has remained unavailable outside of

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The Thief

Fuminori Nakamura · 221 pages

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Rumble Fish

Marcus Romer, S.E. Hinton · 123 pages

A junior high school boy idolizes his older brother, the coolest, toughest guy in the neighborhood, and wants to be just like him.

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The Reader

Bernhard Schlink · 224 pages

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