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The First Bad Man

Miranda July · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

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

Absurdist HumorDark ComedySexuality and IntimacyUnreliable Narrator
❤️

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Ken Kesey · 311 pages

An international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was one of the defining works of the 1960s. A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into

Unreliable NarratorDark ComedyCharacter-DrivenAbsurdist Humor
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The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath · 258 pages

The Bell Jar is a classic of American literature, with over two million copies sold in this country. This extraordinary work chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful - but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time. Step by careful step, Sylvia Plath takes us with Esther through a painful month in New York as a contest-winning junior

Unreliable NarratorSexuality and IntimacyCharacter-DrivenDark Comedy
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Hunter S. Thompson · 204 pages

Maverick author Hunter S. Thompson introduced the world to "gonzo journalism" with this cult classic that shot back up the best seller lists after Thompson's suicide in 2005. No book ever written has more perfectly captured the spirit of the 1960s counterculture. In Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle race, Raoul Duke (Thompson) and his attorney Dr. Gonzo (inspired by a friend of Thompson) are quickly

Absurdist HumorDark ComedyUnreliable NarratorFirst Person Narrator
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Clown Girl

Monica Drake · 316 pages

Absurdist HumorDark ComedyCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
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The Third Policeman

Flann O'Brien · 200 pages

The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles,

Absurdist HumorUnreliable NarratorDark ComedyLiterary Fiction
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This Is How You Lose Her

Junot Diaz · 240 pages

This is a collection of stories that explores the power of love in all its forms, obsessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love, as it is shaped by passion, betrayal, and the echoes of intimacy.

Sexuality and IntimacyCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea

Chelsea Handler · 264 pages

When Chelsea Handler needs to get a few things off her chest, she appeals to a higher power--vodka. Welcome to Chelsea's world--a place where absurdity reigns supreme and a quick wit is the best line of defense. In this collection, Chelsea mines her past for stories about her family, relationships, and career that are at once singular and ridiculous. Whether she's convincing her third-grade class

Sexuality and IntimacyDark ComedyAbsurdist HumorFirst Person Narrator
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We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Karen Joy Fowler · 336 pages

Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. "I was raised with a chimpanzee," she explains. "I tell you Fern is a chimp and, already, you aren't thinking of her as my sister. . . . Until Fern's expulsion . . . she was my twin, my fun-house mirror, my whirlwind other half. . . . I loved her as a sister."

Unreliable NarratorCharacter-DrivenDark ComedyLiterary Fiction
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Trainspotting

Irvine Welsh · 352 pages

Scottish writer Irvine Welsh's first novel, Trainspotting, is a collection of short-stories revolving around a group of friends, their drug use, and struggles in the city of Edinburgh.

Sexuality and IntimacyDark ComedyLiterary FictionAbsurdist Humor
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Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace · 1,088 pages

A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connec

Dark ComedyAbsurdist HumorSexuality and IntimacyLiterary Fiction
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Treasure Island!!!

Sara Levine · 172 pages

"When a college graduate with a history of hapless jobs (ice cream scooper; gift wrapper; laziest ever part-time clerk at the Pet Library) reads Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island, she is dumbstruck by the timid design of her life. ... Convinced that Stevenson's book is cosmically intended for her, she redesigns her life according to its core values: boldness, resolution, independence,

Unreliable NarratorDark ComedyAbsurdist HumorLiterary Fiction
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Based on a True Story

Norm Macdonald · 256 pages

Fictional Memoir. A Novel containing scattered facts which are interleaved into fictional stories creating a journey through a fictional memoir of the author, which includes growing up in rural Canada, his SNL (TV show) days and many other anecdotes. This is an adventure and a retrospective of life. A humoristic literary work with a very unique style, matching the author's comedic and reflective

Dark ComedyAbsurdist HumorUnreliable NarratorFirst Person Narrator
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Cat's Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. · 229 pages

Cat's Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat's Cr

Absurdist HumorDark ComedyUnreliable NarratorFirst Person Narrator
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The Dice Man

Luke Rhinehart · 431 pages

The cult classic that can still change your life...Let the dice decide! This is the philosophy that changes the life of bored psychiatrist Luke Rhinehart - and in some ways changes the world as well. Because once you hand over your life to the dice, anything can happen. Entertaining, humorous, scary, shocking, subversive, The Dice Man is one of the cult bestsellers of our time.

Unreliable NarratorDark ComedyAbsurdist HumorLiterary Fiction
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John Dies at the End

David Wong · 428 pages

This may be the story of John and David, a drug called soy sauce, and other-worldly beings invading the planet. Or, it may be the story of two beer-drinking friends who live in an unnamed Midwestern town and only think something horrific is going on. But the important thing is, according to the narrator, "None of this is my fault."

Absurdist HumorUnreliable NarratorDark ComedyFirst Person Narrator
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I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

Tucker Max · 288 pages

The Book That Inspired The MovieMy name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole. I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging dickhead. But, I do contribute to humanity in one very important way: I share my a

Sexuality and IntimacyDark ComedyAbsurdist HumorFirst Person Narrator
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Barney's Version

Mordecai Richler · 416 pages

Barney Panofsky smokes too many cigars, drinks too much whiskey, and is obsessed with two things: the Montreal Canadiens hockey team and his ex-wife Miriam. An acquaintance from his youthful years in Paris, Terry McIver, is about to publish his autobiography. In its pages he accuses Barney of an assortment of sins, including murder. It's time, Barney decides, to present the world with his own vers

Unreliable NarratorDark ComedyCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Eileen

Ottessa Moshfegh · 266 pages

"A lonely young woman working in a boys' prison outside Boston in the early 60s is pulled into a very strange crime, in a mordant, harrowing story of obsession and suspense"--

Unreliable NarratorCharacter-DrivenDark ComedyLiterary Fiction
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Wittgenstein's Mistress

David Markson · 240 pages

Unreliable NarratorCharacter-DrivenAbsurdist HumorLiterary Fiction
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Talking It Over

Julian Barnes · 275 pages

Few writers think and talk to beguilingly. This book is wonderfully funny. And intelligent. And moving' Independent on SundayShy, sensible banker Stuart has trouble with women; that is, until a fortuitous singles night, where he meets Gillian, a picture restorer recovering from a destructive affair. Stuart's best friend Oliver is his complete opposite – a language teacher who 'talks like a diction

Unreliable NarratorDark ComedyCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

Shehan Karunatilaka · 416 pages

Retired sportswriter W.G. Karunasena is dying. He will spend his final months drinking arrack, making his wife unhappy, ignoring his son, and tracking down Pradeep S. Mathew, a spin bowler who has mysteriously disappeared.

Unreliable NarratorDark ComedyCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Bunny

Mona Awad · 305 pages

Dark ComedyUnreliable NarratorAbsurdist HumorLiterary Fiction
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An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

Brock Clarke · 305 pages

Sam Pulsifer is determined to put his past behind him after serving a prison term for torching an American literary landmark and killing two people in the blaze, but when the homes of notable American writers begin to go up in smoke, his history makes him the prime suspect.

Dark ComedyUnreliable NarratorAbsurdist HumorFirst Person Narrator
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