Newsstand and Annex weirdness buyer
I have been following Tommi Parrish's comics since Perfect Hair, their comics always look beautiful and the stories are always slightly unnerving while nothing really happens. In this new book a Single mother, poet/performer, Eliza, and a younger fan, sex worker, Sasha, explore their relationship. The unnerving part is Andrew a TV home renovation host and obsessed client of Sasha's
Direct from Germany, this book has a great collection of Krautrock, Folk, Psych and Early Electronic music concert posters from 1968-1981.
Hands down one of my favorite photography books of the year. All photographs are taken by Robert H. Boltz, a coroner in West Bend, Wisconsin. After the bodies were cleared he would photograph the crashes, which take on a surreal, menacing quality devoid of any people and illuminated only by the flash of the camera. Edited from the personal collection of Diane Keaton.
Available for the first time in English, this beautiful children’s book from 1984 follows Torakichi , a tiger/plant. Each page has Torakichi wandering further into the land of dreams, changing into melons, getting lost in a building made of stairs, turning into a cube. This book is a great introduction to Tiger Tateishi’s beautiful artwork.
Beginning with a trivial argument about chores, Keeping Two follows a couple’s innermost thoughts as they imagine a horrible car accident. Another couple that has recently experienced a miscarriage discusses a cruise, which spirals out into imagined drownings. Twenty years in the making, this is one of the most beautifully written and illustrated comics I have ever read. Stick with it to the end for a beautiful ending.
Rough Trade Records has been quietly putting out some of my favorite zines and books of the past few years. This new limited edition box contains a loose leaf recreation of Jack’s “novel,” a room 237 keychain, a hedge maze poster/diagram, and exclusive interviews with Shelley Duvall and Dan Lloyd, all housed in an Overlook carpet-lined box.
A new issue of this beautiful irregular journal from Norway about the forest, Black Metal, and the occult. The main interview discusses animism and its relation to Norwegian history and how it was coopted by Nazis and white supremicists. My favorite part is all the short interviews with Black Metal musicians about the sybolism of the forrest in metal music.
Another horrific story from the author of Hurricane Season. One of the most brutal last 10 pages of a book I have read in a long time.
A career spanning heavily illustrated biography of the great designer & artist Tadanori Yokoo. Mostly known for his beautiful posters, this book contains a fantastic selection of his very surreal paintings and collages.
A wild oral history of the hippies in Lawrence, Kansas in the 60's. Short vignettes that veer wildly from hilarous to horrifying.
An experimental periodical edited by the photographer Anne Turyn, each issue of Top Stories featured a single authors story, poetry or artwork. The entire run is reproduced in a two volume set including works by Kathy Acker, Laurie Anderson, Constance DeJong and the incredible "How to Get Rid of Pimples" by Cookie Mueller
I have been reading all the Bernadette Mayer books I have been able to find after reading The Basketball Article, sadly most of her stuff is currently out of print. I highly recommend the Bernadette Mayer Reader as well as this incredible chap book. Each page contains a photograph of a different Helen from Troy, New York, followed by a biography poem.
Possibly out of print. Email or call to check availability and price.
One of the creators of a new style of photography in Japan, with Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyama, recently featured at a show at MoMa. Masahisa Fukase turned his lens to his new cat Sasuke, and later Momoe. Most of the photos are eye level with his cat; he said he would crawl around after her in an effort to become a cat. In some of the photographs, you can see little glimpses of him reflected in the cat’s eyes; he considers the cat photos his self-portraits. My favorites are the close-up shots of the cats yawning.
This sprawling story follows 3 strangers through the night as they make their way to the Disco Haram. Jona is moving to Berlin all of his friends ditch him on a night out alone he runs into a character from his past that he is trying to forget, Victoria escapes from her overbearing friends and family who are trying to comit her, Rodolphe is reconsidering his lifestyle when he gets a drink full of a potent drug poured on him. Brecht Evens beautiful artwork creates a beautiful and menacing narrative.
I started cooking a lot when I moved to New York as a way to save money. Whenever I needed a particular spice for a recipe, I would head to Sahadi’s on Atlantic Ave., an experience not at all dissimilar to the description in the introduction. They carry every spice imaginable and make, hands down, my favorite spicy hummus, which I miss greatly. Arranged by spice, this cookbook gives you ideas for spice blends you can make, and ways to use the spices in multiple dishes. Also included is the coveted spicy hummus recipe.
Five wordless stories of the last days of Dracula, wandering around a small nameless Argentinian town that exists under a brutal military dictator. Dracula has his fangs removed by a butcher dentist, and corrupt politicians have already drained all the life from the people living under their oppressive regime. Compared to his beautifully drawn horror and science fiction comics (Mort Cinder, The Eternaut), Breccia’s illustrations are unrecognizable; the characters are rendered in garish colors and drawn as twisted caricatures.
Larry McMurtry uses Walter Benjamins essay Illuminations to reflect on the idea of the storyteller. When the Dairy Queens started opening up in the small isolated towns all over Texas they became the defacto town squares where all of the residents would meet to share stories and gossip. His local Dairy Queen serves as McMurtry's place to reflect on the history of his town, family, his body of work and most of all his love of reading. RIP the great Larry McMurtry
Eric Tabuchi has assembled a visual guide containing 1500 pictures accross 256 pages. From the publisher of Los Angeles Standards this book functions as a more universal style guide.
The newest Blank Forms journal highlights one of my favorite songwriters/artists, Terry Allen. In a lengthy interview Allen discusses his career and life existing on the fringes of the country music world while making art. Also featuring a beautiful reflection on the life of Milford Graves, a free jazz drummer/ healer/ inventor. Check it out and listen to Terry Allen
A beautiful adaptation by the creator of the Yokai comics Kitaro. Tono Monogatari is a collection of folktales from the Tono region of Japan, collected 1910. Mizuki hoped to retrace the footsteps of the folklorists that collected the stories however he was too old, the work he created is his loving retelling of some of the most famous stories of the Yokai as well as his meeting between himself and Kunio Yanagita one of the original researches that collected the stories. The artwork is absolutely beautiful
Starting in 1915, New Orleans began expanding farther into floodplains and oil companies started digging canals that contributed to erosion of natural barriers, bringing the Gulf of Mexico farther inland, dooming the great city of New Orleans. An exhaustive history of the corruption and greed that led to the devastation of New Orleans by hurricane Katrina in 2005.
As the pandemic shut down the world, people started ordering books they had been putting off, usually longer classics. Lonesome Dove was one of these long classics, by one of my favorite authors (I highly recommend the Thalia Trilogy for more McMurtry). This collection brings together 4 important Westerns that reframed the West as needlessly violent, cruel, and lonely.
Willis Wu dreams of being Kung Fu Guy, but right now he is stuck playing Generic Asian Man in various scenes on the generic cop show Black and White. Most of the book is Willis’s internal thoughts about his family, racial stereotyping, his apartment building, and how to get himself seen. Infuriating, heartbreaking and hilarious.
Possibly out of print. Email or call to check availability and price.
One of my favorite entries in the 33 1/3 series. Each chapter is devoted to a different misreading of Okie from Muskogee.
Possibly out of print. Email or call to check availability and price.
First comprehensive monograph of the great Houston artist Trenton Doyle Hancock. Including a primer of his Moundverse, as well as conversations between different artists.
Possibly out of print. Email or call to check availability and price.
Possibly out of print. Email or call to check availability and price.
I found a bunch of the Foxfire books a few years ago in a used bookstore in Tennessee, every so often I pick one up, open to a random page and discover something fantastic. Starting in 1966 the Foxfire project was started as a way to document the Lifestyle, craft, cooking, folktales and tall tales of the people of Appalachia.
One of my absolute favorite children's books reprinted in a beautiful hardcover by New York Review of Books. Remy Charlip's books are always full of beautiful illustrations and absurd wordplay.
Possibly out of print. Email or call to check availability and price.