Books like 'Eve's Hollywood'
Readers who enjoyed Eve's Hollywood by Eve Babitz also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary 20th century comedy north-america usa california classics humor coming-of-age urban
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The Little Golden Calf by Ilya Ilf, Yevgeny Petrov
Rated: 4.45 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe name The Little Golden Calf comes from the Bible, the Book of Exodus 32:1-4 Delighted applause from both sides of the Atlantic greeted the first publication of this comic clasic about Soviet life in the early years after the Revolution. Social changes then were so drastic and came so thick and fast that even most Russians were confused... -
The Complete Yes Prime Minister by Jonathan Lynn, Antony Jay
Rated: 4.58 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsPresented in the form of diaries, official documents, and letters, rather than simply transcribed scripts, this book is a companion to the successful BBC series, "Yes Prime Minister... -
The Compromise by Sergei Dovlatov
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBased on Dovlatov's experiences as a journalist in the Soviet Republic of Estonia, this is an acidly comic picture of ludicrous bureaucratic ineptitude, which obviously still continues... -
The Suitcase by Sergei Dovlatov
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSergei Dovlatov’s subtle, dark-edged humor and wry observations are in full force in The Suitcase as he examines eight objects—the items he brought with him in his luggage upon his emigration from the U.S.S.R... -
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Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 60 ratingsA gargantuan, mind-altering tragi-comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America... -
What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire by Charles Bukowski
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsCharles Bukowski's gamble in art was as prolific as it was audacious. The second in Black Sparrow's series of posthumous volumes of Bukowski's poetry takes us deeper into the raw, wild vein that extends from the early 1970s to the 1990s... -
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsMaqroll the Gaviero (the Lookout) is one of the most alluring and memorable characters in the fiction of the last twenty-five years...Categorized as:
classics crime humor literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies -
Noises Off by Michael Frayn
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsNoises Off, the classic farce by the Tony Award—winning author of Copenhagen, is not one play but two: simultaneously a traditional sex farce, Nothing On, and the backstage “drama” that develops during Nothing On’s final rehearsal and tour... -
Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsIn what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D. H...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age humor literary-fiction urban 20th-century audiobook bildungsroman -
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 73 ratingsWhen Claudia decided to run away, she planned very carefully. She would be gone just long enough to teach her parents a lesson in Claudia appreciation. And she would go in comfort-she would live at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She saved her money, and she invited her brother Jamie to go, mostly because be was a miser and would have money... -
The Collected Plays, Vol. 1 by Neil Simon
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis first volume of The Collected Plays of Neil Simon contains the triumphs that put his unique brand of comic genius on the American stage, and made him the most successful playwright of his generation... -
The Complete Plays by Joe Orton
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis volume contains every play written by Joe Orton, who emerged in the 1960s as the most talented comic playwright in recent English history and was considered the direct successor to Wilde, Shaw, and Coward... -
Mulliner Nights by P.G. Wodehouse, Jonathan Cecil
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA private detective who can make the guilty confess simply by smiling at them. An artist so intimidated by his morally impeccable cat that he feels compelled to wear formal attire at dinner. A devotee of Proust whose life is turned upside down when he inadvertently subscribes to a correspondence course on "How to Acquire Complete Self-Confidence and an Iron Will... -
What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhat Makes Sammy Run?Everyone of us knows someone who runs. He is one of the symp-toms of our times—from the little man who shoves you out of the way on the street to the go-getter who shoves you out of a job in the office to the Fuehrer who shoves you out of the world. And all of us have stopped to wonder, at some time or another, what it is that makes these people tick... -
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Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo, Joseph Farrell
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn its first two years of production, Dario Fo's controversial farce, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, was seen by over half a million people. It has since been performed all over the world and is widely recognised as a classic of modern drama... -
Pushkin Hills by Sergei Dovlatov
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn unsuccessful writer and an inveterate alcoholic, Boris Alikhanov has recently divorced his wife Tatyana, and he is running out of money... -
The Collected Stories by Grace Paley
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis reissue of Grace Paley's classic collection—a finalist for the National Book Award—demonstrates her rich use of language as well as her extraordinary insight into and compassion for her characters, moving from the hilarious to the tragic and back again... -
The World According to Garp by John Irving
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 72 ratingsThis is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields—a feminist leader ahead of her times. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes—even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with "lunacy and sorrow"; yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust... -
The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWhite Boy Shuffle is Man Booker-winner Paul Beatty’s electrifying debut novel about teenage-surf-bum Gunnar Kaufman who is forced to wise up when his mother moves from suburban Santa Monica to urban West Los Angeles. There, he begins to undergo a startling transformation from neighbourhood outcast to basketball superstar, and eventually to reluctant messiah of a ‘divided, downtrodden people’... -
Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valentime by Barbara Park
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsBarbara Park’s New York Times bestselling chapter book series, Junie B. Jones, is a classroom favorite and has been keeping kids laughing—and reading—for more than twenty years. Over 60 million copies in print and now with a bright new look for a new generation! Meet the World’s Funniest Kindergartner—Junie B. Jones! February 14—Valentime’s Day, as Junie B. calls it—is just around the corner... -
Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A. by Eve Babitz
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsEve Babitz captured the voluptuous quality of L.A. in the 1960s in a wildly original, totally unique voice. These stories are time capsule gems, as poignant and startling today as they were when published in the early 1970s. Eve Babitz is not well known today, but she should be. Her first hand experiences in the L.A... -
Ramona and Her Mother by Beverly Cleary
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis is a previously published edition of edition of ISBN 9780380709526. An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.Ramona Quimby is no longer seven, but not quite eight... -
The Best of Saki by Saki
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 21 ratingsThe short stories of Saki give brief but dazzling glimpses into the lives of the Edwardian rich; a class that virtually disappeared with the advent of the First World War. With delicious malice, Saki portrays the follies, eloquence, tradition and foibles of his characters... -
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The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story about the Hard Life by Flann O'Brien
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Poor Mouth relates the story of one Bonaparte O'Coonassa, born in a cabin in a fictitious village called Corkadoragha in western Ireland equally renowned for its beauty and the abject poverty of its residents. Potatoes constitute the basis of his family's daily fare, and they share both bed and board with the sheep and pigs... -
Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsNineteen-year-old Harold Chasen is obsessed with death. He fakes suicides to shock his self-obsessed mother, drives a customized Jaguar hearse, and attends funerals of complete strangers. Seventy-nine-year-old Maude Chardin, on the other hand, adores life... -
The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in the mountains of Connemara, County Galway, The Beauty Queen of Leenane tells the darkly comic tale of Maureen Folan, a plain and lonely woman in her early forties, and Mag her manipulative aging mother whose interference in Maureen's first and potentially last loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that is as gothically funny as it is horrific... -
Rosy Is My Relative by Gerald Durrell
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsRosy, the elephant bequeathed to young Adrian Rookwhistle by a reprobate relative, turned out to be a handful: not alone because of her size but also because of her fondness for strong drink. To Adrian she represented the chance to get away froma City shop and a suburban lodging by exploiting her theatrical talent and experience...Categorized as:
classics humor literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure animals anthropomorphism book -
A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrederick Exley's inimitable "fictional memoir" A Fan's Notes has assumed the status of a classic since its first publication in 1968. Mordantly and poignantly, Exley describes the profound failures of his life; professional, sexual, and personal... -
The Risk Pool by Richard Russo
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe Risk Pool is a thirty-year journey through the lives of Sam Hall, a small-town gambling hellraiser, and his watchful, introspective son Ned...Categorized as:
coming-of-age humor literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure book comedy contemporary -
Junie B. Jones Is a Party Animal by Barbara Park
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBarbara Park’s New York Times bestselling chapter book series, Junie B. Jones, is a classroom favorite and has been keeping kids laughing—and reading—for more than twenty years. Over 60 million copies in print and now with a bright new look for a new generation! Meet the World’s Funniest Kindergartner—Junie B... -
Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970 by Richard Brautigan
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA collection of 62 very short stories set in 1960s California, particularly around the author's home town of San Francisco. Richard Brautigan is the author of "Willard & His Bowling Trophies", "Trout Fishing in America", "In Watermelon Sugar" & "A Confederate General From Big Sur"... -
Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe plot of Exercises in Style is simple: a man gets into an argument with another passenger on a bus. However, this anecdote is told 99 more times, each in a radically different style, as a sonnet, an opera, in slang, and with many more permutations. This virtuoso set of variations is a linguistic rust-remover, and a guide to literary forms... -
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Significant Others by Armistead Maupin
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsSignificant Others, the fifth self-contained chronicle in the Tales of the City saga, is a cunningly observed class comedy that's sure to be relished by the cognoscenti and by new readers alike.A holiday in the redwoods goes uproariously awry when the opposing sexes camp out rather too close to each other for comfort... -
Wait Until Spring, Bandini by John Fante
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIt is going to be a cold winter in Rocklin, Colorado for the family of Svevo Bandini. The immigrant Italian bricklayer is spending his money at the Imperial Poolhall and his time at the widow Hildegarde's.His angelic wife Maria stays at home, cleaning, praying, dreading the arrival of her fearsome mother...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age humor literary-fiction north-america usa 20th-century bildungsroman -
Babycakes by Armistead Maupin
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe characters that filled the pages of the three earlier Tales of the City books with love and laughter are at it again, as an ordinary house-husband and his ambitious wife discover there's more to making a baby than meets the eye. Unexpected help arrives in the form of a British monarch, a grieving gay neighbour, and an international ring of mail-order brides... -
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 72 ratingsFear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken... -
The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsMattia Pascal endures a life of drudgery in a provincial town. Then, providentially, he discovers that he has been declared dead. Realizing he has a chance to start over, to do it right this time, he moves to a new city, adopts a new name, and a new course of life—only to find that this new existence is as insufferable as the old one... -
The Scapegoat by Daniel Pennac
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsPathetic, contrite and hapless, Benjamin is nonetheless the scapegoat at The Store: there is nothing for which he cannot be blamed. While his blunders remain minor, most of his unwitting victims can find it in their hearts to forgive him, but when violent explosions begin to follow him around, he inevitably becomes the prime suspect... -
The Odd Couple by Neil Simon, Nathan Lane
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsComedy / 6m, 2f / Int. This classic comedy opens as a group of the guys assembled for cards in the apartment of divorced Oscar Madison. And if the mess is any indication, it's no wonder that his wife left him. Late to arrive is Felix Unger who has just been separated from his wife... -
Junie B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake by Barbara Park
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratings"I'm the bestest winner in the world!" It's Carnival Night, and Lucille has already won a box of fluffy cupcakes with sprinkles on them. But when Junie B. wins the Cake Walk, she chooses the bestest cake of all- the one wrapped in sparkly aluminum foil... -
Henry and Beezus by Beverly Cleary, Louis Darling
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAll Henry Huggins wants is his very own bicycle, a shiny red one to ride up and down Klickitat Street. But no matter how Henry tries to raise money for the bike of his dreams--from selling bubble gum to delivering newspapers--he always ends up with too much trouble and not enough money... -
Sexus by Henry Miller
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsSexus is the first volume of the scandalous trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, Henry Miller's major life workHenry Miller called the end of his life in America and the start of a new, bohemian existence in 1930s Paris his 'rosy crucifixion'. His searing fictionalized autobiography of this time of liberation was banned for nearly twenty years... -
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Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bed by Barbara Park
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThere's no such thing as monsters. Mother and Daddy even said so. But then why is there monster drool on Junie B.'s pillow? Oh, no! What if Paulie Allen Puffer is right -- what if she really "does" have a monster under her bed? If Junie B. goes to sleep, the monster might see her feet hanging down... -
Sure of You by Armistead Maupin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsIn this, the sixth and final self-contained volume of Armistead Maupin's epic chronicle of modern life, a fiercely ambitious TV talk show host finds she must choose between national stardom in New York and a husband and child in San Francisco... -
In His Own Write by John Lennon
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAbout The Awful I was bored on the 9th of Octover 1940 when, I believe, the Nasties were still booming us led by Madolf Heatlump (who only had one). Anyway they didn't get me. I attended to varicous schools in Liddypol. And still didn't pass—much to my Aunties supplies... -
Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA dark, quasi-detective novel, Cosmos follows the classic noir motif to explore the arbitrariness of language, the joke of human freedom, and man’s attempt to bring order out of chaos in his psychological life.Published in 1965, Cosmos is the last novel by Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969) and his most somber and multifaceted work... -
A Confederate General from Big Sur by Richard Brautigan
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsBrautigan's excellent novel is definitely worth the quick read, then worth another to catch all his language play. Having grown up near Big Sur, this book was particularly funny as Lee Mellon is still in residence there. Brautigan's descriptions of drugs, drinks, frogs & the commas of Ecclesiastes are all done in a straightforward style... -
Mr. Mulliner Speaking by P.G. Wodehouse
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA Mulliner collectionIn the bar-parlour of the Angler's Rest, Mr Mulliner tells his amazing tales, which hold his audience of drinkers (referred to only as Pints of Stout and Whiskies-and-Splash) in the palm of his expressive hand...
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