Games and Rituals
By: Katherine Heiny
3.82
Format: 226 pages, Hardcover
The games and rituals performed by Katherine Heiny's characters range from mischievous and edgy to …
Want to Read $ 13.99"Some people say that migraines feel like bad hangovers. And some people say that migraines feel like headaches that pulse. And some people say that migraines feel like stomach flu in your head. But what migraines really feel like is being tied to a railroad track while the worlds longest, loudest, freight train thunders over you. It starts with a bright light in the corner of your vision. Very bright. Like someone is standing beside you and shining a flashlight in your eye, but you can't back a light away. Can't turn your head from it. Then you hear the train's shrill whistle, the dull angry clank of the bell, the roar of its engine. By then you're tied to the train track. Hopefully the track is your bed and not a bus stop bench or restaurant table. And you can only try to flatten yourself as the train rushes toward you. Its light flashing and horn blaring. Finally you feel the hot breath of its arrival. Feel the smoky burning exhaust fill your lungs. And then it's thundering over you. Of course the train, the noise, and the light, and the fumes is all in your head. But that's the problem. It's ALL IN YOUR HEAD! You can't escape it. You can only lie on the track, waiting for the roaring, shrieking, light splintering pain to pass. And remember, this is the world's longest train. You'll be here for hours. in this exact position. In this much pain. Lifting your head, even if you were capable of that, which you're not, results in instant decapitation. But decapitation would at least stop the pain and sometimes you wish for it."-Katherine Heiny, Games and Rituals
"Some people say that migraines feel like bad hangovers. And some people say that migraines feel like headaches that pulse. And some people say that migraines feel like stomach flu in your head. But what migraines really feel like is being tied to a railroad track while the worlds longest, loudest, freight train thunders over you. It starts with a bright light in the corner of your vision. Very bright. Like someone is standing beside you and shining a flashlight in your eye, but you can't back a light away. Can't turn your head from it. Then you hear the train's shrill whistle, the dull angry clank of the bell, the roar of its engine. By then you're tied to the train track. Hopefully the track is your bed and not a bus stop bench or restaurant table. And you can only try to flatten yourself as the train rushes toward you. Its light flashing and horn blaring. Finally you feel the hot breath of its arrival. Feel the smoky burning exhaust fill your lungs. And then it's thundering over you. Of course the train, the noise, and the light, and the fumes is all in your head. But that's the problem. It's ALL IN YOUR HEAD! You can't escape it. You can only lie on the track, waiting for the roaring, shrieking, light splintering pain to pass. And remember, this is the world's longest train. You'll be here for hours. in this exact position. In this much pain. Lifting your head, even if you were capable of that, which you're not, results in instant decapitation. But decapitation would at least stop the pain and sometimes you wish for it."-Katherine Heiny, Games and Rituals
If you liked the fiction plot in Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny , here is a list of 20 books like this:
1. You Are Here
By: David Nicholls
4.08
Format: 368 pages, Hardcover
Sometimes you need to get lost to find your way . . . Michael is coming undone. Adrift after his… read more
Want to Read $ 12.99Similar categories in David Nicholls's You Are Here book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"It’s true I do have time and freedom and I love it, sometimes. But the notion that I should be “making the most of it"-David Nicholls, You Are Here
"You were traumatised.’ ‘I wonder if people use that word too much.’ ‘It’s the right word for something traumatic.’ ‘But it wasn’t war. People get beaten up every Friday night.’ ‘And are traumatised b…"-David Nicholls, You Are Here
"she went on a solo trip to Italy, role-playing a character in a Forster novel. In Florence, she read performatively in cafés and sat in the cool of exquisite churches, straining for some kind of spir…"-David Nicholls, You Are Here
"Books saw her through the pupal stage of thirteen to sixteen, frowning at Kafka and Woolf, then tearing through John Irving and Maeve Binchy, widely read in the proper sense, making no distinction be…"-David Nicholls, You Are Here
2. Went to London, Took the Dog: A Diary
By: Nina Stibbe
3.66
Format: 346 pages, Hardcover
How do I get rid of the mosquitoes infesting the garden? Should my kids be drinking so much? And wh… read more
Want to Read $ 9.99Similar categories in Nina Stibbe's Went to London, Took the Dog: A Diary book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- audiobook
- humor
- contemporary
3. The Guest
By: Emma Cline
3.29
Format: 304 pages, Hardcover
A young woman pretends to be someone she isn't in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestsel… read more
Want to Read $ 13.99Similar categories in Emma Cline's The Guest book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"Younger men had to make everything mean something, had to turn every choice and preference into a referendum on their personality."-Emma Cline, The Guest
"He assumed her attention when he spoke. He had his insecurities, his anxieties. But underlying it all was the certainty that the world would be generous in its orientation toward him."-Emma Cline, The Guest
"All the women in the show hated each other, hated each other so much, just so they could avoid hating their husbands. Only their little dogs, blinking from their laps, seemed real: they were the wome…"-Emma Cline, The Guest
4. Blue Sisters
By: Coco Mellors
4.21
Format: 352 pages, Hardcover
Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister's death… read more
Want to Read $ 13.99Similar categories in Coco Mellors's Blue Sisters book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend? Yet this status is used a…"-Coco Mellors, Blue Sisters
5. Romantic Comedy
By: Curtis Sittenfeld
3.64
Format: 309 pages, Hardcover
A comedy writer thinks she’s sworn off love, until a dreamily handsome pop star flips the script on… read more
Want to Read $ 12.99Similar categories in Curtis Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- humor
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"Just to be clear,"-Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy
"Aren't we all performing the role of ourselves?"-Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy
"I don't write from a point of clarity. I write out of confusion."-Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy
"Isn't the goal to live with out demons, not to expect them to go away?"-Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy
6. The Rachel Incident
By: Caroline O'Donoghue
4.09
Format: 304 pages, Hardcover
A brilliantly funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately tr… read more
Want to Read $ 12.99Similar categories in Caroline O'Donoghue's The Rachel Incident book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"I was twenty and I needed two things: to be in love and to be taken seriously."-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident
"He was a doctor and I was supposed to take what he said seriously; but he was a dentist and my dad so I didn’t."-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident
"It's not that we weren't capable of warmth as a family. But we were regularly seduced by the concept of being wronged."-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident
"I thought of my parents as heads on Easter Island, and it took moving two miles away to realise they had been people all along."-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident
7. Come and Get It
By: Kiley Reid
3.38
Format: 400 pages, Hardcover
A fresh and provocative story about a residential assistant and her messy entanglement with a profe… read more
Want to Read $ 14.99Similar categories in Kiley Reid's Come and Get It book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"Kennedy hadn't considered it before, that to write something beautiful you just do it regular, and then you pull out a red pen."-Kiley Reid, Come and Get It
"Washing her sheets was another thing she'd failed to do. She washed her clothes—every weekend—but when it came to the bedsheets, she'd get stressed out or she'd forget. And then there was too much ti…"-Kiley Reid, Come and Get It
"Okay, sometimes—just being honest— Millie can be . . . a little ghetto." On the word little, Tyler held two fingers an inch apart. "Nooo. Don't say that. Ah love Millie." "But I'm not saying it like …"-Kiley Reid, Come and Get It
8. Games and Rituals
By: Katherine Heiny
3.82
Format: 226 pages, Hardcover
The games and rituals performed by Katherine Heiny's characters range from mischievous and edgy to … read more
Want to Read $ 13.99Similar categories in Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- short story collection
- humor
- anthologies
- short stories
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"Some people say that migraines feel like bad hangovers. And some people say that migraines feel like headaches that pulse. And some people say that migraines feel like stomach flu in your head. But w…"-Katherine Heiny, Games and Rituals
9. Soldier Sailor
By: Claire Kilroy
4.10
Format: 256 pages, ebook
Well, Sailor. Here we are once more, you and me in one another's arms. The Earth rotates beneath us… read more
Want to Read $ 12.99Similar categories in Claire Kilroy's Soldier Sailor book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- audiobook
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
"I laughed and then we were doing that thing again, our thing: laughing into one another's eyes. All that time I had thought I was jollying you along when all that time you were jollying along me."-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor
"I tell my husband about my childhood and he tells me about his but it isn't the same. We can never know each other as we were then. But I know you. I will see the child you were in the man you will b…"-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor
"Hated cling film. Hated it more than I hated kinetic sand. Defeated by something that lacked a third dimension. While I'd been off tinkering on the cerebral plane, the smart money has been mastering …"-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor
"I knelt down to pick up the hatchling to . . . . what? Give it back to its mother? Here is your dying chick? Just before I made contact with it, she dive-bombed me. The mother actually dive-bombed me…"-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor
10. The Vulnerables
By: Sigrid Nunez
3.61
Format: 256 pages, Hardcover
The New York Times –bestselling, National Book Award–winning author of The Friend and What Are You … read more
Want to Read $ 14.99Similar categories in Sigrid Nunez's The Vulnerables book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- audiobook
"Only when I was young did I believe that it was important to remember what happened in every novel I read. Now I know the truth: what matters is what you experience while reading, the states of feeli…"-Sigrid Nunez, The Vulnerables
11. Piglet
By: Lottie Hazell
3.47
Format: 320 pages, Hardcover
An elegant, razor-sharp debut about women's ambitions and appetites—and the truth about having it a… read more
Want to Read $ 14.99Similar categories in Lottie Hazell's Piglet book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"She picked up salted butter, thick Greek yoghurt, and cream. The menu was not modest. Her basket was already heavy with Charlotte potatoes, fresh herbs, and a Duchy chicken. It was too hot for a roas…"-Lottie Hazell, Piglet
"She picked up salted butter, thick Greek yoghurt, and cream. The menu was not modest. Her basket was already heavy with Charlotte potatoes, fresh herbs, and a Duchy chicken. It was too hot for a roas…"-Lottie Hazell, Piglet
"She opened the capers, green and freckled as amphibians, and with a teaspoon eased them from their brine. The olives were next, and she pushed pits from the aubergine-dark fruits, dropping their fles…"-Lottie Hazell, Piglet
"On the platter before her there was a bowl of beef bourguignon, the sauce dark with merlot; the corner of dauphinoise potatoes, gruyère-crusted top browned, bubbled with heat; there was a small plate…"-Lottie Hazell, Piglet
12. Big Swiss
By: Jen Beagin
3.68
Format: 336 pages, Hardcover
Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house is … read more
Want to Read $ 12.99Similar categories in Jen Beagin's Big Swiss book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"¿Habla más de un idioma?"-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss
"You bullied other bullies,"-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss
"she’d always been less of a shit-talker and more of a shit-thinker"-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss
"At least I know where the hell I am and what’s happening. Which way is north?"-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss
13. Good Material
By: Dolly Alderton
3.91
Format: 345 pages, Paperback
From the bestselling author of Ghosts and Everything I Know About Love: a story of heartbreak and f… read more
Want to Read $ 14.99Similar categories in Dolly Alderton's Good Material book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- humor
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"Thirty-five is the youth of middle age."-Dolly Alderton, Good Material
"Remember, a broken heart is a jester's greatest prop."-Dolly Alderton, Good Material
"You know how to be along without being lonely. Do you know how rare that is?"-Dolly Alderton, Good Material
"Why is it that London always seems the most alive and full of possibility on the nights when you've got no plans?"-Dolly Alderton, Good Material
14. Sandwich
By: Catherine Newman
3.75
Format: 229 pages, Hardcover
From the beloved author of We All Want Impossible Things, a moving, hilarious story of a family sum… read more
Want to Read $ 13.99Similar categories in Catherine Newman's Sandwich book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"What does loss look like, in your body? Where is it? It feels like an air bubble stuck in your psyche. It feels like peering down into a deep hole. The vertigo of that. The potential for obliteration…"-Catherine Newman, Sandwich
"We're just ruined by sex, women---our bodies, our psyches. We're sexually assaulted every five minutes. We're infected with everything. Traumatized by conceiving, by not conceiving. But let's keep at…"-Catherine Newman, Sandwich
15. Green Dot
By: Madeleine Gray
3.71
Format: 320 pages, Hardcover
An irresistible and messy love story about the terrible allure of wanting something that promises n… read more
Want to Read $ 14.99Similar categories in Madeleine Gray's Green Dot book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
16. After the Funeral and Other Stories
By: Tessa Hadley
3.81
Format: 240 pages, Hardcover
A masterful collection of stories that plumb the depths of everyday life to reveal the shifting tid… read more
Want to Read $ 12.99Similar categories in Tessa Hadley's After the Funeral and Other Stories book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- literary fiction
- short story collection
- short stories
- fiction
- contemporary
- audiobook
17. The Happy Couple
By: Naoise Dolan
3.38
Format: 240 pages, Hardcover
An intimate, sharply funny novel about a couple heading toward their wedding, and the three friends… read more
Want to Read $ 12.99Similar categories in Naoise Dolan's The Happy Couple book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"She'd learned by that point that she couldn't fix people. All she needed to know, really, in any human transaction, was wether it was right for her; wether it fit. That was why she'd dumped Luke when…"-Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple
"Celine believed things for exactly as long as she wanted to. Being smart, being logical, didn't help her. It just enabled her baroque self-deceit. Phoebe took the simpler route of putting no consider…"-Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple
18. We All Want Impossible Things
By: Catherine Newman
4.00
Format: 224 pages, Hardcover
Who knows you better than your best friend? Who knows your secrets, your fears, your desires, your … read more
Want to Read $ 14.99Similar categories in Catherine Newman's We All Want Impossible Things book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"In the end there’s more beauty in the imperfection."-Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things
19. The Three of Us
By: Ore Agbaje-Williams
2.96
Format: 192 pages, Hardcover
Long-standing tensions between a husband, his wife, and her best friend finally come to a breaking … read more
Want to Read $ 12.99Similar categories in Ore Agbaje-Williams's The Three of Us book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
20. Same As It Ever Was
By: Claire Lombardo
4.00
Format: 498 pages, Hardcover
Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the pla… read more
Want to Read $ 14.99Similar categories in Claire Lombardo's Same As It Ever Was book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"Parenthood was a persistent cruelty, a constant, simultaneous desire to be together and apart."-Claire Lombardo, Same As It Ever Was
21. Long Island Compromise
By: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
3.88
Format: 464 pages, Hardcover
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An exhilarating novel about one American family, the dark moment that shatter… read more
Want to Read $ 13.99Similar categories in Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Long Island Compromise book and Katherine Heiny's Games and Rituals
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- audiobook
