Conveyor Belt Books

Conveyor Belt Books Used & Rare Bookstore Throwing Mindbombs in Northern Kentucky & Greater Cincinnati

Another of these rampagers up online, 1st ed/4th printing of Selby's classic.
06/04/2026

Another of these rampagers up online, 1st ed/4th printing of Selby's classic.






I dunno TF Joy Williams did to continuously earn the dubious title of World's Greatest Writer With The Worst Cover Art i...
06/04/2026

I dunno TF Joy Williams did to continuously earn the dubious title of World's Greatest Writer With The Worst Cover Art in America but as a massive, massive acolyte & fan of her gorgeous prose, these 2 works stand as ample evidence for her argument of Best Living Writer, period.

The Changeling, her 2nd novel (& best, per the rapturous Rikki Ducornet) is perhaps the most bizarre, sumptuous & dark iteration of postpartum motherhood in literature - subtly daring, laconic in its humor, efflorescent in style, I've never encountered anything remotely like it & Williams never attempted anything quite like it again. Largely dismissed, critically-neglected or else reviled by those who welcomed her arrival with State of Grace, it was perhaps too weird, too ahead of its time & environment to be properly appreciated; maybe the apparatus wasn't ready to accept this gin-dunked nightmare of lightly-magical fiction about a recent mother entangled in the cult vibes of a strange island with visions of shapeshifting children from an emerging female author (likely), but this is one of the novels I have recommended most over the last two years, & I will keep flogging this particular horse, enthusiastically.

Its dismissal had a kind of upside, in that Williams shifted her focus more towards the writing of short fiction, for which she is often most regarded. Hard to argue with that, as The Visiting Privilege strongly attests. Collecting the majority of Williams stories from Taking Care to its time of publication, I'd nominate Train, Escapes, nearly everything from Honored Guest (& 85% of this collection) as proof she belongs with O'Connor, Pancake & Carver at the summit of American short stories.

Granted the Changeling cover is just merely "meh" but c'mon - a blurred dog for Visiting Privilege?

This woman is a national treasure. Someone tell her that while she's still around looking cool in dark sunglasses.






Back in the saddle & lookin California with Fante tomorrow from 12-6.
06/03/2026

Back in the saddle & lookin California with Fante tomorrow from 12-6.






More essential reading from Debord & co, The Situationist International Anthology, here presented in its definitive, exp...
06/02/2026

More essential reading from Debord & co, The Situationist International Anthology, here presented in its definitive, expanded edition.






UNBEARABLY scarce & cool, a true 1st English-language printing of Jean Genet's The Thief's Journal, published by Olympia...
06/01/2026

UNBEARABLY scarce & cool, a true 1st English-language printing of Jean Genet's The Thief's Journal, published by Olympia Press in 1954. This publication predates the more common (but still scarce) Traveller's Companion edition Olympia subsequently released, as well as the later, more common hardcover printing from Grove Press.

Possibly/probably the most important & influential figure in Gay Lit (way up there in any case, maybe battling Burroughs), an incomparable stylist, a visionary, an artist in every imaginable sense of the word, whose daring & poeticism has never dulled.

Up online now.






Coming up at the , a world of fun begins with Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair, a series of screenings presented in partner...
05/31/2026

Coming up at the , a world of fun begins with Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair, a series of screenings presented in partnership with that will surely require some va**um aerosol or a nice post-screening cocktail at . 17 films all embracing the darkness, the ennui, the crippling terror, the depraved, the terminally-sick, the good clean American & elsewhere sense of "un-joy."

It was a dynamite good time going through lineup selections with & , over at Larry's a few months back, & for Conveyor's part we'll be introducing two all-time favorites, Gus Van Sant's Elephant (one we've long-wanted to screen) & Bela Tarr's Damnation. Other screenings will be introduced by the delicious local talents of , & .

Full lineup & tix available via the Esquire's site. See ya out there & maybe we can all form a support group.






Never having been much a fan of the idea of these presumptive "best of" lists that roll out every so often, I hadn't loo...
05/31/2026

Never having been much a fan of the idea of these presumptive "best of" lists that roll out every so often, I hadn't looked at the recent Guardian 100 Greatest Novels iteration, mostly owing to that indifference & the suspicion it'd be a fairly unexciting, sexless, exsanguinated affair - which turns out to be true, of course, I feel like I've spent two hours examining varieties of beige paint samples.

Whatta thoroughly dull experience, one which hides the quirks, dazzling brilliance, idiosyncrasies, mindbombs & challenges in literature. Rather than act aghast at x-amount of omissions (though extremely surprised Tommy Ruggles, Gaddis, O'Connor, Kesey & myriad, many more ain't on there), I'd prefer to just say hey, where'n the f*ck is the DeLillo, folks?

Even understanding that these are meant to be digestible, unobtrusive fluff pieces designed for "general readership" or whatever (or calling a novella - The Metamorphosis - a novel) & that these kinds of endeavors consider the endorsement of anything lightly "experimental" a high-risk endeavor, it's a touch shocking that ole Uncle Don isn't represented by White Noise, Libra, Mao II or this lovely brick, Underworld.

Having spent the last 2 months either rereading or doing first reads of DeLillo's ouevre (at 10 books right now & I don't want it to end), it's startling how close he's sensed the currents of this country in his time writing, & that stretch from The Names to (I'd argue) Cosmopolis is frankly unparalleled in terms of a "hit" streak. On a sentence by sentence basis, in the back-half of the 20th century, there's a small room where DeLillo, Joy Williams & William Gass are alone, hopefully not staring at beige-painted walls.

With Underworld, lemme tell ya, you can do worse things this spring than deliquesce into this masterful, exhausting testament of what fiction can do, when it's being done by a master of the form.

Alright, the "yelling at clouds" portion of the day has ended.

Read some Don.

Peace.






4 from - emphatic love for the Ronald Johnson, a truly essential collection.
05/31/2026

4 from - emphatic love for the Ronald Johnson, a truly essential collection.





Another day, another Hopscotch.
05/31/2026

Another day, another Hopscotch.






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