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4187 ratings | 1825 reviews | avg rating:4.28

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Corey Mesler’s Followers (288)

Corey’s Bookshelves

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Corey’s Friends (2,949)

Mike

1,523 books | 90 friends

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2,875 books | 249 friends

Mary Keane

375 books | 615 friends

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Corey Mesler

Goodreads Author

Born

in Niagara Falls NY, The United States

Twitter

coreymesler

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Poetry, Short Stories

Influences

Raymond Carver, James Tate, Frank O'Hara, Donald Barthelme, Steve Ster ...more

Member Since

February 2008

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/coreymesler

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COREY MESLER has published in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Esquire/Narrative4 Project and Good Poems, American Places (Viking Press, 2011). He has published 9 novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002), We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006), The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores (2010), Following Richard Brautigan (2010), Gardner Remembers (2011), Frank Comma and the Time-Slip (2012), Diddy-Wah-Diddy: A Beale Street Suite (2013), Memphis Movie (2015), Robert Walker (2016); 5 full length poetry collections, Some Identity Problems (2008), Before the Great Troubling (2011), Our Locust Years (2013), The Catastrophe of my Personality (2014), The Sky Needs More Work (2014); and 4 books of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations ...more

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Corey Mesler’s books

Average rating: 4.38 · 717 ratings · 221 reviews · 86 distinct works • Similar authors

	Memphis Movie 4.04 avg rating — 80 ratings — published 2008 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Following Richard Brautigan 4.16 avg rating — 44 ratings — published 2005 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Talk 4.10 avg rating — 21 ratings — published 2002 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	We Are Billion Year-Old Carbon: A Tribal-Love-Rock-Novel Set in The Sixties on an Outpost Planet Called Memphis 4.62 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 2005 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	I'll Give You Something to Cry About: A Gathering of Stories by Corey Mesler (Goodreads Author), Debra Jones-Jackson 4.38 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 2011	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Hole in Sleep 4.58 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 2006 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Notes Toward The Story and other stories (2013) 4.23 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 2011 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Listen: Twenty-nine Short Conversations 4.82 avg rating — 11 ratings — published 2008 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores: A Novel of Sex and Murder 4.42 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 2010 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Diddy-Wah-Diddy: A Beale Street Suite 3.85 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 2013	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Corey is Currently Reading

Corey is currently reading

The Dice Man

by Luke Rhinehart

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Oct 03, 2026 09:08AM

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Good Girl

by Lee McCarthy

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Oct 03, 2026 07:44AM

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Horses

by Philip Shaw

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Sep 22, 2026 08:25AM

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Corey’s Recent Updates

Corey and 8 other people liked Eileen Fireman's review of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest:
17 hours, 44 min ago · see review
Corey is currently reading The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Oct 03, 2026 09:08AM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Corey rated a book really liked it Symposium by Muriel Spark	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
She's always great. This is a witty comedy of manners, with a little crime and murder thrown in. ...more
Oct 03, 2026 09:07AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Symposium by Muriel Spark. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Symposium by Muriel Spark <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Corey is currently reading Good Girl by Lee McCarthy	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Oct 03, 2026 07:44AM · like
Corey rated a book it was amazing Each Child a Disappearance: New and Selected Poems, 1972-2025 by Richard Hoffman	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
One of the best books of poetry I've read in a long time. Some of these poems hit hard. Some bring a smile. But all are rooted in a big-hearted view of the world we live in. He says, "Inside me are places where conclusions and confessions are conject ...more
Oct 03, 2026 07:40AM · like · see review
Corey and 4 other people liked Kathy's review of Fat City:
Oct 03, 2026 05:15AM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Fat City by Leonard Gardner. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Fat City by Leonard Gardner <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Corey and 20 other people liked Lisa's review of Small Things Like These: "A short novella but searing. This is how you take a historical story and make it real and immediately unsettling and relatable."
Oct 02, 2026 03:57AM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Corey and 16 other people liked lark benobi's review of Ironweed:
Oct 02, 2026 03:55AM · see review
Corey is currently reading Symposium by Muriel Spark	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Sep 29, 2026 08:52AM · 1 like · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Symposium by Muriel Spark. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Symposium by Muriel Spark <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Corey entered a giveaway My Eliot: A Novel by Donald Antrim 25 copies available, ends on October 15, 2026 Enter to win »
Sep 27, 2026 09:04AM · like · see giveaway

More of Corey's books…

Quotes by Corey Mesler (?)

“I miss you because memory
is a kind editor.
The past is a long scroll and
in it is the story of us,
told with gentle metaphor, and
words that bring
you back and back, even as you
lie there, lying.”
― Corey Mesler

tags: corey-mesler, poetry, return-key

11 likes

“It was raining a motherfucker.
It was raining a Dostoyevsky novel.
It was raining a Kurosawa film.
It was raining a Trout Mask Repilca.”
― Corey Mesler, Following Richard Brautigan

3 likes

Corey’s Quotes

“His own faith, however, was not lacking in virtues since it consisted in acknowledging obscurely that he would be granted much without ever deserving anything.”
― Albert Camus

10 likes

“Sometimes, when I couldn’t afford to pay the utility bill at the end of the month, I was forced to read by the light of the stories themselves.”
― Steve Stern

tags: books

9 likes

“I’m on a government watch list. But I’m not interested, because government watches only work twenty minutes out of every hour.”
― Jarod Kintz, At even one penny, this book would be overpriced. In fact, free is too expensive, because you'd still waste time by reading it.

264 likes

“I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”
― François Rabelais

tags: death, french-renaissance-writer, john-green, last-words, life, looking-for-alaska, meaning-of-life, miles-halter

4581 likes

“He did not know what to do. Not just now, he thought, not just in this, not just about this, today and tomorrow, but every day on the earth.”
― Raymond Carver

6 likes

More of Corey’s quotes…

recent posts
Corey’s Groups

¡ POETRY ! — 22494 members — last activity Sep 21, 2026 02:04PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more

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For friends of NYRB Classics

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Join acclaimed author Jesse Ball for a discussion of his work in celebration of his newest novel The Curfew. Jesse will answer questions September 5-9 ...more

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Keep up with new releases, readings and travels with RD Armstrong as he tries to make it as a micro-press in 21st century America. Lummox Press has be ...more

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Sign up to get news of our lastest acquistions and newest releases. Bloggers and Reviewers Welcome! Join for review ARCs, connect with our authors ...more

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Are you the author of a weird book? Are you enjoying a weird book that you'd like to tell others about? Are you an actual weird book that has somehow ...more

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Punk Hostage Press is a not-for-profit book publishing imprint that also acts as a an outreach program to connect writers and contemporary literature ...more

Ask Megan Abbott & Michael Koryta - Thursday, September 12th! — 100 members — last activity Sep 11, 2014 11:46AM
Join us on Thursday, September 12th for a special discussion with authors Megan Abbott & Michael Koryta. Megan and Michael will be discussing their ne ...more

The Melville House Group — 213 members — last activity Feb 22, 2022 05:26PM
We rather like our books. Just a bit, maybe. A little. Naturally, we want to talk about them with fellow readers. Join us in discussing our books or ...more

Folded Word Fan Club — 44 members — last activity May 04, 2020 11:54PM
A place for readers with excellent taste to discuss (chap)books published by Folded Word and schmooze with its editors and authors. Imagine a string q ...more

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Corey’s Friend Comments

Comments (showing 1-30) post a comment »

date

newest »

message 30: by Corey

Nov 01, 2016 04:55AM

Majenta wrote: "Hello again, just want to say congratulations on ALL your books! I am impressed! Write on! Have a good tomorrow/next month!
Blessings!

Best wishes from Majenta"

Thanks so much. You did a lot of liking! Tell me your real name and place in the world.
best,
Corey

reply | flag

message 29: by Majenta

Oct 31, 2016 07:23PM

Hello again, just want to say congratulations on ALL your books! I am impressed! Write on! Have a good tomorrow/next month!
Blessings!

Best wishes from Majenta

reply | flag

message 28: by Majenta

Oct 31, 2016 02:06PM

Hello, Corey! Thank you so much for contacting me. I hope you are well and will have a great and productive week. Happy Monday, Happy Halloween. Happy reading, writing, and everything else. Blessings!
Best wishes from Majenta

reply | flag

message 27: by Corey

Dec 06, 2013 04:40AM

s.penkevich wrote: "Thank you for the friend request!"

My pleasure.

reply | flag

message 26: by s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]

Dec 05, 2013 10:10PM

Thank you for the friend request!

reply | flag

message 25: by Corey

Jun 18, 2013 04:28AM

Robin wrote: "Thanks for the friendship Corey! Keep up the good writing and may your imagination and inspiration always run free!"

Robin wrote: "Thanks for the friendship Corey! Keep up the good writing and may your imagination and inspiration always run free!"

Thanks. Back atcha.

reply | flag

message 24: by Robin

Jun 17, 2013 08:45PM

Thanks for the friendship Corey! Keep up the good writing and may your imagination and inspiration always run free!

reply | flag

message 23: by Corey

Jun 10, 2013 04:59AM

Back atcha.

reply | flag

message 22: by Christine

Jun 10, 2013 04:56AM

Thanks for being my friend

reply | flag

message 21: by Ed

Mar 29, 2010 11:25AM

Thank you for the friend invite, Corey.

reply | flag

message 20: by Corey

Dec 12, 2009 06:25AM

Jeffrey wrote: "hey corey;

congrats on your monkey puzzle showing!

jeff"

Jeffrey wrote: "hey corey;

congrats on your monkey puzzle showing!

jeff"

Thanks. It's a classy little production and I was happy to land in it.

reply | flag

message 19: by Jeffrey

Dec 12, 2009 05:36AM