The only weird book I've read till now is The Grimus by Salman Rushdie.

I just finished the weirdest book I have ever read. It was called "House of Leaves."

Sherri! I forgot to add my weird book to the list:

The End Of Alice and it's "companion" Appendix A: An Elaboration on the Novel the End of Alice

Teenage girl seeks out convicted pedophile murderer as mentor. He obliges her from prison.

Ugh.

(But I so admire Homes for being able to pull it off. It is an incredibly disturbing but stunning work.)

Debbie, I was going to say something similar. I was eight when The Phantom Tollbooth was published and read it right away. Of course I knew it was a fantasy but so were half the books I was reading back then. As I got a few years older, I was able to better appreciate the word play, and other charms of the book, so I've read the book differently at different ages, but I have the memories of my eight year old self.

Of course, I started reading the Harry Potters in my 40s and I don't think of them as weird anyway. I accept a lot in the pages of books that I'd think was extraordinarily weird in real life.

I think the age at which you first read Phantom Tollbooth might make a difference? I met it first in my mid-40's when one of my pupils asked me to read it to the class. I did, but found it quite weird. I can see how a child might be more accepting of the weird concepts it contains....and then grow up thinking it is wonderful/charming.

Bunny, And it could be argued that wonderful part is not the weirdest part in the book. Yet I consider The Phantom Tollbooth to be a perfectly "normal" book. Of course, everything about it is unique so therefore weird. Edit: I concede.

Yay! So I want to say that any book where somebody is born floating at the height they will eventually attain and then grows downward until his feet touch the ground can fairly be called at least somewhat weird.

Moved from list thread:
I included The Phantom Tollbooth on my list, Debbie. Totally weird! :)

And I replied to Lisa if she's weird for her views on The Phantom Tollbooth, that weird is good!

Ah, Thanks to Bunny I found this thread. So, I'm moving some of my errant message text from the weirdo book shelf non-discussion thread to this discussion thread:

So yes, I admitted to Mindy that my choice of a weird book: North America's Top Selling Home Plans was a strange choice. I guess I'm weird because I did bother to rate it on Goodreads.

I also mentioned to the members who'd put The Phantom Tollbooth on their weird book lists, even though weird in a good way for at least one, that I don't find The Phantom Tollbooth at all weird. It is unusual so maybe in that sense it fits the definition. It came out when I was eight and it's been a favorite ever since, and it seems like a perfectly normal book to me. But calling the weird designation for TPT I guess I was just being facetious. It is a terrific book though!

Some explanation for my specific choices:

"Cards of Identity" is described on its jacket as "a scathing satire of psychology, identity theory, and class prejudice". Definitely the oddest book I've read in the past couple of years, for reasons I try to pin down in my review, but without much success:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/166...

"Endgame" has the distinction of being bleaker than "Godot": We have the impression of watching the end of something, the end possibly of the human race. All movement has slowed down. Hamm is paralyzed and confined to his chair. Clov walks with difficulty. Nagg and Nell are legless and occupy little space in their ash cans. The setting vaguely resembles a womb and the ash cans are wombs within the womb. The two windows look out onto the sea and the earth, which are without trace of mankind. No affection joins the four characters. Nagg and Nell depend on Hamm for food. Clov, the son-slave, would kill Hamm if he knew the combination to the buffet where the last crackers are stored.

But if you think those four folks are dysfunctional, wait until you meet the Groan family of "Gormenghast".

Or the charming characters that take part in "The Bottle Factory Outing"

I would say that those four books are the ones on my list where the "weirdness" detracted from my enjoyment, or - in the case of Gormenghast - made me not want to continue reading. As I general rule I tend to find flawed characters more interesting company than those obviously meant to be "good" or "heroic" or "noble", but the truly nasty or psychopathic tend not to be good company over the long haul. Particularly if they dominate the whole milieu - I find unmitigated dreariness neither entertaining or particularly edifying.

The other six on my list were strange, but in a way that worked for me, but that will have to wait for a later post. As someone else pointed out, children's books are a richer source of strangeness than adult fiction, which suggests a possible atrophying of our tastes and expectations as readers as we get older.

While I don't dispute the selection of "The Master and Margarita" to be included for discussion on this thread, Goethe's treatment of the Faust legend got pretty weird as well, particularly in Faust, Part II.

o henry

Oh, yes, I love Flann O'Brien! He is absolutely brilliant - experimental, hilarious, and an underrated genius. "The Third Policeman" is quite creepy in a delicious way. And it was made slightly odder by the fact that one of the main characters was a passing character in one of his other novels, "The Dalkey Archives." Read Dalkey first and then read Policemen - it gives you a chilling deja vu.

Probably his finest novel is "At Swim-Two-Birds" (published 1939) in which he pre-invented post-modernism. Get this: The story is about a college youth writing a novel about characters who decide they want to be free of the bad writing of the author of their book so they manage to drug him so they can go off and do the things they wanted to do that the writer wouldn't let them do. Genius. "The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story About a Hard Life" is also quite good as well as "The Hard Life: An Exegesis of Squalor." He was an odd guy...died at 55, a lonely drunk i've read. He had a column for an Irish newspaper wherein he wrote from a character POV, not a pundit POV - a sort of early 20th century Stephen Colbert. He supposedly wrote letters to the Editor complaining about his own articles.

When i was at Powell's recently i picked up all his remaining collections. Pure joy to read.

I haven't read the complete thread yet, but has anyone read "The Third Policeman" by Flan O'Brien? Very strange story!

I agree, Dottie! And I can't seem to forget it even though it has been a while. Weird leftover images from the book seem to come to mind for no reason.

King -- I not only thought about it -- I put Faber's book on my list -- it qualifies in my definition of weird no matter what the aim was. I'm not saying it wasn't a good book -- just that I found it plenty weird.

Going out of my way to meet weird seems to be my relationship pattern.

Good point, King. I was referring to the novel by Don Delillo, not the one by Rudy Rucker which I didn't know about until your post.

Sorry if there was confusion. Dave, which one were you referring to?

See and I actually liked the flatness of Coraline because I felt it had the quality of a folk tale, where people don't demonstrate the motives and character behind their behavior, they just do stuff and leave us to figure it out. Why does a troll live under a bridge and grab people? Because that's what trolls do. Why do mice sing odd whispery songs in the garden? Because they are mice. Isn't it fun how different people can see very different things in the same work?

Are you guys talking about the same "White Noise"? Because if you're talking about the Rudy Rucker book, yeah that sucker is weird. It's actually the one Rucker book I don't like much.

It also reminds me of a Damon Knight book called "Humpty Dumpty", which I also didn't like much - although I am pretty much a fan of Knight's stuff.

Also, I don't remember who mentioned it but I almost put Michael Faber's "Under the Skin" on my list.

Dottie, Mindy, thank you for the compliment. *pets my cute word*

Dottie, I don't think "Coraline" is weird either, but I think that's what Gaiman was going for. It didn't work for me because he didn't overcome the clichéd plot or make the characters more than two-dimensional.

I think I'd know weird if I met it, but I also haven't really gone out to try and meet it.

Noran - No offense taken. I thought it was worth explaining.

If the thread is meant for "weird" as in "quirky", the list is probably endless, since there are entire genres that might fall under that category. If it includes books that are not themselves inherently weird, but contain quirky characters. Isn't it every writer's goal to make the characters quirky enough to be memorable?

The various definitions of the category and the explanations of people's choices are what make this thread interesting to me.

Since Neil Gaiman's books have already been brought up, I'll explain why I chose "A Walking Tour of the Shambles" out of all of his books. Most of what he's written could easily be classified as "weird", as backed up by a thesaurus. His themes are weird before you get to his characters, many of whom are also weird.
A Walking Tour of the Shambles is a faux travel guide of a faux neighborhood in a real city. As such, it has no characters or plot in the traditional sense. I'd argue that in lieu of characters, the sites become characters, and the descriptions of the various destinations are stories in themselves. It also purports to be only one part of a larger series - I wish it was. I'd love to read the rest.

Dave, I have read WHITE NOISE.

I asked you because I found the book to be pretty much, how shall I say this, not-weird. The style was clear, the story was clear with a couple of unusual elements, like the airborne toxic event and the drug, but nothing particularly "weird." I found nothing about the book to be weird at all.

What did you find to be weird about WHITE NOISE?

Coraline isn't what I'd class as really weird but I wouldn't call it yawnsome -- though I DO love that word! I actually liked Coraline (my only Gaiman so far) very much -- which is odd since the fantasy/sci-fi/magical realism etc genre is not my usual cuppa at all.

Okay, back to the weirdness.

Yawnsome is a GREAT word!!!!

I was thinking that I haven't really read anything "weird" until I read Koe's description of "repulsive-necrophiliac-thinly-veiled-celebrity-weirdo weird."

"Snow, Glass, Apples" by Neil Gaiman definitely fits that list. And it's creepy, too.

"Coraline," on the other hand, tries to be weird but is yawnsome.

My mom thinks all of my fantasy books are "weird," but she has no problems reading "Piggy Pie" to my nieces and nephews.

Tom, re: White Noise. Are you asking because you haven't read it? If you did read it, what elements of the story did you find normal?

Misty, I almost put Weetzie Bat on my list. Definitely weird, in a fever dream/L.A. way.

Okay, here are some of my choices with my reasons:

Under the Skin - Michael Faber
Although I have since read reviews that helped me understand this is satire regarding the meat consuption in our country - and I buy that - I still found it an odd book. I enjoyed it, but it was weird (by my definition of weird...I'll get into that later :)

Running with Scissors – Augusten Burroughs
This one was weird because of allllll the stuff this man went through (it's a memoir). Some of it painful to read about, some hilarious, some...unbelievable and disturbing.

Weetzie Bat – Francesca Lia Block
Love this book! I always recommend it to my students who...march to the beat of a different drum. It's kind of like Stargirl, but with more beautiful imagery - a kiss is compared to cotton candy (yum!). I guess this one is weird to me because of the eclectic main character.

Godbody – Theodore Sturgeon
Again, I love this book! The idea of love expressed in the story is different from society's norm...hence "weird." Perhaps the world would be a better place...

Noran -- I have Justine - de Sade on my list -- so there he is. Of course I don't know if my elaboration concerning its weirdness satisfies but it stands.

Loooove My Neighbor Totoro, Noran! Especially the cat bus with, what, 8 legs?

Oh Sarah--I did extensive checking, just in case, there are on other works the Princess bride is based on or abridged from, there is none. I so hoped I was going to to find something, just like my search for legends of Totoro-nothing there either.

Now there is one for WEIRD Child child movie of the year-yet wholesome!

Yes, weird is relative, but there's no debating that Paul's Elvis fetus is definitely weird. Jeezus, where did you find that?!

Thanks bunny! NoW that is cool with me! Weird in the eye of the beholder!

by the way, i am getting me some:Flan by Stephen Tunney--looking mighty fine!

Why would we need or want to have a definition that excludes either Sarah or Noran's choices? I don't think that makes things more interesting for anybody. Lets all just be weird however we want to be weird eh?

Sherri--out of the mainstream. unique, very odd, bizarre. strange. not normal.

Sarah--based on your age at the princess bride, I can see how you may view things, I as an adult seeing it as a film first , then a book-found it a glorious romp of humor and joy!

I was brought up strange and odd myself!

My hubby asked where is De sade in all of this-never read his myself i said. I sighted the fist to come off my list at random-most favs-with fun illustrations yet! Trying for the mood of the month.
i guess i am asking for a definition for the shelf set by the beings in power, to know how weird they want it i guess.

Sarah, I just view Bride as a cherished classic that all should experience in print and film-i see it as fun, not weird at all-modern fairy tales. sorry if i upset you in anyway-sincerely.
I saw another's list of children's books and it paused me completely--i have a listing for strange children books and none of them are there-most of those are under child or classic for me. See--viewpoints vary so dramatically with life experiences. I was raised with dark humor-mother might die every day-so you hide it from the kids of you make it part of every day life. Mother made it far past her five year sentence, and i am well adjusted and well rounded for it. Family humor was unique in our home!

So someone else can define weird for this thread. i will just sit back and keep my comments to myself, and only applaud.
Again-sorry Sarah--great insight you shared with me!

Sarah, I totally agree with you on that. If you had any idea how long I actually wondered if there really WAS an unabridged version... :D

Oh oh oh I just remembered "My Elvis Blackout" by Simon Crump. For example :

"When he was a foetus, Elvis used to wait till his Mom was asleep, carefully remove his umbilical cord, sneak out of her insides and head off into town. He usually wore the little tartan coat which Alfredo, their disgusting toy poodle, wore for his walks with Momsy on cold winter mornings. Elvis looked like a complete tosser in this outfit, what with the blood and the dog hairs, but what the fuck did he care? He was the unborn King of Rock 'n' Roll and if he wanted to go out naked except for a ridiculous tartan dog coat, he bastard well would. He'd steal cans of Delmonte pineapple chunks from the Magic Market on Centenary Road, Goole, England.
'Now's the time to rip stuff off,' he figured. 'Before I get any goddamn fingerprints.'
One time when he got home he tried to crawl back inside Alfredo by mistake, but as any fool knows, you can't get to heaven in a biscuit tin (coz a biscuit tin's got biscuits in) and you can't fit an embryo up a dog's arse."

As far as I'm concerned everybody gets to add whatever seems weird to them but I am especially interested in your reason Sarah. I added Pale Fire for similar reasons it is also one in which the narrator inserts himself into the process in odd ways. In Pale Fire there are also good reasons to suspect that the narrator is not very reliable and you can't trust what he says. Then again how else do you get the information, he's the narrator you have to see it through his eyes so then you start comparing notes oh wait a minute he said this but then four pages later he says the opposite... it puts you in an odd relationship to the narrative. Which Goldman uses to great comic effect in Bride, and Nabokov uses to mess with my head in Pale Fire. I would never have thought to connect those two books in that way if you hadn't commented. Interesting.

Somebody challenged me on The Princess Bride. I added that because at the time I read it, in 7th or 8th grade, I found the book to be strangely structured. The author inserts himself into the novel in a way I hadn't encountered before, claiming that it was an abridgement of a previous work, and adding all sorts of footnotes and references to the previous work. I had never read a book that had both a plot and a commentary on itself contained within the same text -- actually, I can't think of another off the top of my head, although I'm sure someone would be happy to supply a couple. I haven't read it in years, so it may be that it isn't all that strange, but I think it merits a mention.

So Dave, what's weird about WHITE NOISE?

My selections fall into two categories:

1. Books that are weird because of their content:
The Master and Margarita
White Noise
Breakfast of Champions
The Intuitionist
The Space Merchants
The Trial
Towing Jehovah

2. Books that are weird because of the way they are written:
Trout Fishing in America
Pale Fire
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

I think I'm using the word weird here as a synonym for "unusual" or "idiosyncratic". Although content is a wider category, because there are only so many forms a book can take and still be intelligible.

I had The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters checked out from the library for a long time but didn't manage to get to it before someone requested it and I couldn't renew it any longer. I've always meant to go back to it.

"There's nowt as weird as folks"!!
That is why I think The Guinness Book of Records is one of the weirdest books I have ever seen.

Dottie, I read The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters! Nice to meet you, you are the first person I know who has even heard of it, yes I wouldn't begin to know how to describe it and haven't recommended it to anyone for that reason.

Here's what I can come up with in the way of elaboration on my choices.

1. The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters is weird in many ways and fits none of my usual genres so far as I can see -- and yet it was a book which pulled one along to the end with little time to think -- do I want to finish or not? I have found very few people thus far who have read it and I cannot frame guidelines for choosing anyone to recommend this one to -- so I'm doomed to pondering this on my own, it would seem.

2. Under the Skin was a substitute for a Faber which I was supposed to get my hands on and read with a group. I did pick up the other one and get it read as well but this one was a real departure for me -- and well-done but while it may get a decent rating, I still waiver on whether I can actually say I liked it.

3. The Mask of Sanity was a long , slow, slog full of case studies and dry as a bone writing but the information was fascinating and enlightening.

4. The Piano Teacher was weird and voyeuristic reading and left an afterhaze of blue. I don't think it's a book one can say one liked but I suppose it could be said it was powerful.

5. The Metamorphosis and/or The Trial either one could be labeled weird -- I mean you wake up and you're a cockroach? or you are on trial and have no idea why? I think the latter was the most disturbing for the strangeness of the shifting convolutions of place and setting.

6. Enduring Love as I said three attempts before i could finish it -- had help and hand-holding figuratively speaking to do so. And I GOT it, finally really did -- but did I like it? Yes. No. I don't know. Well, yes, I like it. Let's say it seriously continues to unsettle me. Weird, weird, weird -- seemed to me the perfect beginning to the review and still does. Do I think it's a good book? Now THAT I can answer -- YES.

7. Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom and
Other Writings was somewhat like watching films filled with foul language -- after a while it becomes static. This book is so filled with sexual depravities from the mildest to most extreme that it isn't all that shocking after the first little while. and the language -- is rather exquisite which tends to mask the topics from time to time. Read this sort of on a dare -- just to say I'd done so.

8. Beautiful Losers seems now a bit like a modern version of Justine -- foul and sex laced and disjointed. I really don't GET Cohen. Well, not exactly so but I'm not sure I need to spend any more time with him.

9. A Blessing on the Moon blew me away. The strangeness was out of my normal reading range but it simple didn't matter because the story was what i was engulfed in and the strangeness simply didn't take away from the strength of that. Highly recommend this but yes, I believe weird fits it.

10. The Devils of Loudon was fascinatingly weird and it was Aldous Huxley -- who knew? Another weird but highly recommended reading experience.

I am moving this comment from the list thread:

That sounds like the plot to the movie Basket Case, and the X-Files episode "Humbug", Lori.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humbug_(The_X-Files)

I like Brooke's definition of weird being similar to dreams, in that while there they make total sense but upon awakening they have broken logic. So psychologically and even spritually they are completely sensible, but not so much in our space/time continuum. Heee. I got the s/t stuff in!

I do hope we don't get into a competition about weirdness.

Master and Margarita was an excellent weird book, loved it, and I'll be reading it again. In spite of all the weirdness, it's written in such a realistic style that one says while reading, well why not? Now if that isn't weird stuff being done to our brain, what is?

There is no Absolute Zero Kelvin of weird. I agree with Sherri that weird is a very personal judgment. For example, i thought House of Leaves and Geek Love were both fantastical and fantastic, but not excessively weird. If you grew up reading fantasy fiction, then I think neither strikes as way out there. But i can see why some might see them as weird. House of Leaves borders on weird for me not so much because it's creepy but because it's experimental, having 3 stories running in parallel one of which is in footnotes. Defining weird... it's all about the freak-syndrome, one of the very things Geek Love is about. Who gets to decide who is a freak and why? Enigma the tattooed man may seem weird to many people (horns implanted under your skin, anyone?), but to his wife Katzen, he's just wonderful. Maybe the real freaks are the people who are so normal they can't embrace being different. But i digress.

I personally judge weird in literature to mean any potpourri of the following:
- Avant-garde/experimental in structure and/or narrative--enough to mess with your concept of fiction. How pomo does it have to be? That depends on your opinion. I think Naked Lunch is very weird in structure--Burroughs pushed the boundaries of what was possible. But it wasn't really post-modern in the way self-referential literature is. Pomo can be odd but still not avant-garde.
- Pushing/breaking the boundaries of social acceptability (Was it so extreme in some fashion that it will offend or disturb--and to me violence doesn't fit comfortably here because violence/horror is very commonplace. Friday the 13th is not weird, it's just gross and available at Blockbuster). Does it challenge typical sensibilities and expectations? Will it shock the jury?

Weird, of course, doesn't have to be good either. It just have to be really different and rule breaking. I did list 4 books i felt were both weird and good. I'll throw out a challenge: i'd be really surprised if anyone could read Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish or Flan and not think they were weird.

Weird in iambic pentameter! Heee. Yeah, I think weird can be otherworldly, or eerie, or it can do odd and disorienting things with narrative structure, or it can set up expectations and then pull them out from under your feet, lots of room for different kinds of weird.

Here's a question: is shocking the same as weird? I think weirdness can BE shocking, but doesn't necessarily have to be. It could be funny, or incongruous, or beautiful, too.

And what about quality? Even if a book is incredibly weird, it might not be great, or even worth reading.