Books told in unique formats - Any Genre or Age

[Psylk]

So I have always been a sucker for a book told in a unique way. Books told in multiple perspectives or by unique narrators are great. Books that shift timeline like past and present or even future. Books that read like a diary, emails, letters, or articles. Honestly anything that isn't the typical way of telling a story sucks me in. So what are some recs for books with unique formats? Any genre as long as its fiction I will read it :)

[Jess]

The only one that comes to mind is
Possession series
By Elana Johnson (sp?)

Overall I was not a huge fan of the books the author writing style changes with each book. If I remember right it is the second book where each chapter starts with the name of the person talking in this chapter. Good luck hope you find something you like.

[Scott]

House of Leaves

[Kirstin]

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler you are the main character
Jitterbug Perfume past, present and future all mashed up together
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children creepy old photos add to the ok story
Skinny Legs and All POV of a spoon and a can of soup

[Psylk]

Thank all of you so much for the recs. I will look at them all. Cant wait to see what else comes up.

[Michele]

I just finished Sorcery & Cecelia: or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot and it was a fun light fantasy, magical Jane Austen style.

It is an epistolary format - all letters.

[Ket]

Diary by Chuck Palahniuk might be right up your alley.

And The Body: An Essay by Jenny Boully is probably the most unique format of any work I have ever encountered. The 'story' is removed, and all that remains are the footnotes to a non-existent essay.

Also, a quick YA read would be ttyl by Lauren Myracle. It's not an unheard-of, totally unique story, but I was a teen in the early noughts so the all-IM format was familiar and, to me, captured the teen voices I remember.

[Pamela]

The Wild Hunt, by Jane Yolen. The Wild HuntA bizarrely brilliant fantasy.

[``Laurie]

The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Up the Down Staircase by Bel Kaufman
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
The Eight by Katherine Neville
The Plague Tales by Ann Benson

[☆Joycedale☆]

The only one I can think of is Why We Broke Up, its written out as a letter.

[Ficie]

Let's see... A Visit from the Goon Squad is a series of connected short stories / a novel told from different perspectives. Each story / chapter is told in a different way - some more traditional, some less (a chapter is told as a PowerPoint presentation!). The story is also very good.
David Mitchell has written few books with an original structure - again, semi-connected short stories that span through past, present and future. Check Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten.
The Raw Shark Texts and The End of Mr. Y both have a very original structure - but read as novels.
Flowers for Algernon is an old but good one. The structure is quite banal -a diary- but the story makes it more original. You should check it out.
Ella Minnow Pea is told through letters, but with a very original twist - I recommend it.
I really liked The Blind Assassin, which tells a story in a story through a third story. Great story, very interesting storytelling.
In Room the narrator is a little boy who does not really know what is happening. It's, however, a very good book.
Walter Moers's novels are extremely original, if you can get your hands on them I advise The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear, Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures and his best work, The City of Dreaming Books.

[Psylk]

Thank yo all for such amazing recs. As soon as I finish finals this week I will be on busy reading beaver!

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

You may want to check out this listopia.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/3...

"Fictional tales told through letters, emails, diary entries, etc."

I'm reading one right now, Rites of Passage. Told via diary entries from a young man to his godfather as he travels from England to Australia in the early 19th century. Too soon to know if I would recommend the book, although Golding is a Nobel Prize winner.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Evelina is great.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is told as a series of letters or diary entries from a wife to her husband.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

David Foster Wallace is known for his creative, postmodern ways of telling a story, both in his fiction and his nonfiction. I've read his short story collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

[Pamela]

The Wonderful O, by James Thurber. The Wonderful O

Funny and original.

[Anna]

The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth written in a shadow version of medieval English

[Melanti]

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov.

One story is told in an epic poem and a second story is told in the footnotes by an extremely biased (insane?) editor.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

There's the main text and two different narrators' stories via footnotes. And as the characters in the story have to twist and turn their way through a maze, you literally have to turn the book upside down, read mirror image text, etc. Also, if you're into puzzles there's lots of them in here.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke is another one that used the footnote device - though a little more traditionally.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Time's Arrow is a story told backwards through time.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

A Void. A novel that never uses the letter "e."

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Then there's always Finnegans Wake.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

The Collector is told partly by diary entries.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Riddley Walker is written in some kind of post-apocalyptic Olde Englishe. (I haven't read it.)

[Liralen]

In I Can't Tell You, all dialogue from the narrator takes the form of notes scribbled on napkins and whiteboards and the like.

[Liralen]

Story/Time: The Life of an Idea is really hard to describe, but it's basically a performance in written form.

Edited to add: Not fiction. But you might look it up anyway, even if you don't read it.

[Liralen]

Liar has an unreliable narrator.
The narrator of The Lovely Bones is dead.
Ellen Hopkins' books are told in verse.
A Trick of the Light is told from the perspective of an eating disorder.
In the tradition of Georges Perec (who wrote A Void), each story within Impossible Words: Reasonable Stories Born from Unreasonable Rules is written without using a given vowel.

[Joseph]

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn is an epistolary novel set in the fictional island of Nollop situated off the coast of South Carolina and home to the inventor of the pangram The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog. Now deceased, the islanders have erected a monument to honor their hero, but one day a tile with the letter �z� falls from the statue. The leaders interpret the falling tile as a message from beyond the grave and the letter is banned from use. On an island where the residents pride themselves on their love of language, this is seen as a tragedy. They are still reeling from the shock, when another tile falls and then another....

[Pamela]

The Circus of Doctor Lao by Charles Finney The Circus of Dr. Lao Very weird, very interesting, and the end notes are the best part.

[Railyn]

Bright Lights, Big City is the story of a cocaine addict's life of working for a magazine by day and partying by night. It's a short read, and one I always found interesting - especially when he tries to go back to the root of his problems. It's written entirely in the 2nd person, which I rather enjoyed.

[Michelle °O°]

This story was told in verse. It was a quick read but great story.

Chasing Brooklyn

[Anna]

Brown Girl Dreaming written in a verse

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

The Golden Gate is written in verse. "...composed of 590 Onegin stanzas (sonnets written in iambic tetrameter, with the rhyme scheme following the ababccddeffegg pattern of Eugene Onegin). It was inspired by Charles Johnston's translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin." Wikipedia.

[Psylk]

Wow guys thank you so much! I really appreciate all the recs.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

S. purports to be a battered library copy of another work. Postcards, maps, newspaper clippings are inserted. There is handwritten marginalia. Also an epistolary romance.

[Teri-K]

Bruiser is written as a free-form poem. It's about a boy who takes on the pain of those he cares about, and I found I enjoyed it quite a lot.

[Hillary]

Willing to include picture books?
Many by David Wiesner would be great, I love Tuesday which has very few words. Also Black and White my David Macaulay is amazing, four stories told mostly in pictures merge into one ... maybe.

[Merrilee]

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is mostly illustrated but (IMO) extremely good.

[Kelly]

Meg Cabot's Boy Meets Girl series is good.

[Merrilee]

Oooh speaking of Meg Cabot brings to mind The Princess Diaries series. The newest comes out next summer. They are written in diary format with emails and texts (I think it's been so long since I've read them) thrown in as well.

[Kelly]

Merrilee wrote: "Oooh speaking of Meg Cabot brings to mind The Princess Diaries series. The newest comes out next summer. They are written in diary format with emails and texts (I think it's been so long since I've..."

The Boy Meets Girl series is told completely in emails/texts/IMs, unlike the PD series, which only incorporates them. (I am so excited for book #11 of PD and book #7 of The Mediator!)

[Merrilee]

Thank you Kelly! More books for the TBR mountain! Lol.

[Kelly]

Too many books, too little time!

[Hillary]

As Always, Jack: A Wartime Love Story is non-fiction, and almost entirely one side of letters from a WWII GI to his sweetheart. There is a brief intro, and conclusion as to what happened at the end, but otherwise it is one side of a letter writing duo. Funny, romantic, poignant.

[Liralen]

84, Charing Cross Road is written in the form of letters. Again, not fiction, but very funny and a quick read.

[Psylk]

Thank you again everyone. I cant wait to start reading some of these!

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Dear Committee Members epistolary novel told via letters of recommendation.

[Abigail]

Here are some Listopias of stories written in verse:

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2...

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2...

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

[Rebekah]

The Sherwood Ring has two interconnected story lines. A lonely girl in the present (50s, that is, which is when it was written) is visited by the ghosts of her ancestors who tell her their stories from the American Revolution. She'll find an intriguing note, or a historical artefact in the ancestral house, and when her uncle won't explain it, one of the ghosts appears and tells her the next bit of the story which explains what she found.

[Megan]

Nearly all of the books by Jodi Picoult have multiple narrators.
The Forgotten Garden uses multiple narrators and shifting timelines.
A Game of Thrones
The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck are told mostly through illustrations.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is told through letters.

[Lou]

Here's some SF and fantasy, if you like those.

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Quantum Thief
Hexwood
The World Jones Made
Schrodinger's Ball
A Perfect Vacuum
Einstein's Dreams
A Swiftly Tilting Planet