What Is The Weirdest Book You've Read? (3/8/20)

[Marc]

I'll leave it up to you to define "weird," but let us know the weirdest book you've ever read? Can be from any time period or genre. What tops the list and what did you think of it?

[Bretnie]

Fever Dream was the first that came to mind. I'm sure if I think a little more I could remember something weirder though!

[Marc]

Did you like it, Bretnie?
Feel free to chime in again if other weird reads come to mind. :-)

I'm torn as to which tops the weird category for me. Debating with myself amongst the following:
- F/32
- The Tooth Fairy (maybe creepier than weird)
- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
- (I know there's others I'm forgetting... )

[Bretnie]

Marc wrote: "Did you like it, Bretnie?
Feel free to chime in again if other weird reads come to mind. :-)

I'm torn as to which tops the weird category for me. Debating with myself amongst the following:
- [bo..."

I LOVED it.

Oh yeah, all Haruki Murakami falls into the weird category!

[book:Smoke City|36319320] was another "what did I just read?!" kind of books, also good-weird!

[Robert]

I guess Jeff vandemeer’s Borne, the broom of the System has some ‘eh did I just read that’ moments

[LindaJ^]

Loquela - My review explains its weirdness -- https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Lark]

Contemporary: The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter

Classic: Candide

[Tea73]

Earth Fathers Are Weird Weird. Surprisingly sweet. Gay tentacled sex. I'm not gay. Nor tentacled.

[Nadine in California]

Dead Astronauts by Jeff Vandermeer has been my weirdest read in the last year.

[[deleted user]]

Dead Astronauts is in my list too. In a good way.

Some others:
Stella Benson
The Final Programme
Briefing for a Descent Into Hell

[Marc]

Tea73, I love that the description for Earth Fathers Are Weird says the computer may have misinterpreted the word for "nanny." That wouldn't make any sense without your brief description of the book! :D

I still need to read Vandermeer... I'm not letting 2020 end without reading my unread copy of City of Saints and Madmen.

Candide is one of the few books I actually reread (about once every 2 to 3 years).

So glad you liked Fever Dream, Bretnie!

[Violet]

Has to be The Vorrh!

[Bretnie]

My "to read" list is getting a lot longer!

I haven't read any Jeff Vandermeer, but he's been on my list to try.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

I thought House of Leaves was pretty strange.

I picked up a copy of The Vorrh not too long ago--now Violet has bumped up my TBR.

I don't know if I'd call Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer weird so much as I would say it has a startlingly original viewpoint. You say weird, I say startlingly original, toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe.

[Stacia]

Weird books are my favorite! Watching this list for ideas....

Some that I would categorize as weird:
Bad Monkeys (loved it & would recommend reading it w/out any spoilers/knowledge ahead of time)
The Manual of Detection
The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney
The Core of the Sun
Borges and The Eternal Orangutans
Mr. Fox
The Raw Shark Texts
Zeroville
Tentacle
And, most books I've read written by Jonathan Carroll (of which my favorite is Sleeping in Flame)

Also, not so weird to me, but some of my friends assure me these fall into the weird category (lol):
Comemadre
The Book of Chameleons
The Way Through Doors
The Story of My Teeth
The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

Pretty much loved or really enjoyed all of the ones I listed & would recommend them.

[Nadine in California]

Stacia wrote: "Weird books are my favorite! Watching this list for ideas....

Some that I would categorize as weird:
Bad Monkeys (loved it & would recommend reading it w/out any spoilers/knowledge ah..."

Yay for Bad Monkeys - it deserves more love and attention! I looked at my review of it from 2013- I gave it 5 stars and called it a runaway train. Fans of The Regional Office is Under Attack! will appreciate it.

[Mary]

Pinocchio in Venice by Robert Coover was weird and twisted enough that I didn’t finish it. Joyce Carol Oates’ Zombie was weird in that it left me feeling deeply sorry for the character. Jeffrey Dahmer was the inspiration for the character.

[Franky]

Bryan "They call me the Doge" wrote: "I thought House of Leaves was pretty strange.

I picked up a copy of The Vorrh not too long ago--now Violet has bumped up my TBR.

I don't know if I'd call Annihilation by Jeff Van..."

Yeah, I'd say The House of Leaves was strange now that you mention it. Read it years back and I enjoyed it maybe because it was so different, like it fit into multiple genres all at once.

[Marc]

Pinocchio in Venice is my least favorite Coover book so far, Mary, and I've read a lot of his stuff.

Ian Banks's The Wasp Factory was kinda weird.

[Marc]

Earlier this year, I happened upon a graphic novel called Leaving Richard's Valley, which consists of a rather simple black and white drawing style where most of the animals look like they're sort of hand-shaped and they are all part of this weird cult in the woods. It has one of the oddest feels to it in terms of dialogue non sequiturs, plot twists, and characters. I ended up delightfully baffled, especially because it manages to be rather touching and loaded with insightful social/environmental commentary. Apparently, it started as a strip being posted daily a strip at a time on the author's Instagram account.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

No limits on the weirdness possible in graphic novels, but if that sort of thing interests you, you could check out Jim Woodring's The Frank Book for some oftentimes unsettling-without-really-knowing-why imagery.

[Robert]

Bryan "They call me the Doge" wrote: "No limits on the weirdness possible in graphic novels, but if that sort of thing interests you, you could check out Jim Woodring's The Frank Book for some oftentimes unsettling-withou..."

I read that when I was 20 - that book is an exercise in drug free trippiness

[Whitney]

I can't think of anything that comes close to Les Chants de Maldoror, that classic of surrealist / dadaist literature.

[Antonomasia]

The Sublimes by Yuriy Mamleev, a Soviet-era transgressive novel which I never would have bothered with if it had been from a more liberal time and place (or, probably, another region), or if it hadn't been free from the English-language publisher. Everything else mentioned here that I know, such as The Vorrh, The Wasp Factory is nowhere similar in terms of levels of deliberate disgustingness, but those also have a lot more story and art about them. (Also to an extent The Discomfort of Evening though there are in a way parallels with the farm/family setting and the way the narrative keeps ramping it up.) There is some level on which this transgressive stuff seems rather more justified as a surreal way of kicking out at an authoritarian regime, compared with some recent American guy who just feels like writing that stuff.

[Robert]

Well if you’re equating transgressive with weird there’s Alice Nutting’s Tampa

[Kathy]

House of Leaves and Night Film. I always like a good conspiracy. Add Hawksmoor and First Light both written by Peter Ackroyd. I enjoyed them both but they were strange — in a good way!

[Hugh]

I think Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World probably wins for me, but I found much of Gravity's Rainbow pretty baffling too.