Weird books

[ufo]

Ever read any weird books? And here I'm not talk 'fun' weird, but, well, I will give an example.

For christmas I got a book on dragons. While there was alot of stupid things in it, it was pretty good for learning the myths about dragons. Quite interesting.

However, the ending comment was something along the lines of:

"... and remember, do not ever discuss this delicate topic with unknowing fools who do not believe in dragons!". That was a bit creepy.

[bosssmiley]

However, the ending comment was something along the lines of:

"... and remember, do not ever discuss this delicate topic with unknowing fools who do not believe in dragons!". That was a bit creepy.

I think I know that book in the English translation. Pretty cool way of warning someone not to spook the mundanes (Big Brother/soap opera viewing "Sun" reading lumpenproles) by talking about stuff beyond their limited ken. :smallcool:

"Slaughterhouse 5" by Kurt Vonnegut. Couldn't get into it. It just read like someone out of their literary depth trying to transcribe the experience of a bad trip (later found out this was largely the case). Weird. Dull. Badly in need of a more severe editor.

edit: *looks around at the silence* Oh dear, another thread killed; am I really that hard an act to follow. :smallamused:

[DraPrime]

I will keep this thread alive! Weirdest book I've read? Brave New World. Good yet weird book.

[Serpentine]

Millennium edited by Douglas E. Winter is pretty odd. It's a collection of short stories, mostly science-fictionish, sort of telling the history of humanity. Sort of.
The Book of Nonsense is very odd, but I guess that's sort of the point. Has a lot of snippets of Lewis Carrol, but a lot of other stuff as well.
World Zero Minus is an anthology of sci-fi stories, some of which are very disturbing.

[Icewalker]

My dad does work on water science, he runs a non-profit which tries to spread information on water shortages and global warming. He has also recently moved a little into junk science.

My brother got him this 'magic crystals doing magic things' book. It's pretty funny. I'll see if I can find it.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Weird books I've read...

Illuminatus trillogy. It makes no sense. It refuses to keep to a single plot thread or stay in chronological order. It cuts to characters with some relation to the main characters who never appear again. It has dumb sex scenes that make no sense.

And half way through it cuts away to a critic giving a bad review of itself.

[Arlanthe]

My dad does work on water science, he runs a non-profit which tries to spread information on water shortages and global warming. He has also recently moved a little into junk science.

My brother got him this 'magic crystals doing magic things' book. It's pretty funny. I'll see if I can find it.

Ich. Crystal magic... Piezo figures out crystals can be used to regulate electric and audio frequencies and suddenly people think they prevent cancer and keep a clean colon or something.

Buy him a NON-WEIRD book: Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World".

[Quincunx]

I'll have to politely disagree about Slaughterhouse-Five not having structure. I took to Vonnegut's work like a duck to water, being the sort of person who cracks the book open to any old page, keeps reading until distracted, and simply repeats the process until no new segments are found; to me, most books read like an early Vonnegut novel. Five years later, I read through the book again with an uninterrupted chunk of time. While the overall design was still non-linear (as one segment claimed Trafalmadorian literature was), it was. . .how to express this. . .shaped more like a cone from beginning to end, converging on the point, instead of the scattered nebula it had been on the random reading.

[Belteshazzar]

The Zombie Survival Guide. Seriously I am still not sure why I have it. I mean most of the stuff in it was common sense(chainsaws are heavy, noisy and painful to fumble) . Some of it was really odd (I mean who owns a shaolin spade on this continent just because it is supposed to be a 'good' anti zombie tool doesn't mean I could actually find one laying around to be used in my shed.) And then I realize I just bought a book a I should never need but that I just read it all the way through several times on trips.

[Portent]

House of Leaves is some crazy stuff. I really need to pick that book up again and finish it some day, but it really creeped me the heck out.

[bosssmiley]

I'll have to politely disagree about Slaughterhouse-Five not having structure. I took to Vonnegut's work like a duck to water, being the sort of person who cracks the book open to any old page, keeps reading until distracted, and simply repeats the process until no new segments are found; to me, most books read like an early Vonnegut novel. Five years later, I read through the book again with an uninterrupted chunk of time. While the overall design was still non-linear (as one segment claimed Trafalmadorian literature was), it was. . .how to express this. . .shaped more like a cone from beginning to end, converging on the point, instead of the scattered nebula it had been on the random reading.

Ok, now that made sense to me. Maybe I just tried to read Vonnegut at the wrong time in my life. I'll have to take another run at it after a 'New Wave of Brit Sci-Fi' (Moorcock, Ballard, etc.) binge.

Oh, more weirdness: Franz Kafka, omnia opus. :smallwink:

[TheAlmightyOne]

my biology test. 14% of people who died in a hospital died. it was a strange question

[Jorkens]

Weird books I've read...

Illuminatus trillogy. It makes no sense. It refuses to keep to a single plot thread or stay in chronological order. It cuts to characters with some relation to the main characters who never appear again. It has dumb sex scenes that make no sense.

And half way through it cuts away to a critic giving a bad review of itself.

:smallbiggrin: Isn't it great!

But I'd say some weirder books are:
Italo Calvino: If On A Winter's Night A Traveller - one of the only books I've ever read that's written in the second person.
William Burroughs: The Ticket That Exploded (or the Soft Machine, or Nova Express) - probably the weirdest Burroughs books I've read. And that's saying a lot.
Jorge Luis Borges: Fictions - short stories. Will mess with your head.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude - maybe it's not as weird as some of the others, but the way the past starts to blur towards the end really does my head in.
Thomas Pynchon - pretty much everything really, they're all very clever and very strange, and mostly extremely funny as well.

[Nathander]

House of Leaves is some crazy stuff. I really need to pick that book up again and finish it some day, but it really creeped me the heck out.

I read House of Leaves over about a period of three weeks, and I can honestly agree that it was one of the freakiest books I had ever read. But, at the same time, that's why I adore that book so much. It had a very Lynchian feel to it, as if Lynch had chosen to write a book instead of going into movies (though I think House of Leaves isn't quite as abstract as Lynch's work, as well as tending to carrying on a much more comprehensive narrative). Still, a wonderful, if disturbing, book.


Weirdest book I've read? Brave New World. Good yet weird book.

Another book that I love. However, I wasn't so much disturbed by the weirdness in Brave New World as much as the fact that, along with my own beliefs of human nature, I felt that Huxley's predictions for the path humanity will take in the future are horrifically likely.

[jamroar]

Ever read any weird books? And here I'm not talk 'fun' weird, but, well, I will give an example.

For christmas I got a book on dragons. While there was alot of stupid things in it, it was pretty good for learning the myths about dragons. Quite interesting.

However, the ending comment was something along the lines of:

"... and remember, do not ever discuss this delicate topic with unknowing fools who do not believe in dragons!". That was a bit creepy.


Finnegans wake (http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-3.htm), the most(only?) completely surreal book ever.

[purple gelatinous cube o' Doom]

I suppose weird is a relative term. I'd be willing to bet most people would think reading books about grass and how to take care of grass would be strange, but not me. (I got my college degree in turfgrass science). And yes, I'm very well aware of the fact I went to school to learn how grass grows.

[Amotis]

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid: A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll was pretty cool.

Iono, I think most people connect postmodern with "weird." That certainly what my friends say when they listen to my taste in music.

[MrsbwcMD]

Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. Japanese cyber-punk mystery/thriller. 'Nuff said.

[Timberwolf]

Weird books I've read...

Illuminatus trillogy. It makes no sense. It refuses to keep to a single plot thread or stay in chronological order. It cuts to characters with some relation to the main characters who never appear again. It has dumb sex scenes that make no sense.

And half way through it cuts away to a critic giving a bad review of itself.

QFT. QFT

I hated that book. Perhaps I should have had some hard drugs before reading it.

[bosssmiley]

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid: A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll was pretty cool.

Iono, I think most people connect postmodern with "weird." That certainly what my friends say when they listen to my taste in music.

That was a good read. Like "Brief History of Time" the weird tended to sneak up on you though. One minute I'm sitting in the sunny uplands of intellectual stimulation, happily chortling away at some textual joke; the next I realise I'm hopelessly lost in a deep, dark forest of torturous language, with the fearsome double-headed beast of post-modernism and deconstructionism stalking me.

[Gaelbert]

However, the ending comment was something along the lines of:

"... and remember, do not ever discuss this delicate topic with unknowing fools who do not believe in dragons!". That was a bit creepy.

I read a book about UFOs with almost that exact same ending. And then it had a little card thingy that you were supposed to fill out that basically told any aliens that abduct you not to kill you. How useful.

[dish]

Weird is indeed a relative term. Some books I absolutely adore have been mentioned:



Illuminatus trilogy. It makes no sense. It refuses to keep to a single plot thread or stay in chronological order.
Isn't it great!

After 100 pages you can't believe you're reading this garbled nonsense.
After 200 pages you still don't know what's going on, but it's fascinating.
And after 300 pages you're begging the authors never to finish. (While planning to start a band just to use up some of the names on that epic list.)


Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. Japanese cyber-punk mystery/thriller. 'Nuff said.
I love Murakami's novels - they're like Jungian dreams straight from the collective unconscious. Yes, Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World is one of the weirdest. I also highly recommend Kafka on the Shore, A Wild Sheep Chase and the Wind Up Bird Chronicle.


Italo Calvino: If On A Winter's Night A Traveller - one of the only books I've ever read that's written in the second person.

Isn't it just delicious? All those different books he starts throughout the novel. Really entertaining.

Thus I'm obviously not very qualified to recommend a weird book. All I can think of right now is a book that once stunned me - The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. However I read it mutter...cough...many years ago... so it might not have the same effect now.

(Sadly, most of Iain Banks' subsequent books have failed to live up to his initial promise. Even more sadly, when my ex and I split he got the Terry Pratchett and I got the Iain Banks. Yes, it rankles.)

[Alysar]

I don't know if this qualifies as 'weird', but "Villains by Necessity" by Eve Forward has an unusual plot.

It is basically your classical fantasy adventure quest, complete with all the traditional cliches. A group of unlikely heros band together to stop a wizard from oppressing the world and to save the world from being destroyed, matching birthmarks on the protagonist and antagonist, tests that each person must past to get the pieces of the magical whosit that is needed to save the world. The works.

Thing is, there is a very distinct twist on this one. The story takes place about 150 years after the side of good has finally won the eternal war between good and evil, and in doing so has upset some very important cosmic balances. So some of the last remaining bad guys in the world (an assassin, a thief, a sorceress, a knight in black armor, a druid who is not actually evil but knows there must be a balance between good and evil, and a young centaur minstrel) set off to restore darkness to the world before it is finally sublimated in blinding white light.

I highly recommend this one.

[Teal Kuinshi]

An interesting one is How to be a Villain. It was a pretty good read, actually.

[Revlid]

Kafka's The Metamorposis. Weird stuff, couldn't get into it.

[Simius]

Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. Japanese cyber-punk mystery/thriller. 'Nuff said.

I just might have to agree with that. It was a great book though.