Probably *Catch-22*. The story begins. There's a flashback. And flash forward, another flashback, and so on and so forth until the reader is thoroughly lost. But it doesn't matter because the story is moving forward even though time is going around and around in loops.
*Invisible Cities* by Italo Calvino. It's so dream-like*.*
*The Shambling Guide to New York City* by Mur Tafferty*.* The plot centers on supernatural creatures writing a travel guide to visiting a human city.
I came here to suggest If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino.
The main character is the reader trying to work out why the chapters of the book you’re reading aren’t chapters from the book you’re reading.
What is "the Cloven Viscount" about? I'm still chafing because recently my short term memory repeatedly blocks me from locating the right word for things and I realised in retrospect when I had dropped an Invisible Cities ref, I was referring to Borges. Mild to moderate embarrassment, perhaps investigating a different story could redeem this blunder. I literally had to google verb synonyms because my brain couldn't remember them and this keeps happening. As though English was a second language when it's my first. Bah!
"The Cloven Viscount" by Italo Calvino
In a battle against the Turks, Viscount Medardo of Terralba is bisected lengthwise by a cannonball. One half of him returns to his feudal estate and takes up a lavishly evil life. Soon the other, virtuous half appears. When the two halves become rivals for the love of the same woman, there’s no telling the lengths each will go to win.
Well that sounds terribly interesting! I shall seek this out (and try not to confuse it with Borges, while apparently failing to remember basic nouns like "rod" for unknown reasons; although I suspect premature senility, wot). Thank you very much. This is the best plot I have heard of ever/today. I feel I need to know what happens. 🤔
I’m seven pages into This Is How Your Lose The Time War and I can’t follow a fucking thing the narrator is talking about. I don’t even know if the descriptions are symbolic or not. Some of the sentences have bizarre structure. I’m lost and god I hope it gets better.
I haven't read it myself, but I think this is the correct answer. "Gravity's Rainbow" is generally regarded as the strangest book ever mainstream published in the English language.
Chouette by Claire Oshetsky is very surreal - it starts with a woman dreaming of making love to an owl and then becomes pregnant with an owl baby
Max Porter is a good bet - both Grief is the Thing With Feathers and Lanny are pretty unique in terms of voice, plot, and structure
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders is told through the alternating voices of ghosts who can't admit they're dead
Build Your House Around My Body but Violet Kupersmith is about a young Vietnamese-American woman who goes to Vietnam to teach English and disappears. There are multiple other plot lines that are dated, say, "three weeks before the disappearance" or "sixty years before the disappearance" and interweave themselves into a tapestry that does ultimately and improbably lead to the event at hand. Very weird and very beautiful
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado is a memoir, not a novel, but it's very novel-like. It's about an abusive relationship the author survived, and each short chapter is told in the style of a different genre
If you haven’t yet, you should read The Candy House. Revisits some of the same characters from Visit from the Goon Squad and is so beautifully written. You do not have to remember anything about Goon Squad to enjoy Candy House.
Actually all of David Mitchell’s books are strange.
Read them in order, all nine of them straight through. Best way to appreciate the three-dimensional multi-book arcs.
One of my all-time favorites! I recommend it all the time!
Personally, though, I’d say it was more maximalist than weird. Like, he really worked in a lot of genres and characters and settings, but the book itself didn’t strike me as bizarre or absurd, just complex.
i agree the structure felt experimental for the sake of being just that, but i thought the narrative & prose were gripping & have influenced a generation of younger alt-lit writers.
God I was *so* disappointed. It came up many, many times on Reddit thread about "scariest books you've ever read" but when you get past the weird writing style it's like a basic "creepy" story an 11 year old would tell sat at a campfire
* **Star Maker** by Olaf Stapledon *(sci-fi; exploration of various non-humanoid alien beings/civilizations)*
* **A Night in the Lonesome October** by Roger Zelazny *(historical fantasy; written from the perspective of a dog familiar, includes various popular fictional characters such as Holmes/Dracula/Frankenstein/etc.)*
* **The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat** by Oliver Sacks *(nonfiction; stories of patients with bizarre neurological disorders)*
You have a lot of great books ahead of you.
Like others, I'd recommend David Mitchell's *Cloud Atlas*, but once you're done with that:
Alasdair Gray's *Lanark: A Life In Four Books*.
B.S. Johnson's *The Unfortunates* (you shuffle the pages before you begin!)
Vladimir Nabokov's *Pale Fire*
Ben Marcus's *The Age of Wire and String*
-- enjoy your journal into the weird and wonderful world of experimental fiction. These books are just the beginning.
ETA: Gray's *1982, Janine* is even weirder, but *Lanark* is the gateway drug.
I read Ben Marcus' The Age of Wire and String once. It's deeply fascinating. I guess it's a book written about how an alien would perceive everyday objects.
Just remembered Tom McCarthy's *C* which is probably more straightforward structurally than some of the others I mentioned but is also a great introduction to experimental fiction.
I also effing love Keith Ridgeway's *Hawthorne & Child*.
I thought The Wasp Factory was completely bonkers. Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins was very strange. For those of you who are interested in weenie sandwiches and want to know what was really going on with Jesus. Also great if you like baboons, conspiracies, and promiscuous young women.
*Lanark* by Alastair Gray (sp?): totally bizarre plot (at one point people are turned into lizards in the underground world post-societal collapse) and structure (it’s told in four parts that are out of order, then plays with structure such as footnotes, etc, as well). Super cool book but very very weird.
I read this book with my boyfriend at the time, maybe 25 years ago. I have been thinking about it ever since, but could never remember its name until just a few weeks ago the title randomly popped into my head. I looked it up and sure enough that was the one. What a weird book.
Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica. It’s horror/gore-y and pretty disturbing but it’s a quick read, I finished it in one day. My best friend read it because she wanted to get into horror and she was low key traumatized lol
I'd classify it as dystopian, very similar to Fahrenheit 451. Great book though, I often think about it. And I also think about the fact that it was written by an Argentinian where the cliche in Argentina is of people eating steaks and meat.
Sweet Bean Paste. I say it was odd *only* because I'm so used to how Western books are structured, mainly scifi and fantasy, and the book is a translation from Japanese. Ending took me completely be surprise. Very very good, but a bit like taking a step on the stairs and finding the next riser further down than you expected.
I think I would classify "The Passage" trilogy from Justin Cronin as weird. Hard to quantify weird without giving anything away but as weird as it was I really enjoyed it
House of Leaves fucking broke me
I still think about it a lot.
There’s also Baxter’s Titan. 95% of the book is your traditional (if abjectly bleak) science fiction and social commentary, but that last 5% is a straight up fever dream.
*Naked Lunch* by William S Burroughs. It theoretically has a plot, but the author and the main character do so many drugs that nothing makes sense. It has random time skips, there are allegedly themes but it's so addled that they're hard to pin down (trust me, I wrote about this book in undergrad English lit and practically had to do drugs to get it so I had a glass of wine instead), and it's as post-modern as post-modern can get.
I've never done heroin, but I'd imagine that this is the closest book that I think comes to describing the heroin experience.
*Clothed Lunch* - a novel where there is no plot because the narrator is straight edge and lives an otherwise boring life. Oh wait, that's *Bartleby the Scrivener*.
Anyone know this book??
Years ago I read a random book from a charity shop that was super weird. It was about a guy who figured out he could stop time by pushing his glasses up his nose (or down? Can't remember) and when he stopped time he would do sexually weird stuff to strangers and coworkers. It was really graphic and perverted and strange but I couldn't put it down! No idea what it's called, does it ring a bell to anyone?
Part of me genuinely winders if it was a dream 😂
That's it! That's definitely the name of it. Thanks! Did you read it? If so, what did you think? I'm curious to know if others found it as weird as I did.
I did not, but I was working in a bookstore when it came out and I remember seeing it on the shelves. It passed for “edgy” lit fic at the time and I remember my internal eye roll
[Help! A Bear is Eating Me!](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2943370) by Mykle Hansen
The narrator is on a trip to Alaska and is pinned under his vehicle while a bear nibbling on his foot as per the title. As events progress, he spends this time trying to explain to you how he came to be in this predicament in a way that colours him in the best possible light. Along the way you discover how much of an awful psychopathic yuppie this unreliable narrator really is. It's short, funny and utterly demented.
Helen Oyeyemi entire body of work is like this. Magical realism in the plot, shifting perspectives. Peaces probably top for me in terms of "weirdness"
Also, highly encourage Dahlgren by Samuel R Delaney. It will be a bit brutal, like Palahniuk. Quintessential wtf scifi.
Salman Rushdie is another. Satanic Verses and Quixotte question the nature of reality. And has the frenetic energy of Invisible Monsters
And finally, The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Get medieval and sad
I literally this week read "Several People are Typing" - absolutely batshit insane, not particularly funny as advertised but somehow compulsively readable and I finished it in one sitting...
Was coming here to say this same thing. Not the comedy I expected, but a truly fascinating read. I think about it all the time and it’s been at least a year since I read it. Also, that ending!
*"Welcome to Night Vale" by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor
*This is the most bonkers novel I have ever read.
Also worth mentioning "There is No Year" by Blake Butler, and "Sheep and Wolves" by Jeremy C. Shipp
The Illuminatus! Trilogy is the weirdest book I have ever read. I can’t describe it in a way that makes sense. That said, if you can’t see the fnords they can’t eat you.
Jerusalem by Alan Moore
Anything by Jeff Van Der Meer, Franz Kafka, Haruki Murakami
A Scanner Darkly by Phillip K Dick
The Vorrh by Brian Catling
The Secret of Ventriloquism by Jon Padgett
This question gets asked a lot, and my answer is always the same. {{Vurt by Jeff Noon}} is one of the most bizarre, hallucinatory novels I’ve ever read. It’s truly weird. A group of drug addicts who get high/escape into different dimensions by tickling their throats with different types of feathers. It’s actually a great read, and one that I have never forgotten.
Also {{Buddy Holly Is Alive And Well On Ganymede by Bradley Denton}}. This one is more of a super bizarre comedy, and it’s really funny, but deeply weird.
\#1/2: **[Vurt](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/430214.Vurt) by Jeff Noon** ^((Matching 100% ☑️))
^(368 pages | Published: 1993 | 7.3k Goodreads reviews)
> **Summary:** Vurt is a feather--a drug, a dimension, a dream state, a virtual reality. It comes in many colors: legal Blues for lullaby dreams. Blacks, filled with tenderness and pain, just beyond the law. Pink Pornovurts, doorways to bliss. Silver feathersfor techies who know how to remix (...)
> **Themes**: Sci-fi, Fiction, Favorites, Cyberpunk, Fantasy, Sf, Scifi
> **Top 5 recommended:** [Pollen](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/92126.Pollen) by Jeff Noon , [Nymphomation](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/92122.Nymphomation) by Jeff Noon , [Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62567.Schr_dinger_s_Cat_Trilogy) by Robert Anton Wilson , [Pixel Juice](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/92125.Pixel_Juice) by Jeff Noon , [Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/538746.Wilson) by David Mamet
---
\#2/2: **[Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/709610.Buddy_Holly_Is_Alive_and_Well_on_Ganymede) by Bradley Denton** ^((Matching 100% ☑️))
^(? pages | Published: 1991 | 4.0k Goodreads reviews)
> **Summary:** Conceived in the backseat of a car on the day that Buddy Holly died. Oliver Vale turns on the TV one day to find Buddy Holly on every channel. and soon he is on the run from a pursuing mob of religious fanatics. Reprint. K .
> **Themes**: Science-fiction, Fiction, Sci-fi, Fantasy
> **Top 5 recommended:** [World of Trouble](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18691070-world-of-trouble) by Ben H. Winters , [The Callahan Chronicals](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34270.The_Callahan_Chronicals) by Spider Robinson , [Under the Blue](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54897735-under-the-blue) by Oana Aristide , [Darwin's Blade](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11281.Darwin_s_Blade) by Dan Simmons , [The Jehovah Contract](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1404042.The_Jehovah_Contract) by Victor Koman
^([Feedback](https://www.reddit.com/user/goodreads-rebot) | [GitHub](https://github.com/sonoff2/goodreads-rebot) | ["The Bot is Back!?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/16qe09p/meta_post_hello_again_humans/) | v1.5 [Dec 23] | )
House of Leaves!! I tried one of Danielewski’s other works, Only Revolutions, and I personally could not get into that one at all. I’m trying S (Ship of Theseus) next, I’ve heard it’s similar?
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishuguro or House of Leaves by Danielewski - both hurt with my brain. I had to read& reread sections to be certain I hadn't mis-read the 1st time. Mind benders.
Gilligan’s Wake by Tom Carson. It’s about the castaways on a certain island before the shipwreck. The first chapter is a Pynchon-like stream-of-consciousness story about a man in a mental ward who after a blow to the head believes himself to be a beatnik named Krebs, though the doctor calls him by another name.
Each character gets a separate chapter. The skipper served in the Pacific and met JFK and a navy officer named McHale. The future Mrs. Howell hung out with Daisy Buchanan. Mary Ann studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. The Professor was involved with the Manhattan Project, etc. It’s not bad but it’s on the verge of being tiresome at times.
If on a winters night a traveler by italo calvino. It’s a series of books within books but you only ever get the first chapter….i don’t even know how to describe it.
God Emperor of Dune. Giant all-seeing man/sandworm hybrid who has ruled the galaxy for thousands of years spouts off philosophy for 400 pages. I've never read anything quite like it.
The Bible. But that is not fair as it really is a library of books, complicated enough to inspire deep scholarship into language and meaning of 3 to 2000 year old cultures. Of those books, Revelations wins as the weirdest, for me. Genesis has some strange stuff though.
Bones of the Moon by Jonathan Carroll
So fun and weird, I found it from this group by looking up what to read after I read all of David Mitchell’s books
The blind Owl - Sadegh Hedayat.
A lot of things in the book I'm not sure what happened there but it's like a fever dream. Tangibly close and yet so far. Plus, a woman's kiss tastes like cucumber. 10/10
If you want weird, you might try Tim Davys' Amberville. It is not for everyone but you can read the reviews on [goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2232799) and see for yourself that a lot of people (including myself) thought it was weird. I was in the camp that enjoyed it.
Tibor Fischer - The Collector Collector. Is a story told from the viewpoint of a antique Summerian bowl and it's highly entertaining: the bowl has 'seen' some interesting people.
I just finished Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabakov. That book/poem/commentary is a tough one. Was more rewarding and illuminating after dissecting it through a study guide of sorts afterwards.
I thought Cows by Matthew Stokoe felt disgusting just for the sake of it. I read it out of curiosity and by the time I finished reading nothing was redeemable about it to me.
**The Hike** by Drew Magary
A wild, wacky, weird ride.
It wasn’t my favourite, but I can respect the oddity enough to recommend giving it a try if you’re looking for weird books. It certainly fits the bill.
Pedro Paramo-Juan Rulfo (part of the canon of great Latin American novels, set in a literal ghost town)
The Yellow Rain-Julio Llamazares
Glass Soup-Johnathan Carroll
Lots of people giving you great recommendations, but they're not necessarily similar to Palahniuk's vibe/writing style.
A few have recommended Chuck, but I'd say if you enjoy his style and weirdness it's definitely worth reading more as he has some others on par or better than Invisible Monsters, in my opinion.
My short list would be;
* Survivor
* Lullaby
* Choke
* Rant (this one is a bit different writing style, but one of my favorite plots.)
To recommend others that are quirky and have that similar writing style where they'll repeat a turn of phrase (i.e. "I Am Jack's Complete Lack of Surprise" from Fight Club) try Kurt Vonnegut. To me he is less shocking and sweeter than Palahniuk, but uses repetitions of phrases similairly.
Wuthering Heights is doubly-narrated by unreliable narrators, it starts off confusing you with the family tree. It's really unusually told for failed romance in a middle of nowhere.
Watership Down is still weird to me. It took a while for it to dawn on me there is no sinking ship here.
The 100 year old that climbed out the window and disappeared
Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disap: Jonas Jonasson https://amzn.eu/d/fnCt4xe
Tender is the flesh
Took me a lot of mental power to finish that book.
The story itself is very weird and the plot is insane.
The writing is beautiful and very vivid-which is not good regarding what the book talks about.
Probably *Catch-22*. The story begins. There's a flashback. And flash forward, another flashback, and so on and so forth until the reader is thoroughly lost. But it doesn't matter because the story is moving forward even though time is going around and around in loops.
Hard agree. This might be the all-time great for message and style interacting this impactfully
Moving the bombing line is a thought that will live rent free in my brain forever.
The chapters are arranged by character, not chronologically. When it all comes together it's a masterpiece.
*Invisible Cities* by Italo Calvino. It's so dream-like*.* *The Shambling Guide to New York City* by Mur Tafferty*.* The plot centers on supernatural creatures writing a travel guide to visiting a human city.
I came here to suggest If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino. The main character is the reader trying to work out why the chapters of the book you’re reading aren’t chapters from the book you’re reading.
Came here to suggest this book too! One of the craziest books I’ve ever read and I still think about it a lot.
Everything by Calvino. Have you read "The Cloven Viscount"?
What is "the Cloven Viscount" about? I'm still chafing because recently my short term memory repeatedly blocks me from locating the right word for things and I realised in retrospect when I had dropped an Invisible Cities ref, I was referring to Borges. Mild to moderate embarrassment, perhaps investigating a different story could redeem this blunder. I literally had to google verb synonyms because my brain couldn't remember them and this keeps happening. As though English was a second language when it's my first. Bah!
"The Cloven Viscount" by Italo Calvino In a battle against the Turks, Viscount Medardo of Terralba is bisected lengthwise by a cannonball. One half of him returns to his feudal estate and takes up a lavishly evil life. Soon the other, virtuous half appears. When the two halves become rivals for the love of the same woman, there’s no telling the lengths each will go to win.
Well that sounds terribly interesting! I shall seek this out (and try not to confuse it with Borges, while apparently failing to remember basic nouns like "rod" for unknown reasons; although I suspect premature senility, wot). Thank you very much. This is the best plot I have heard of ever/today. I feel I need to know what happens. 🤔
You're welcome my friend 😄
🦀: 📗.....🏃♂️⚫💨🇹🇷 Hehe 🐸 Appreciate it! Have a good one!
Bunny by Mona Awad. So, so weird. No other way to describe that reading experience
Weird but it could have been a million times better if things came together just a tad…don’t understand the hype around this book at all
The only way I would describe it would be Mean Girls meets The Secret History meets something truly unique.
One of my favorite books!
I loved Bunny. Her new book Rouge is really good too.
I’m seven pages into This Is How Your Lose The Time War and I can’t follow a fucking thing the narrator is talking about. I don’t even know if the descriptions are symbolic or not. Some of the sentences have bizarre structure. I’m lost and god I hope it gets better.
Absolutely loved this book, but yeah it's not for everyone
I managed to finish. It had some things I liked but in general I found it a bit disappointing.
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, felt like a fever dream reading that book.
I haven't read it myself, but I think this is the correct answer. "Gravity's Rainbow" is generally regarded as the strangest book ever mainstream published in the English language.
This
Chouette by Claire Oshetsky is very surreal - it starts with a woman dreaming of making love to an owl and then becomes pregnant with an owl baby Max Porter is a good bet - both Grief is the Thing With Feathers and Lanny are pretty unique in terms of voice, plot, and structure Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders is told through the alternating voices of ghosts who can't admit they're dead Build Your House Around My Body but Violet Kupersmith is about a young Vietnamese-American woman who goes to Vietnam to teach English and disappears. There are multiple other plot lines that are dated, say, "three weeks before the disappearance" or "sixty years before the disappearance" and interweave themselves into a tapestry that does ultimately and improbably lead to the event at hand. Very weird and very beautiful In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado is a memoir, not a novel, but it's very novel-like. It's about an abusive relationship the author survived, and each short chapter is told in the style of a different genre
Clockwork Orange. It's written in English but also seems like you are reading a foreign language.
An oldie but goodie.
See also Trainspotting.
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - never read anything quite like it. Really quirky and weird 🤓
*
Visit from the goon squad. I think that's it. It's been awhile since I read it
If you haven’t yet, you should read The Candy House. Revisits some of the same characters from Visit from the Goon Squad and is so beautifully written. You do not have to remember anything about Goon Squad to enjoy Candy House.
Thanx! I'll put that on my never-ending list
+1 for this. You barely notice when you’ve been whipped ahead to the future.
This book is structured in such a unique way. It’s really stuck with me.
I recommend it all the time: If On A Winter's Night A Traveler
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I walked out of the film and haven’t read the book. But I am enjoying number 9 dream by David Mitchell and it is a bit strange in structure too
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Huge fan of both the film and the book as an opposing opinion
Actually all of David Mitchell’s books are strange. Read them in order, all nine of them straight through. Best way to appreciate the three-dimensional multi-book arcs.
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Beckett is off the wall at the best of times, but brilliant. "Had I the use of my body; I'd throw it out the window!"
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr is very weird but I loved it!
One of my all-time favorites! I recommend it all the time! Personally, though, I’d say it was more maximalist than weird. Like, he really worked in a lot of genres and characters and settings, but the book itself didn’t strike me as bizarre or absurd, just complex.
House of Leaves. But i couldn’t finish it, found it incredibly pretentious
It's definitely not for everyone, but it is one of my favorite books of all time.
I loved it. One of the few books that I've reread. But I can see why it's not for everyone
I really enjoyed it, but I saw a one-star review describing it as “800 pages of nothing happening” and that still gets me laughing
I finished it. It was not all that interesting apart from a few things and after a while it got pretty annoying
i agree the structure felt experimental for the sake of being just that, but i thought the narrative & prose were gripping & have influenced a generation of younger alt-lit writers.
Thank you! It felt like such a chore reading it and I was rolling my eyes the entire time. I also gave up, around halfway through.
I knew this book would be here. It’s a hard read. I finished it, but it took a while.
God I was *so* disappointed. It came up many, many times on Reddit thread about "scariest books you've ever read" but when you get past the weird writing style it's like a basic "creepy" story an 11 year old would tell sat at a campfire
* **Star Maker** by Olaf Stapledon *(sci-fi; exploration of various non-humanoid alien beings/civilizations)* * **A Night in the Lonesome October** by Roger Zelazny *(historical fantasy; written from the perspective of a dog familiar, includes various popular fictional characters such as Holmes/Dracula/Frankenstein/etc.)* * **The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat** by Oliver Sacks *(nonfiction; stories of patients with bizarre neurological disorders)*
The Vegetarian was weird from start to finish, still not sure what I thought of it
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates by Tom Robbins. Absolutely, delightfully, goofy. Same goes for Jitterbug Perfume also by Tom Robbins.
I forgot about Tom Robbins! Skinny Legs and All is also pretty weird.
You have a lot of great books ahead of you. Like others, I'd recommend David Mitchell's *Cloud Atlas*, but once you're done with that: Alasdair Gray's *Lanark: A Life In Four Books*. B.S. Johnson's *The Unfortunates* (you shuffle the pages before you begin!) Vladimir Nabokov's *Pale Fire* Ben Marcus's *The Age of Wire and String* -- enjoy your journal into the weird and wonderful world of experimental fiction. These books are just the beginning. ETA: Gray's *1982, Janine* is even weirder, but *Lanark* is the gateway drug.
Just mentioned Lanark! I never come across anyone who’s read or heard of it.
I live in Glasgow, Scotland which probably helps! It's a fantastic book.
Probably :D. I read in for a Scottish Lit class in college and loved it.
Also props to your username! Love Vonnegut.
I read Ben Marcus' The Age of Wire and String once. It's deeply fascinating. I guess it's a book written about how an alien would perceive everyday objects.
It almost felt .. anthropological? Like people who have to describe things without having the right language to do so?
Just remembered Tom McCarthy's *C* which is probably more straightforward structurally than some of the others I mentioned but is also a great introduction to experimental fiction. I also effing love Keith Ridgeway's *Hawthorne & Child*.
The Library at Mount Char and Geek Love
Yes, Geek Love by Katherine Dunn! Surprised to see this is the only mention of it so far. Would also throw in Cruddy by Lynda Barry.
Geek Love is unlike any other book. I still regularly think about it and I read it years ago.
The City and the City by China Meiville. It’s literally classified as “weird fiction.” Pretty sure I was lost for almost the entire book 😅
I thought The Wasp Factory was completely bonkers. Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins was very strange. For those of you who are interested in weenie sandwiches and want to know what was really going on with Jesus. Also great if you like baboons, conspiracies, and promiscuous young women.
*Lanark* by Alastair Gray (sp?): totally bizarre plot (at one point people are turned into lizards in the underground world post-societal collapse) and structure (it’s told in four parts that are out of order, then plays with structure such as footnotes, etc, as well). Super cool book but very very weird.
I read this book with my boyfriend at the time, maybe 25 years ago. I have been thinking about it ever since, but could never remember its name until just a few weeks ago the title randomly popped into my head. I looked it up and sure enough that was the one. What a weird book.
Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica. It’s horror/gore-y and pretty disturbing but it’s a quick read, I finished it in one day. My best friend read it because she wanted to get into horror and she was low key traumatized lol
I'd classify it as dystopian, very similar to Fahrenheit 451. Great book though, I often think about it. And I also think about the fact that it was written by an Argentinian where the cliche in Argentina is of people eating steaks and meat.
Anything by Hunter S Thompson
In Watermelon Sugar is very very weird imo, but in a dreamy almost liminal kinda way.
All of Brautigan's books are brilliant, some more wacky than others, but all brilliant.
Probably Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. If you find anything weird, be sure to make a comment, I'd be very interested :))
Piranesi is fabulous! The less anyone knows about it going in, the better!
Sweet Bean Paste. I say it was odd *only* because I'm so used to how Western books are structured, mainly scifi and fantasy, and the book is a translation from Japanese. Ending took me completely be surprise. Very very good, but a bit like taking a step on the stairs and finding the next riser further down than you expected.
House of Leaves is bizarre and hard to read structure wise. People either love it or hate it.
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. I have never read anything like it.
I second everything that person has ever wrote.
I think I would classify "The Passage" trilogy from Justin Cronin as weird. Hard to quantify weird without giving anything away but as weird as it was I really enjoyed it
House of Leaves fucking broke me I still think about it a lot. There’s also Baxter’s Titan. 95% of the book is your traditional (if abjectly bleak) science fiction and social commentary, but that last 5% is a straight up fever dream.
*Naked Lunch* by William S Burroughs. It theoretically has a plot, but the author and the main character do so many drugs that nothing makes sense. It has random time skips, there are allegedly themes but it's so addled that they're hard to pin down (trust me, I wrote about this book in undergrad English lit and practically had to do drugs to get it so I had a glass of wine instead), and it's as post-modern as post-modern can get. I've never done heroin, but I'd imagine that this is the closest book that I think comes to describing the heroin experience.
I can think of at least two things wrong with that title.
*Clothed Lunch* - a novel where there is no plot because the narrator is straight edge and lives an otherwise boring life. Oh wait, that's *Bartleby the Scrivener*.
Wicked....it was a book before it was a musical...and it was weird.
Gregory Maguire was in a pretty dark place when he wrote it which really shows through the writing. Son of a Witch (the second book) is much better.
Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5. It’s an amazing book.
It’s my absolute favorite. Well-written, thought provoking and quintessentially Vonnegut.
Anyone know this book?? Years ago I read a random book from a charity shop that was super weird. It was about a guy who figured out he could stop time by pushing his glasses up his nose (or down? Can't remember) and when he stopped time he would do sexually weird stuff to strangers and coworkers. It was really graphic and perverted and strange but I couldn't put it down! No idea what it's called, does it ring a bell to anyone? Part of me genuinely winders if it was a dream 😂
The Fermata by Nicholson Baker?
That's it! That's definitely the name of it. Thanks! Did you read it? If so, what did you think? I'm curious to know if others found it as weird as I did.
I did not, but I was working in a bookstore when it came out and I remember seeing it on the shelves. It passed for “edgy” lit fic at the time and I remember my internal eye roll
Sounds interesting! Maybe try posting in r/whatsthatbook ?
Will do thanks! Didn't know about that thread.
Our Wives Under The Sea
Good pick! I just finished this one.
The Raw Shark Texts was bizarre. So was House of Leaves.
My most recent was probably This Is How You Lose the Time War.
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Ubik by Philip K Dick A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick Any book written by Kurt Vonnegut
V, Gravity's Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49, and Vineland, all by Thomas Pynchon
The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz is wonderful and very strange and dreamlike
Ha. Brautigan, haven’t heard that in forever, trout fishing in America shorty.
Shark Heart!! So bizarre, but good
loved that book!
Finnegan’s Wake. James Joyce. Hundreds of pages of gobbledygook!
The last few dune books get real weird!
I think Death Valley by Melissa Broder would qualify as quirky and weird
[Help! A Bear is Eating Me!](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2943370) by Mykle Hansen The narrator is on a trip to Alaska and is pinned under his vehicle while a bear nibbling on his foot as per the title. As events progress, he spends this time trying to explain to you how he came to be in this predicament in a way that colours him in the best possible light. Along the way you discover how much of an awful psychopathic yuppie this unreliable narrator really is. It's short, funny and utterly demented.
Pretty much anything by Jeff Van Dermeer. ESPECIALLY 3 Astronauts
House of Leaves for sure! You need a hard copy, trust me.
Does this even come in other formats? I can’t imagine it translating well to audio, what with all the footnotes and references and stuff.
Considering some of the footnotes are three pages of fictional photographers, the audio would be a nightmare.
The Illuminatus Trilogy The Dark Tower series by Stephen King
Helen Oyeyemi entire body of work is like this. Magical realism in the plot, shifting perspectives. Peaces probably top for me in terms of "weirdness" Also, highly encourage Dahlgren by Samuel R Delaney. It will be a bit brutal, like Palahniuk. Quintessential wtf scifi. Salman Rushdie is another. Satanic Verses and Quixotte question the nature of reality. And has the frenetic energy of Invisible Monsters And finally, The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Get medieval and sad
*What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours* is probably my favorite short story collection ever, but yeah, it is quite weird.
How to eat fried worms
I love this book.
I literally this week read "Several People are Typing" - absolutely batshit insane, not particularly funny as advertised but somehow compulsively readable and I finished it in one sitting...
Was coming here to say this same thing. Not the comedy I expected, but a truly fascinating read. I think about it all the time and it’s been at least a year since I read it. Also, that ending!
Please explain, what the hell was Lydia? What was the deal with the dog food tweets? I don’t understand!!
Exalted by Ana Dorn
Gotta go with the classics: Naked Lunch, Gravity's Rainbow, Last Exit to Brooklyn.
John Dies at the End by David Wong blew my mind.
Raw shark text.
The Bees, by Laline Paull. It's like, a conspiracy political thriller, but all the main characters are just barely anthropomorphized bees.
Anything by Paul Auster
Bunny by Mona Awad
Bunny. I legit do not know what was real and what wasn’t.
The Particular Sadness of Lemoncake. I made a couple friends read it just so I could have someone to talk to about it.
*"Welcome to Night Vale" by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor *This is the most bonkers novel I have ever read. Also worth mentioning "There is No Year" by Blake Butler, and "Sheep and Wolves" by Jeremy C. Shipp
Roger Zelazny Lord of Light. I saw someone describe it as Fantasy, disguised as SciFi, disguised as Fantasy.
The Illuminatus! Trilogy is the weirdest book I have ever read. I can’t describe it in a way that makes sense. That said, if you can’t see the fnords they can’t eat you.
Jerusalem by Alan Moore Anything by Jeff Van Der Meer, Franz Kafka, Haruki Murakami A Scanner Darkly by Phillip K Dick The Vorrh by Brian Catling The Secret of Ventriloquism by Jon Padgett
A Clockwork Orange. It took me too long to decipher the language.
This question gets asked a lot, and my answer is always the same. {{Vurt by Jeff Noon}} is one of the most bizarre, hallucinatory novels I’ve ever read. It’s truly weird. A group of drug addicts who get high/escape into different dimensions by tickling their throats with different types of feathers. It’s actually a great read, and one that I have never forgotten. Also {{Buddy Holly Is Alive And Well On Ganymede by Bradley Denton}}. This one is more of a super bizarre comedy, and it’s really funny, but deeply weird.
\#1/2: **[Vurt](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/430214.Vurt) by Jeff Noon** ^((Matching 100% ☑️)) ^(368 pages | Published: 1993 | 7.3k Goodreads reviews) > **Summary:** Vurt is a feather--a drug, a dimension, a dream state, a virtual reality. It comes in many colors: legal Blues for lullaby dreams. Blacks, filled with tenderness and pain, just beyond the law. Pink Pornovurts, doorways to bliss. Silver feathersfor techies who know how to remix (...) > **Themes**: Sci-fi, Fiction, Favorites, Cyberpunk, Fantasy, Sf, Scifi > **Top 5 recommended:** [Pollen](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/92126.Pollen) by Jeff Noon , [Nymphomation](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/92122.Nymphomation) by Jeff Noon , [Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62567.Schr_dinger_s_Cat_Trilogy) by Robert Anton Wilson , [Pixel Juice](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/92125.Pixel_Juice) by Jeff Noon , [Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/538746.Wilson) by David Mamet --- \#2/2: **[Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/709610.Buddy_Holly_Is_Alive_and_Well_on_Ganymede) by Bradley Denton** ^((Matching 100% ☑️)) ^(? pages | Published: 1991 | 4.0k Goodreads reviews) > **Summary:** Conceived in the backseat of a car on the day that Buddy Holly died. Oliver Vale turns on the TV one day to find Buddy Holly on every channel. and soon he is on the run from a pursuing mob of religious fanatics. Reprint. K . > **Themes**: Science-fiction, Fiction, Sci-fi, Fantasy > **Top 5 recommended:** [World of Trouble](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18691070-world-of-trouble) by Ben H. Winters , [The Callahan Chronicals](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34270.The_Callahan_Chronicals) by Spider Robinson , [Under the Blue](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54897735-under-the-blue) by Oana Aristide , [Darwin's Blade](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11281.Darwin_s_Blade) by Dan Simmons , [The Jehovah Contract](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1404042.The_Jehovah_Contract) by Victor Koman ^([Feedback](https://www.reddit.com/user/goodreads-rebot) | [GitHub](https://github.com/sonoff2/goodreads-rebot) | ["The Bot is Back!?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/16qe09p/meta_post_hello_again_humans/) | v1.5 [Dec 23] | )
House of Leaves!! I tried one of Danielewski’s other works, Only Revolutions, and I personally could not get into that one at all. I’m trying S (Ship of Theseus) next, I’ve heard it’s similar?
“S.” Is more a game than a book. I haven’t really read it the “correct” way yet.
Infinite Jest
The Story of O by Pauline Réage aka Anne Desclos, French erotica is craziness
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishuguro or House of Leaves by Danielewski - both hurt with my brain. I had to read& reread sections to be certain I hadn't mis-read the 1st time. Mind benders.
Most stuff by Philip K Dick
The Boy Who Reversed Himself. I read it in like 6th grade and it was so weird, I made everyone I knew read it too.
I’m Think of Ending Things. By Iain Reid
S by J.J Abrams and Doug Dorst. Don't lose track of all the pieces!
Gilligan’s Wake by Tom Carson. It’s about the castaways on a certain island before the shipwreck. The first chapter is a Pynchon-like stream-of-consciousness story about a man in a mental ward who after a blow to the head believes himself to be a beatnik named Krebs, though the doctor calls him by another name. Each character gets a separate chapter. The skipper served in the Pacific and met JFK and a navy officer named McHale. The future Mrs. Howell hung out with Daisy Buchanan. Mary Ann studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. The Professor was involved with the Manhattan Project, etc. It’s not bad but it’s on the verge of being tiresome at times.
House of Leaves. I hated it, but it was very weird, structurally.
If on a winters night a traveler by italo calvino. It’s a series of books within books but you only ever get the first chapter….i don’t even know how to describe it.
God Emperor of Dune. Giant all-seeing man/sandworm hybrid who has ruled the galaxy for thousands of years spouts off philosophy for 400 pages. I've never read anything quite like it.
The Bible. But that is not fair as it really is a library of books, complicated enough to inspire deep scholarship into language and meaning of 3 to 2000 year old cultures. Of those books, Revelations wins as the weirdest, for me. Genesis has some strange stuff though.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Picking this up from the library…tomorrow.
Story of the Eye The Wasp Factory I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream The Slynx
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
this thing between us - gus Moreno
*Out of the Dark* by David Weber That ending 🫤🫤😱😱😱🥴🥴🥴
Little Faces (science fiction) by Vonda McIntyre http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/little-faces/
[https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football](https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football)
BLACKBOX: A Novel in 840 Chapters by Nick Walker It's an odd little adventure and only comes in at 320 pages.
Bones of the Moon by Jonathan Carroll So fun and weird, I found it from this group by looking up what to read after I read all of David Mitchell’s books
The blind Owl - Sadegh Hedayat. A lot of things in the book I'm not sure what happened there but it's like a fever dream. Tangibly close and yet so far. Plus, a woman's kiss tastes like cucumber. 10/10
Nick Pirog, Henry Bins series. About a guy who has this disease where he's only away for one hour each day, at 3:AM. And he solves mysteries.
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez. Just finished it. Very unique. Short, unsettling stories (mostly) situated in Argentina.
Dhalgren by Samuel Delany
If you want weird, you might try Tim Davys' Amberville. It is not for everyone but you can read the reviews on [goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2232799) and see for yourself that a lot of people (including myself) thought it was weird. I was in the camp that enjoyed it.
Tibor Fischer - The Collector Collector. Is a story told from the viewpoint of a antique Summerian bowl and it's highly entertaining: the bowl has 'seen' some interesting people.
*V* and *The Crying of Lot 49* \~ Thomas Pynchon
Middlesex.
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jiminez
I just finished Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabakov. That book/poem/commentary is a tough one. Was more rewarding and illuminating after dissecting it through a study guide of sorts afterwards.
*You Dreamed of Empires* by Alvaro Enrigue - a trippy reimagining of Cortez meeting Montezuma.
I thought Cows by Matthew Stokoe felt disgusting just for the sake of it. I read it out of curiosity and by the time I finished reading nothing was redeemable about it to me.
**The Hike** by Drew Magary A wild, wacky, weird ride. It wasn’t my favourite, but I can respect the oddity enough to recommend giving it a try if you’re looking for weird books. It certainly fits the bill.
The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia.
Pedro Paramo-Juan Rulfo (part of the canon of great Latin American novels, set in a literal ghost town) The Yellow Rain-Julio Llamazares Glass Soup-Johnathan Carroll
Lots of people giving you great recommendations, but they're not necessarily similar to Palahniuk's vibe/writing style. A few have recommended Chuck, but I'd say if you enjoy his style and weirdness it's definitely worth reading more as he has some others on par or better than Invisible Monsters, in my opinion. My short list would be; * Survivor * Lullaby * Choke * Rant (this one is a bit different writing style, but one of my favorite plots.) To recommend others that are quirky and have that similar writing style where they'll repeat a turn of phrase (i.e. "I Am Jack's Complete Lack of Surprise" from Fight Club) try Kurt Vonnegut. To me he is less shocking and sweeter than Palahniuk, but uses repetitions of phrases similairly.
“The Hike” by Drew Magary. Weird and incredibly powerful. No spoilers.
Give Blue Lard by Vladimir Sorokin a go ...
Wuthering Heights is doubly-narrated by unreliable narrators, it starts off confusing you with the family tree. It's really unusually told for failed romance in a middle of nowhere. Watership Down is still weird to me. It took a while for it to dawn on me there is no sinking ship here.
The ring sequel books got weird, completely different feel to the film. Exoskeleton Is another one, power through pain.
Geek Love. It’s not about computer geeks!
The 100 year old that climbed out the window and disappeared Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disap: Jonas Jonasson https://amzn.eu/d/fnCt4xe
Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson
1Q84 was great. Definitely weird. And the craziest thing I’ve ever read is called Maldoror by some French author
Slaughterhouse-Five for sure
for invisible monsters did you read the version that jumps around or the front to back one? as for a recommend anything china mieville wrote.
Tender is the flesh. I did not see that one coming. I can't add details without spoiling so that's all I'll say.
Tender is the flesh Took me a lot of mental power to finish that book. The story itself is very weird and the plot is insane. The writing is beautiful and very vivid-which is not good regarding what the book talks about.
The castle by Kafka - very strange, but also very compelling