What is the strangest book you’ve ever read? Be it the format or the content.
Naked Lunch. It’s like being dropped on an island full of weird things with no map.
I would have to say the strangest book by far was City of Dreaming Books by German author Walter Moers. It’s about sentient dinosaurs who love all things books and knowledge and aspire to be writers. One in particular goes on a journey to the greatest city said to have the rarest books and an adventure ensues.
Walter Moers books are all incredible and strange but not all are translated from German yet. I recommend Rumo as well if you do like his style; same universe different time and protagonists.
This sounds amazing. I can’t look it up on goodreads because the site is down right now, but I just read the summary on wikipedia and this sounds like a deranged children’s book.
omg yes, my library has this on hoopla. Can you start with this one or is better to start with the first book in the series?
My first book was this one, then Rumo, then I am going to read the others that are translated at some point. I’d say you can start anywhere it’s not exactly sequential.
Yeah, Moers is pretty great. His Zamonia books are probably the closest Germany has to Terry Pratchett. He also wrote and drew very adult and quite hilarious comicbooks, one of which is about Hitler.
I’m currently trying to read Record of a Night too Brief by Hiromi Kawakami. It is written like a dream, it jumps around. I really have no idea what it is about or where the story is going, or if it is a story at all??
i read The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins not long ago. it’s a modern fantasy story about a group of orphans raised into adulthood by who is for all intents and purposes, god. content warning for things like extreme violence and gore, sexual assault and child torture, i won’t get into those details but these things are present in the story.
the children are taught by him in this mystical library, isolated from the rest of the world, with each one learning a different discipline in a hyperfixated and certainly unhealthy manner. for example one is taught every aspect of war and combat at the expense of anything else. learning everything in all of the universe and reality in that field to the point where he can telepathically understand what an opponent intends to do next. this doesn’t really result in very well rounded individuals. so pretty much every character is extremely bizzare.
the best way i can think to describe the story would be if the kinds of characters from ancient myths were real, existed in our modern day, and were absolutely not mentally sound. the story is really just completely weird and has no interest in pretending anything should be normal. when confronted with breaking into a house, of course the solution is to recruit a plumber and a pair of lions. our friends at the library don’t know what a telephone is but if you give them the rundown we can have the president of the united states taking orders over the phone in the next 5 minutes.
i do recommend it, despite its oddness there is still an interesting and honestly kind of touching narrative on trauma and acceptance that i think is well told.
This is one of those books that’s on my “I don’t know if I want to read this or not” TBR. Is it hard to follow? I always hate when I get 100 pages into a book and realize I am thoroughly confused.
i think the book does a good job of explaining its internal logic. there are a few povs. one of those raised in the library is the primary character, even though they’re part of the less than normal crowd of misfits her discipline was language, so naturally she is good at communicating and her perspective is about as normal as it can be given the circumstances.
another of the main cast is a fish out of water type regular joe, who is appropriately confused at the goings-on.
and it has fun with it’s scenarios, the book knows how ridiculous it can be and characters can be just as bewildered as the reader, so it grounds itself that way.
This isn’t the strangest book I’ve ever read, but I just finished Earthlings by Sayaka Murata. It’s pretty strange. It’s even weirder than Tender is the Flesh.
Cloud Atlas. The way it skips around, even ending a chapter mid sentence. Really fascinating structure.