What were the most bizarre books you have ever read?

What were the most bizarre or surreal books you have ever read? For me, it would have to be:

1. Anything from Neil Gaiman, including Coraline, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, The Sandman comics, and Neverwhere.
2. Anything from Henrik Drescher, including Simons Book, Pat the Beastie, Love the Beastie and Klutz.

The first ones that occur to me are Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time quartet. One book is about going in the company of a cherubim to talk to a small boy's mitochondria - which had only just been discovered at the time the book was written, so it's understandable that they bear no resemblance to the real thing.

edited 8th Mar '14 4:52:14 AM by LoniJay

Probably Veniss Underground by Jeff Vandermeer. I'm a fan of bizarre books.

Invisible Cities.

City at the End of Time by Greg Bear was also really weird. I agree about the Time Quartet as well.

Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminati trilogy.

Matt Ruff' Public Works trilogy, which in reverse of the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy is in one volume.

The Goneaway World by Nick Harkaway

edited 10th Mar '14 8:26:43 PM by tricksterson

Yeah! There's something about bizarre books that I really enjoy reading about since they are always unusual and yet creative at the same time!

The Giver. I don't remember much from it, just that it seemed bizarre in 4th grade.

Life, a User's Manual by Georges Perec. A jigsaw puzzle in the shape of a book, exploring every apartment in a typical Parisian building over a few seconds. The composition of the book involved a 10x10 Graeco-Latin square, 42 lists of objects and the Knight's Tour.

Honourable mentions to Italo Calvino's oeuvre (particularly Cosmicomics and Invisible Cities), Julio Cortazar's Cronopios and Famas, Mark Z. Danielewski for House of Leaves and Only Revolutions, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series.

Although I've read books that try to be weird, I think the weirdest books I've read were just bizarre to read because of bad writing, not intentionally.

Oh yeah, I have come across some books that were written terribly and I think it has to do with trying to create a chaotic mood for the story (at least, some stories are set up like that).

I think for a book to be bizarre in the way that I like the author should spend some time setting up some rules/expectations, and then begin breaking those expectations or showing how those rules are invalid. Done well it can give a book a cool sense of disorientation, paranoia or a dreamlike feel. Done poorly it can seem like the author ran out of ideas and is resorting to deus ex machinas.

I agree with this. That's why I love most of Neil Gaiman's books because while his books are set in a bizarre universe, there is a sense of realism within his characters and the world they live in. Like for example, in Coraline, while you have the elements of the Other World playing a huge role in the plot of the book, you also have Coraline's troublesome decision about whether or not she wants the perfect world of the Other World vs. being with her parents in the real world, which is not as perfect as the Other World.

Even though, the Other Mother gave Coraline everything she ever wanted, it had to involve Coraline sacrificing her parents and her own life just to get the life she wanted and she starts to realize that even though her old life wasn't that perfect, it wasn't worth it to sacrifice the people she love just to get the life she really wanted.

edited 9th Mar '14 3:49:03 PM by Rabbitearsblog

Format-wise, it's House Of Leaves, but content-wise I'm pretty sure it's Gravitys Rainbow. I'm still not sure what all happened in that one.

edited 9th Mar '14 4:50:31 PM by ColonelCathcart

Milorad Pavić's Dictionary of the Khazars. The man has some obscure grudge against the brains of his fellow men, and won't be satisfied until he can short-circuit them.

Haruki Murakami's books, particularly Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. They all follow dream logic, and half of Hardboiled Wonderland is set in a metaphorical world in the protagonist's head. Or something.

edited 13th Mar '14 5:20:37 PM by editerguy

I'll add the works of Alicia Borinsky, Naked Lunch, Bend Sinister, and The Fish Child.

Finding things bizarre seems to be very personal, but bizarre isn't an adjective I would use to describe the works of Neil Gaiman (that I've read), the Time Quintet, The Giver, House of Leaves, or Gormenghast. There's as much use arguing over it as arguing whether red or green is better though.

edited 13th Mar '14 9:31:59 PM by rhea

I haven't read many books by Haruki Murakami, but I heard they were pretty good!

Of his books I've read, I like the fact that despite the weirdness and the fact that sometimes it's unclear how real events actually are, Murakami still has a really solid psychological grounding for his characters. Some of his books I couldn't get into, but he writes some really fascinating and original stuff.

On a technical level Murakami is a brilliant writer, and I think that maybe weird fiction can only really be pulled off by writers who are technically brilliant. Great characters, concepts and style make the weirdness really interesting.

edited 13th Mar '14 11:52:49 PM by editerguy

Gravitys Rainbow

I win.

Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen. Makes Ulysses look like a harlequin book.

And I second the Illuminatus trilogy.

Gravity's Rainbow is weird all right. It's also unreadable and boring.

I can agree that it can be unreadable in some portions, but I think the readable portions are all very good.

edited 15th Mar '14 8:00:09 PM by ColonelCathcart

Despite its weird digressions and absurdist humor, Gravity's Rainbow has an actual plot and definable character arcs. Hell, even Finnegans Wake has the latter! This is not something that's true of every work, however. In those respects, Tristram Shandy might actually be more confounding. Additional strong candidates include In the Realms of the Unreal and Ts'ui Pên's notorious Garden of Forking Paths.

edited 17th Mar '14 8:41:56 AM by Jhimmibhob

Supervillainous!: Confessions of a Costumed Evil-doer. Full stop.

Hmmm...sounds like an interesting read!