Whats the strangest book you've ever read?

[UncleAsriel]

VALIS, by Phillip K. Dick. Drugs are bad, m'kay?


James Joyce's Ulysses. BLEH. My mind just divided by zero.

 

[Kilo24]

"Hey, lookit me, I'm Captain SMARTASS"
Just kidding. I appreciate it.

Hehe, only reason I know is because I read The Cleric Quintet by R.A. Salvatore. Favorite author. Least favorite of his series.

He's a good author; a bit too limited by his popularity into doing new stuff though. I used to love him but now his new books tend to repeat the basic elements again and again.

On topic, 100 Years of Solitude. I don't really even know if I like it, but I guess I must because I've read it ~8 times. And I still don't think I understand it.

Supposedly Joyce's books consist of him shouting "Lookit me!" as he bends the English language into new and uncomfortable shapes with a sickening crack and then him hanging gaudy paintings by Escher off of them. Actual readability is embarassedly locked into a closet before the spectacle starts.

 

[Fingerprint]

However, I have to say Douglas Adams' series are probably some of the weirdest out there, his Dirk Gently series even moreso than the Hitchhiker's.

I love Dirk Gently, some of the things he says are brilliant:

"Oh, and bring money."
"Are you trying to blackmail me?"
"No, for the pizza, you fool."

(Or something very similar)

 

[Sparrow]

Eager is pretty messed up. It's very colourful on the front cover, the blurb is very nice and inviting and the words are nice and gentle.

Then you get deeper into it, and it turns out that colourful childs book you just picked up is a little more darker than you thought.

I think the absolute batshit-lunacy award goes to:

Naked Lunch

and

The Invisibles / The Filth

Though many other titles are worthy contenders. Among them, is Preacher:

Featured here with the entire cast on the cover.

I can see an orange Doctor Manhattan with a mohawk somewhere in there.

 

[Ophiuchus]

Another for House Of Leaves. I haven't actually got through it yet, thanks to other distractions... I've been meaning to get back to it for a while but I'm not sure my head is really in the right place at the moment for something quite so bonkers.

 

[_Cake_]

Naked Lunch, by far.

 

[AbsoluteVirtue18]

A Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft, and The Collecter by ??????

 

[Mongodyr]

Onkel Monokkel. (Uncle Monocle)
It's a book about a guy who wants to be a drummer, so he wears a snare drum on his head.
Then his wife knits a hat so big that it covers the earth.

 

[MrGFunk]

the house of leaves. i'd never had to hold up my book to a mirror to read it before that one. the author's next book, only revolutions, is pretty fucked as well, but i haven't actually finished that one yet.

House of Leaves is a scary, scary book with interesting deliveries. it should be read by everybody, I have personally bought six copies for myself and others.

However, I give my vote to Only Revolutions same author (Mark Z. Danielewski) because I don't even know how to read it, it sits on my shelf, confusing me.

Note: This was my vote coming into the thread.

 

[iain62a]

Trilogy means three, though...
Hitchhiker's would be a..
Uh...
Filogy?
...No, that's dumb.
Anyway, whatever. It is an awesome series, yes.

On my copy it calls itself a trilogy in five parts, but it doesn't really matter.

One of the best book series of all time.

Very strange too.

 

[pmega]

coheriently weird the 2001 series. it makes sence and is quite bad ass. I've got the whole hitchhiker series and why'll very good i feel a bit lazily written. The Incal and any thing By alexander jodoroski is going to be good also herman hess's steppin wolf

 

[Dr. Nerfball]

'John Dies at the End' is pretty bizarre too, but in a fun way. It's like if Douglas Adams tried his hand at horror.

Seconded! That book was increadibly odd. Also, out of curiosity, did you read it online or is it being sold anywhere, I can't find it in any of my local book shops...

Oh, and 'I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream' by Harlan Ellison, that was just down right disturbing.

 

[Lipgloss-x-Lies]

The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway.

I spent most of that book confused as hell, Then to get to the end and find all you've been reading has been imaginary... I believe I sat for a good twenty minutes after i'd finished it attempting to work out out what had just happened

 

[gigastrike]

"Oh the places you'll go"

 

[theeconomy]

"Slaughter house five" closely followed by "Breakfast of champions" Kurt Vonnegit is messed up.

 

[pmega]

i forgot about kurt try him hes gold

 

[Azhrarn-101]

The collected stories of H.P. Lovecraft probably.
(most of them are in the Necronomicon, but not all of them.)
Similarly the stories by Robert Ervin Howard (of Conan fame)
This man was good friends with mr. Lovecraft and the inspiration shows on both sides.

Some of their storylines are true WTF moments.
The latter writers stories are all public domain now and Project Gutenberg Australia has most (if not all) of them available for free. (http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#letterH)
Just search for the authors name (Robert Ervin Howard) and you'll find them)

 

[Leefank137]

Snow Crash had it's moments, excellent book though

 

[slabomeat]

The strangest book I ever read was in German class (it was called Frau Erdbeere, or "Ms. Strawberry"). My classmates and I couldn't read German all too well, and so we had a laugh as we read the text and came up with all this very strange and violent stuff (there's one part where we read that Ms. Strawberry cannibalizes her children, leaving only their heads behind so she can plant them in the ground to grow more children to eat).

Wanting to see what the story was really about, we confronted our German teacher. To our surprise, we read it almost entirely right. This is a children's picture book by the way. There were no graphic images, though (they were all actually very bright and cheerful). Crazy Germans!

Anything i ever read in german involved parents either cannabilizing their childered, or their kids and spouse get abducted and the husband tells the cops not to worry about finding his family, so any german story at all