What are some of the strangest/weirdest books you read?

For me it is "The Hard To Catch Mercy" by William Baldwin.

http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Catch-Mercy-William-Baldwin/dp/1596290226/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-1403668-7528640?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193214407&sr=8-1


I read through it but it took me some time and till the end I didn't understand what he was talking about.

i haven't read much of it yet, but it is a damn strange book

not sure I will read it. I am not into scary books or movies.

His is not an easy style to follow. But it's well worth the effort.

I think I read "Slaughterhouse Five" three times before I really "got" it, and him.

there are way too many books out there to ever be able to read them all.

All those millions and millions of books — more creativity than my brain can comprehend. :crazy:

It has talking snakes and bushes.
:D Good morning MissH

but only because of the cultural aspect, not the religous aspect.

:hi: GoP

this guy begat that guy yada yada yada.
You think they would have hired better writers :silly:
:hi:

I couldn't finish it.

:yoiks:

Strangers in the night, exchanging glances...

Strangers in the night they're testing rubbers this ones too tight lets try another. :silly:

doo biedoo biedoo biedoo
biedoo biedoo bie
doe biedoo biedoo biedoo

Lots of sex and violence. If only there was stuff blowing up here and there, and maybe a car chase scene, it would make a great movie!

I got to the end of that book and really didn't have much of a clue as to what I'd just read. :)

Edited to add a Wiki link for the curious:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhalgren

Maybe there is an idea for the next read for me. Right now I am reading something boring like the biography of Friedrich von Schiller.

It gives a fairly detailed synopsis.

If you can handle experimental types of prose, you should like the book.

I will definitely put it on my list to read. Have enough of mystery novels at the moment.

I've read it about ten times and just bought a second copy to replace the original one that's worn out. Such beautiful, lyrical writing. It's like reading the strangest of dreams.

I agree though, there are some images that just stick with you.

I kept searching for an underlying meaning to the book and never could find it. It was interesting though. I don't regret reading it at all.

It's unlike anything I've ever read. Very weird.

The best of his stuff was Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, I think.

He is definitely out there.

Geek Love is a novel by Katherine Dunn and first published in 1989. It was first published in parts in Mississippi Mud Book of Days and Looking Glass Bookstore Review in 1983 and 1988. The first complete text was published hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, in 1989.

The novel is the story of a traveling circus run by Aloysius "Al" Binewski and his wife, "Crystal" Lil. When Al's circus begins to fail, the couple devise an idea to breed their own freak show, using various drugs and radioactive material to alter the genes of their children. Who emerges are Arturo ("Arty"), a boy with flippers for hands and feet; Electra ("Elly") and Iphigenia ("Iphy") the Siamese Twins; Olympia ("Oly") the hunchback albino dwarf; and Fortunato ("Chick"), the normal looking telekinetic baby of the family — as well as a number of still-borns kept preserved in jars in a special wing of the freak show. The story is told by Oly in the form of a novel written for her daughter Miranda.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Love

makes you think about the author :crazy:

:hi:

:hi:

Who said, "This is the strangest book I have ever read, see if you agree." She was spot on.

I still think about it from time to time.

The Naked Lunch - William Burroughs
The Soft Machine - William Burroughs (ah, feck it, anything by Burroughs is strange)
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
You Bright and Risen Angels - William Vollman
Light - M. John Harrison
Perdido Street Station - China Mieville
Accelerando - Charles Stross
The Arabesque Trilogy - Jon Courtney Grimwood
Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce

he really writes weird fiction.

...for his next book. He has such a unique voice.

and have kafka on the Shore at home. Haven't read it yet though. Even though I find his writing strange it is fascinating at the same time

I only ask because Murakami's English translations are excellent. Murakami speaks perfect English, so he works with his translator to ensure that the spirit of the novels are preserved.

Kafka on the Shore I have in English. Maybe that is the reason I haven't read it yet. Not the English itself but the strangeness in English.

I'm trying to learn Japanese at the moment, but I can't imagine trying to tackle something like Murakami for a few years yet. Weirdness in English is weird. Weirdness in Japanese would be weird squared.

but there are some that make it hard even for me.

You are learning Japanese? Cool. That is a language I would love to learn as well. And if it is only just for fun.

...to be able to recognize a public lavatory six times out of ten. I can also order from a menu, and even occasionally receive something that looks like it may come from the same general region of the planet as the thing I thought I ordered. Beyond that, I have a long way to go.

sounds like you accomplished some already. Is Japanese the same as Chinese regarding the sound of words meaning different stuff?

There's just one way to pronounce each sound, and most words are unaccented, so you stress each syllable equally.

I started to learn Mandarin, but when I got to the part about each syllable having four possible tones, each of which gives it a completely different meaning, I just burst into tears and gave up. Learning 6,000 Han characters is bad enough. Having to know the four different meanings of each one was more than I could take. Of course, Cantonese has six tones for each syllable, so Mandarin is simple by comparison.

My favorite Mandarin translations are:

"Fu fu fu fu fu" - we are fortunate to be having dinner at the Fu's.

"Ma ma ma ma ma ma" - My mother took the horse to the market to sell.


By comparison, Japanese is child's play.

how do they SPEAK that language without messing up all the time? I mean the Mandarin speaking people. And to think Russian is difficult ....

...is that one of the four meanings always seems to be either offensive or insulting. So you try to say "Hello, Mr. Chen. Good to see you. How are your wife and children today?" and end up saying "Yo, Ratface. Your ass stinks. Is your wife still pimping your kids?" It's a minefield.

Apparently, it takes Chinese children a lot longer to become literate, because there is simply so much more to learn. Rural kids get the worst deal, because they haven't really learned enough of the written language by the time they leave school.

These books were really wild, but very very cool.

by Harry Turtledove

It's very funny, but you'll read it a dozen times and STILL not pick up all of the subtleties and implications and parallels!

It's a good read, though. It's written in first-person, which is kind of rare.

James Joyce's last work--700 pages of jabberwocky.

A short sample:

Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

that isn't readable at all!!! How did you do it????

FYI.

:eyes:

http://www.google.ch/search%3Fhl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26q%3D%2522William%2BS.%2BBurroughs%2522%2BWord%2BVirus%2BReader%26meta%3D&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail">Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

I read it a few years ago ... it was about the virgin birth of Satan's child. Very strange and I don't remember much about it.

:hi:

I had to be careful about reading it at bedtime. :scared:


:hi: :hug:

Duh!

retire the trophy

Why do otherwise intelligent individuals form seething masses of idiocy when they engage in collective action? Why do financially sensible people jump lemming-like into hare-brained speculative frenzies--only to jump broker-like out of windows when their fantasies dissolve? We may think that the Great Crash of 1929, junk bonds of the '80s, and over-valued high-tech stocks of the '90s are peculiarly 20th century aberrations, but Mackay's classic--first published in 1841--shows that the madness and confusion of crowds knows no limits, and has no temporal bounds. These are extraordinarily illuminating,and, unfortunately, entertaining tales of chicanery, greed and naivete. Essential reading for any student of human nature or the transmission of ideas.

In fact, cases such as Tulipomania in 1624--when Tulip bulbs traded at a higher price than gold--suggest the existence of what I would dub "Mackay's Law of Mass Action:" when it comes to the effect of social behavior on the intelligence of individuals, 1+1 is often less than 2, and sometimes considerably less than 0.

http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness-Crowds/dp/051788433X

...there's also Tom Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume and Max Barry's Jennifer Government. And maybe anything by Tim Powers.

I quit reading, b/c of other hobbies, but definately like Kobo Abe. Haven't seen "The Woman in the Dunes" movie but planning to.

Not a huge fan of his other books, but this one had me hooked from chapter 1.

Summary
"Fritti Tailchaser, a young ginger tom cat sets out to stray from his home and clan, the Meeting Wall Clan, in search of his catfriend Hushpad after strange disappearances of the Folk have been reported. He and the kitten Pouncequick set out on a long journey to visit the Court of Harar with the intention of finding out the mystery of the disappearances--a journey that will take them to cat Hell and beyond."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailchaser's_Song

It's actually kind of creepy.

all by Robert McCammon....
really anything by him
great reads though...
but weird


http://books.google.com/books?as_auth=Robert+R+McCammon&ots=IdDyM0m37S&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=author-navigational

a link to descriptions of his books


lost

Harouin and The Sea of Stories by Salmon Rushdie. Fun, whimsical, but weird.

Where is Joe Merchant? (Jimmy Buffett). So strange that I kept vowing to put it down, but before I knew it I finished it and it wound up being fun.

Oh yeah, The Anatomy Lesson by Phillip Roth. Very strange (but lots of sex, so he should get some credit).

It's semi(?)autobiographical, with the author sometimes speaking in his own voice, sometimes describing the actions of "Horselover Fat", a character who is initially introduced as a stand-in for the author, but who is slowly revealed as being a separate personality of sorts, albeit living in the same head. Both characters converse with others, sometimes without the other's knowledge, and apparently even converse with each other over the phone. Every alternative religion you can imagine gets jumbled together as t/he/y trie/s to rationalize his 1974 encounter with a supernatural being. There are three-eyed aliens from the future, ancient satellites controlling peoples' brains from space, living plasmatic entities somehow embodied in the Gnostic texts of Nag Hammadi, a show business couple who are, apparently, gods, and well, other "unusual things".

Most of Dick's stuff is pretty weird in some entertaining way, but VALIS is off the charts.

FYI: There are 4 books in the VALIS series; The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, and Radio Free Albemuth.

RFA was published posthumously using PKD's first round of edits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Albemuth

It's much, much more coherent and sensible than VALIS.

OMG -- wiki says there's a film version of VALIS in production?? I don't see how it can be done.

that is from Feb. 2004. :cry:

wrong spot

...Humberto Penaloza, who as a child & adolescent was always told by his father that he must become something, it doesn't matter what, as long as Humberto doesn't go through the same social obscurity that he endures. Later on, he becomes the assistant to Jeronimo, a wealthy politician who is trying to lengthen the family tree. His wife, Ines de Azcoitia is unable to bear him children. Then through either an act of black magic, or Humberto's intimacy Jeronimo is given his child. The child, simply called Boy, is horribly deformed. Jeronimo decides to build the child it's own world, entirely secluded from anything outside of it and surrounded by other people with monstrosities.

When that song "Man in the Box", by Nine Inch Nails came out I immediatly thought of this book. So strange, it gave me weird dreams.

snippets from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ware_Tetralogy

"2031: Manchile, the First Robot-Built Human, Is Planted in the Womb of Della Taze by Ken Doll, Part of Whose Right Brain Is a Robot Rat."

Set in 2030-2031, ten years after the events of Software, Wetware focuses on the attempt of an Edgar Allan Poe-obsessed bopper named Berenice to populate Earth with a robot/human hybrid called a meatbop. Toward this end, she implants an embryo in a human woman living on the Moon (Della Taze, Cobb Anderson's niece) and then frames her for murder to force her to return to Earth. After only a few days, she gives birth to a boy named Manchile, who has been genetically programmed to carry bopper software in his brain (and in his sperm), and to grow to maturity in a matter of weeks.

Berenice's plan is for Manchile to announce the formation of a new religion unifying boppers and humans, and then arrange to have himself assassinated. (Rucker makes several allusions to the Christ story; Taze's abbreviated pregnancy is discovered on Christmas Eve, for instance.) Before the assassination, Manchile impregnates several women, the idea being that his similarly accelerated offspring will create a race of meatbops at an exponential rate.

The plot goes disastrously awry, and a human corporation called ISDN retaliates against the boppers by infecting them with a genetically modified organism called chipmold. The artificial disease succeeds in killing off the boppers, but when it infects the boppers' outer coating, a kind of smart plastic known as flickercladding, it creates a new race of intelligent symbiotes known as moldies — thus fulfilling Berenice's dream of an organic/synthetic hybrid.


The overall feel of Realware lacks continuity with the first three novels. This disjounted style can be attributed to the fact that Rucker quit drinking and doing drugs between the third and fourth novel. Since drug use is such a big part of the ware tetralogy, the change in his attitude towards drugs is significant.

Speaking of drugs ... there's also Rucker's "White Light".

The Monkey's Paw: http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/mnkyspaw.htm

The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: http://fiction.eserver.org/short/occurrence_at_owl_creek.html I think this story was 100 years ahead of its time.