My first Murakami was Killing Commendatore and I adore it, and never see even Murakami fans mention it. It’s got that same dream like quality, it’s a slow burn and it gets weird. Super glad it was my first because I had no clue where it was going.
@@ChaosandComics Long time ago, when it first came out. I'm not a big King fan but really wanted to like his stuff so I tried Barker instead. Turns out I am just not a weird horror novel fan.
I have a little notebook that I have at least a couple written down, then also come up with them on the fly when inspiration strikes like this week lol
Three of my favorite weird mind-benders are Lanark by Alasdair Gray, Inverted World by Christopher Priest and, yes, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. And more recently, I loved Piranesi and Sea of Tranquility.
A couple recommendations:Weaveworld by Clive Barker. It’s about a race of people running from a goddess and so they weave themselves and their world into a carpet. I love this book so much. I would also recommend Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. I loved this odd world so much!
"I'm not gonna talk about Kafka on the Shore" he says while wearing a Kafka on the Shore t-shirt 😂 Kafka on the Shore was the first Murakami book I've read and while I cannot for the life of me remember or articulate what the book was about, the dreamlike feeling when I was reading it stayed with me. Like, I can clearly remember where I was sitting, what the weather was like, the lighting in my reading area - I can picture myself while reading that book... idk, like the weirdness of the book put me in a heightened state of mindfulness, where my surroundings were especially needed to ground me mentally and physically.
Going to recommend you check two books and one comic. Bad Brains - Kathe Koja (trippy, mind-bending horror with a distinctive prose) Ice - Anna Kavan (a surreal existentialist classic) Nameless - Grant Morrison (six issue comic. Imagine if David Lynch directed Event Horizon).
The three stigmata is indeed weird, but, really good! The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker is what came to mind when I saw the title of this video.
The Scottish author Iain Banks is really worth checking out for writing books with weirdness and brilliance, so many of his early novels were genius but The Bridge or Wasp Factory never drop from my top 20 . I recently read African Psycho by Alain Mabanckou, which was a strange little oddity. The Book of All Hours #2 lnk by Hal Duncan, another Scot is a mind bender too. Final Scots book is The Girl The Crow The Writer and the Fighter by George Paterson, so many characters, real or fictional, your head will spin. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster is also a strange trilogy to challenge, I wrote at the time: The story is what you want it to be and you are who you choose to be
If you like Trippy... Do you/have you ever gotten into Vonnegut? Perfect blend of trippy/sci-fi/satire... I feel given a lot of what you read he would be right up main street for you. I would suggest "Welcome to the Monkeyhouse" as your first read, it's a collection of his short works so super-quick read, and especially like the short "Harrison Bergeron". For novels, they all are between good to great, but obviously his most known book is Slaughterhouse-Five, but I am also partial to Sirens of Titan....
Added to my TBR few books, thanks! Some of my recommendations that you could have (or not) missed: most of the Christopher Priest I've read has been weird in a very good way, and Jeff Noon's Vurt series is also a fantastic read
Trout Fishing in America was such a trip! I will always remember A Walden Pond for Winos - it's become a meme between me and my best friend at this point :D I have yet to read In Watermelon Sugar.
I normally don't get into weird, trippy books. Perhaps the most trippy I've read is the Illuminatus! trilogy. It's the 1970s (I think) and all conspiracy theories are true. Different secret societies are competing to rule the world. There is a goddess, Hitler is still alive, dolphins talk, zombies, drugs galore and more. I've read it twice and can't say I understand all the references in it. Should read it again, with the Internet and Wikipedia available I should be able to figure most of it out.
I clicked on this video just to see if Illuminates! was mentioned. Just the narration style alone - in and out of different people's minds and different times. Very weird and challenging read. Love it
The “John Dies at the End” series by Jason Pargin aka David Wong. It’s incredibly weird and trippy. It’s about 2 guys who take a drug that’s just called soy sauce. The side effects are completely random and involve alternate dimensions…if you’re lucky.
If you like weird books that just play with what's real - you might enjoy The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, specifically the first installment City of Glass. It was my first-ever Auster and he's become my all-time favorite author since then. Can also recommend In the Country of Last Things and Man in the Dark by him. They're all pretty quick reads too, I'd say :)
You've become the only channel I watch anymore haha. I've only read 2 books by PKD (Androids' and Scanner Darkly) but because of you I got back into him and picked up Pot Healer and Frolix8!
@@rammelbroadcasting I used to but I just don't have the time or want to anymore! I can stack my own TBR just fine too, but your videos are excellent quality. Have you checked out The Rivener by Garret Godsey yet?
the strangest book I've ever read was Pollen by Jeff Noon. It's wild. It's been a while since I've read it but some snippets that I remember: mysterious deaths, some crazy, mega-fertility phase where everything fucked with everything, plants with people, people with animals, so there are some strange characters
Great list! Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and, Had Boiled Wonderland... are my 3 favorites of his - excellent author. Philip K Dick is a master of weirdness. I really like Flow My Tears the Policeman Said. Something different - Carsten Stroud's - The Niceville Trilogy - Niceville, Comprised of The Homecoming, and The Reckoning. And maybe a bit more hauntingly mysterious than just plain weird - but still odd - The Blue Rose Trilogy, by Peter Straub - Koko, Mystery, and The Throat.
Love to see (and hear) you rocking the EV RE20; love mine. First used it in TV back in 1999. Having one feels surreal but it sure works well! Thanks for the recommendations!
While I tend to really like all of them, I can see what you're saying. He has a tendency to revisit themes and ideas to the point where some people find it repetitive.
I can always give plenty of manga recommendations: Homunculus by Hideo Yamamoto tackles identify through a very trippy/bizarre lens. It's not too long and recently finished printing in English for the first time. Inuyashiki by Hiroya Oku is a similar length and also complete in English. It has unbelievable plot-points that only make sense in manga/anime, but it covers deep topics like humanity and what a life is capable of. Dead Dead Demon's Dededededestruction by Inio Asano might first and foremost be described as trippy but also takes on themes of humanity and war (not as dark as Punpun, but still quite thought-provoking). I'll always push you to read Blood on the Tracks by Shuzo Oshimi but I think it fits for its use of family trauma and gas-lighting where you don't really know who to trust. One of his other works, The Flowers of Evil, is probably "trippier" and I like that story but love Blood on the Tracks. Last plug I'll give is to Taiyo Matsumoto. "No. 5" is a wild story in a fantastic universe. It can be hard to follow because it's quite nonsensical but it still has gripping action and delves into power and control in a way similar to something like 1984.
@rammelbroadcasting oh 100%, I just know you've read it so I wanted to give you more recommendations. I've only read the first volume of Dai Dark by the same mangaka but I can't wait to read more of it!
That last one reminds me of the short story Tunnel Under the World by Pohl. Probably in one of my dad's classic anthologies. But to echo others, Clive gets really trippy in a lot of his fantast/horror.
The Gome Away World by Nick Harkaway: The army invents a weapon that can remove things from existence, reducing them into the fundamental building blocks of reality called "stuff." The stuff starts reforming into weirdness from people's imaginations. Also there are ninjas.
A voyage to Arcturus (1920) by David Lindsay and Lilith (1895) by George Mcdonald are two great stories that I feel can fit in with this category and as a bonus you should also be able to get them for free or very cheap due to their age and how you go about acquiring them.
3:52 - "Man with amnesia finds himself in a isolated town/farm/building/spaceship" novels are dime a dozen. If Crouch managed to be at least a bit innovative here. that's not a small achievement.
Nice. I love discussions like these. Ever since I started reading PKD over 30 years ago I've sought out 'weird'. But I've found that one person's weird can be another person's ordinary. Nothing by PKD strikes me as weird anymore. J.G. Ballard has a lot of weird stuff. Vermillion Sands stands out. I got into Jonathan Lethem once I found out his earliest work was SciFi. Stuff like Gun, With Occasional Music is brilliantly weird. After him I was directed to Jeff VanderMeer. I literally couldn't finish that trilogy. I loved the weirdness, but his stories just go nowhere. Everything Strugatsky is beautifully weird. My weird quest eventually brought me, back in 2011, to the height of weirdness, and the only book in my life I've not finished because it's so good, I don't want to: The Orange Eats Creeps, by Grace Krilanovich . It's simply stunning. And sadly, apparently her only book. Ah well, the quest continues.
Check out The Gone -Away World by Nick Harkaway and, because I can't think of one without the other, The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitch. Love them both. Both are trippy as hell.
One of the weirdest books I've read is In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan. Haruki Murakami is a fan of Brautigan so it's worth checking out. Also Missing Kissinger by Etgar Keret. He writes in the genre of Magical Realism and he's phenomenal. Lastly, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bukgakov and A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. These two authors are the gold standard of magical realism.
I was hoping for something REALLY weird. In my collection I already own Cameron Pierce’s “Ass Goblins of Auschwitz,” Mykle Hansen’s “Rampaging Fuckers of Everything on the Crazy Shitting Planet of the Vomit Atmosphere,” Steven Wright’s “Harold,” as well as everything Chuck Palahniuk has ever written. I was hoping for more of that!
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata is weird but disturbing, traumatic, and a whole bunch of other emotions rolled up into it. I really enjoyed the book, but it is differently in the you either loved it or hated it category.
@Yarnchickenfibers_ I did just finish that, and it would be perfect here. I also did two videos in two weeks, both with that book, I try not to use the same book in too many videos in a row. Otherwise, I feel like I'm just repeating myself. Also, get some different books some love
I think you would love the works of Cartarescu. They're weird and at the same time some of the best written books I've ever read. There's good reason he's always among the candidates for the Nbel prize! :)
My suggestions for weird books. 2 came to mind. The City & the City - China Mieville. Murder mystery , political thriller set in 2 citys in different realities/dimensions that overlap. Like reading a murder set in an M.C. Esher lanscape Geek Love - Katheryn Dunn. Erm, Alternative Reality Rom/Horror. Follow the lives of a family of “Freak Show” performers, each gifted and cursed, damaged and desperate.
I'd like to give a little love to a weird book that deserves to be better known - : Leech, by Hiron Ennes - about a physician who is sent to the "Institute" as a replacement doctor. Things get weird when he finds out the real reason he was sent for. It has a classical feel to it, with a touch of despair, like Poe, or Dick, or someone like them, but the writing is smoother - not saying he's better, just a smoother writer.. I was hoping to find more books by this underrated author, but apparently he hasn't written any others. Darn it.
If you like philip K dick you may have already read it but it never seems to gets mentioned anywhere on these types of videos. His book called Time out of joint is a really good book. Though actually I'd argue it's possibly not as weird as some of his books. But it deffo hits the spot for questioning reality. I'm reading it at the moment, on the final chapter and I think it might be one of my faverouties of his, up there with ubik.
PKD is my favourite author of all time. But for me, I don't find his work to be 'weird'. I guess it depends on one's definition. I suppose for the average reader ( whatever that is...) you're right.
Some if the weirdest books ive read this year are: The Books of Accidents by Chuck Wendig Below by Laurel Hightower Gone to See The River Man by Kristopher Triana (this one is a little uncomfortable at times) The Hike by Drew Magary A Town Called Discovery by RR Haywood Jack & Mr Grin by Anderson Prunty (really bizarre book but pretty uncomfortable to read - definitely took a splatterpunk turn) To Be Devoured - Sara Tantlinger A Short Stay In Hell by Steven L Peck The Call by Peadar O guillan (one of my favorites of the year)
Roadside Picnic, by Boris & Arkady Strugatsky. It's inspired so many sci-fi books & franchises (Including the Southern Reach Trilogy) it's super weird but a great read! Pretty much anything by the Strugatsky bros. would fit into this category tbh 😅
@@sampenny4586 Indeed. I first encountered Banks back in '95 accidentally when a traveling friend of mine gave me The Wasp Factory. I devoured it, and then read all his other works. About half way through those I found out he wrote SciFi, which started a lifelong love of those books. But arguably, yeah, I'd say his pure fiction is ever 'weirder' than his SciFi...
@@steved1135 I read The Wasp Factory over 30 years ago; there's one moment in that book that's stayed with me ever since. My favorite of his is Complicity, about a serial killer, but it's not that weird.
I can add 3 recommendations: The Adventures of Burton & Swinburne, a 5-book series in which a time-travel experiment goes horribly wrong, and only the greatest explorer and his friend the transgressive poet can save the British Empire House of Leaves, which I’m sure is recommended elsewhere in this thread My Favorite Band Does Not Exist. If I tell you anything about this story, it’ll spoil something, so just dive in and hang on!
1Q84, and The Wind Up Bird Chronicles are way weirder than Kafka on the Shore…Kafka on the Shore has the best ending from him books but 1Q84 and Wind Up Bird Chronicles, Hardboiled Wonderland are way more weird, than Kafka on the shore.
@Magdalena8008s That's good to hear. Mine just came in the mail after making this video (and remembering the book existed lol) I ordered it. I don't know when I'll get around to reading it though.
Marlon James did a ton of research on African folklore for Black Leopard Red Wolf, so a lot of the creatures and myths can be found in various African traditions. That book is extra weird in that the subsequent books in the trilogy tell the story of roughly the same events from the perspectives of other characters, and those accounts contradict each other, Rashomon-like. James has pointed out in interviews that the concept of an unreliable narrator is a very Western concept, because the belief in a single, absolute, verifiable truth outside of individual perspective is almost exclusive to the Western cultural tradition. So only a Western audience would assume that there could even be a “reliable” narrator (i.e., one who provides readers access to the Truth). Personally I think James exaggerates the distinctions, since we find knowingly problematic accounts in Western letters and we find truth claims in non-Western literature, but as broad cultural tendencies I think he is roughly correct.
Weird that I can do Tales of the newton world These are stories either edited written or inspired by Philip Jose farmer . And his newton universe My just with in this book I’ve gone from AJ raffles a gentleman thief fighting aliens to couple of stories involving a super intelligent canine who can sound like Sherlock Holmes or Sam spade when he likes and now I’m read a chulu methos story . So you never know what’s coming next .
Death with interruptions is pretty weird. It's about a country where people suddenly can't die. Then people start migrating out of the country illegally to die. Death is a character too.
House of Holes, by Nicholson Baker. He uses language in an interesting way. Is it dirty? I'm not sure. It's a crazy book. The way I found it, was reading his anti-war book Human Smoke, and decided to see what else he had, and found House of Holes. I'm not sure I've ever seen a bigger divergence in content from an author.
I'll throw a couple of recs at ya. 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez John Dies at the End (whole series) by David Wong The Hike by Drew Magary The City and The City by China Meiville Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut A real grab bag of fun stuff
William Burroughs was The King of Weird Sh*t and The Naked Lunch was his masterpiece. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Be warned, it is truly strange, thoroughly obscene and wildly hilarious.
Man black leopard red wolf is craazy, moon witch spider king its veery different. it really makes you thing of the unreliable narrator. In the second book you follow the pov of The witch Sogolon and it the history change a lot
My first Murakami was Killing Commendatore and I adore it, and never see even Murakami fans mention it. It’s got that same dream like quality, it’s a slow burn and it gets weird. Super glad it was my first because I had no clue where it was going.
I love a lot of speculative fiction, too. 👍 Kafka on the Shore is the first of Murakami’s books I read. It was astonishing. 💕
imajica by clive barker is stunning, complex, weird, emotional, trippy, all of the above. probably my favorite reading experience. EVER.
Such a great book!
So funny. I clicked on this video specifically to say this except... I didn't like it at all
@@dansaunders6761 curious about how long ago you read it?
@@ChaosandComics Long time ago, when it first came out. I'm not a big King fan but really wanted to like his stuff so I tried Barker instead. Turns out I am just not a weird horror novel fan.
Great topic. I know it's challenging to keep coming up with fresh ideas for lists, but you do a great job
I have a little notebook that I have at least a couple written down, then also come up with them on the fly when inspiration strikes like this week lol
I love these types of lists. Keep making them!
I'll do my best 😁
Ecstatic that Wayward Pines is on this list. One of my favorites, mega Blake Crouch fan! ❤
Three of my favorite weird mind-benders are Lanark by Alasdair Gray, Inverted World by Christopher Priest and, yes, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. And more recently, I loved Piranesi and Sea of Tranquility.
Inverted world is incredible and Wind-up bird is one of my favourites of all time.
A couple recommendations:Weaveworld by Clive Barker. It’s about a race of people running from a goddess and so they weave themselves and their world into a carpet. I love this book so much. I would also recommend Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. I loved this odd world so much!
"I'm not gonna talk about Kafka on the Shore" he says while wearing a Kafka on the Shore t-shirt 😂
Kafka on the Shore was the first Murakami book I've read and while I cannot for the life of me remember or articulate what the book was about, the dreamlike feeling when I was reading it stayed with me. Like, I can clearly remember where I was sitting, what the weather was like, the lighting in my reading area - I can picture myself while reading that book... idk, like the weirdness of the book put me in a heightened state of mindfulness, where my surroundings were especially needed to ground me mentally and physically.
Imajica by Clive Barker and the Abarat series, also by Clive Barker.
Going to recommend you check two books and one comic.
Bad Brains - Kathe Koja (trippy, mind-bending horror with a distinctive prose)
Ice - Anna Kavan (a surreal existentialist classic)
Nameless - Grant Morrison (six issue comic. Imagine if David Lynch directed Event Horizon).
Those sound great
YES YES YES!!! 😍
The three stigmata is indeed weird, but, really good!
The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker is what came to mind when I saw the title of this video.
Shadow of the Wind. (First in series) Carlos Ruis Zafon. Spain.
Amazing book!
@@pwcinla I couldn’t agree more. Surprised the heck out of me. Highly recommended.
Wayward Pines gave me very heavy Twin Peaks vibes, especially the first book
Absolutely agree! It was fantastic :)
The Scottish author Iain Banks is really worth checking out for writing books with weirdness and brilliance, so many of his early novels were genius but The Bridge or Wasp Factory never drop from my top 20 .
I recently read African Psycho by Alain Mabanckou, which was a strange little oddity.
The Book of All Hours #2 lnk by Hal Duncan, another Scot is a mind bender too.
Final Scots book is The Girl The Crow The Writer and the Fighter by George Paterson, so many characters, real or fictional, your head will spin.
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster is also a strange trilogy to challenge, I wrote at the time: The story is what you want it to be and you are who you choose to be
If you like Trippy... Do you/have you ever gotten into Vonnegut? Perfect blend of trippy/sci-fi/satire... I feel given a lot of what you read he would be right up main street for you. I would suggest "Welcome to the Monkeyhouse" as your first read, it's a collection of his short works so super-quick read, and especially like the short "Harrison Bergeron". For novels, they all are between good to great, but obviously his most known book is Slaughterhouse-Five, but I am also partial to Sirens of Titan....
I liked the Cats Cradle a ton.
@@steve3306 Another great one from him... Good pick
Added to my TBR few books, thanks!
Some of my recommendations that you could have (or not) missed: most of the Christopher Priest I've read has been weird in a very good way, and Jeff Noon's Vurt series is also a fantastic read
Give Borne a go by Jeff Vandemeer. Also I would rate Slaughterhouse Five as one of the weirdest books I've read in a while.
Going back to the 1960’s - In Watermelon Sugar and Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan.
Trout Fishing in America was such a trip! I will always remember A Walden Pond for Winos - it's become a meme between me and my best friend at this point :D I have yet to read In Watermelon Sugar.
I normally don't get into weird, trippy books. Perhaps the most trippy I've read is the Illuminatus! trilogy. It's the 1970s (I think) and all conspiracy theories are true. Different secret societies are competing to rule the world. There is a goddess, Hitler is still alive, dolphins talk, zombies, drugs galore and more. I've read it twice and can't say I understand all the references in it. Should read it again, with the Internet and Wikipedia available I should be able to figure most of it out.
I clicked on this video just to see if Illuminates! was mentioned. Just the narration style alone - in and out of different people's minds and different times. Very weird and challenging read. Love it
Great video man. I love that you picked Palmer Eldritch too, that’s the perfect “weird” PKD pick!
The “John Dies at the End” series by Jason Pargin aka David Wong. It’s incredibly weird and trippy. It’s about 2 guys who take a drug that’s just called soy sauce. The side effects are completely random and involve alternate dimensions…if you’re lucky.
If you like weird books that just play with what's real - you might enjoy The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, specifically the first installment City of Glass. It was my first-ever Auster and he's become my all-time favorite author since then. Can also recommend In the Country of Last Things and Man in the Dark by him. They're all pretty quick reads too, I'd say :)
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins is the weirdest book I’ve read. It’s weird bizarre good, highly recommend it.
Great list. I’ll definitely have to reread the Southern Reach Trilogy before attempting the new book. Thanks for the heads up.
You've become the only channel I watch anymore haha.
I've only read 2 books by PKD (Androids' and Scanner Darkly) but because of you I got back into him and picked up Pot Healer and Frolix8!
@@WickedGoodBooks oh wow! That's awesome! You are allowed to watch other channels though lol
@@rammelbroadcasting I used to but I just don't have the time or want to anymore! I can stack my own TBR just fine too, but your videos are excellent quality. Have you checked out The Rivener by Garret Godsey yet?
@WickedGoodBooks Thank you. No I haven't read that one
Really surprised "house of leaves" isn't on this list.
Have you read it?
the strangest book I've ever read was Pollen by Jeff Noon. It's wild. It's been a while since I've read it but some snippets that I remember: mysterious deaths, some crazy, mega-fertility phase where everything fucked with everything, plants with people, people with animals, so there are some strange characters
Great list!
Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and, Had Boiled Wonderland... are my 3 favorites of his - excellent author. Philip K Dick is a master of weirdness. I really like Flow My Tears the Policeman Said.
Something different - Carsten Stroud's - The Niceville Trilogy - Niceville, Comprised of The Homecoming, and The Reckoning.
And maybe a bit more hauntingly mysterious than just plain weird - but still odd - The Blue Rose Trilogy, by Peter Straub - Koko, Mystery, and The Throat.
Love to see (and hear) you rocking the EV RE20; love mine. First used it in TV back in 1999. Having one feels surreal but it sure works well! Thanks for the recommendations!
It's literally built like a tank! Also, some of the best sound you can get.
Love windup bird. Tried a few of his other books but they all seem to be pale versions of this one
While I tend to really like all of them, I can see what you're saying. He has a tendency to revisit themes and ideas to the point where some people find it repetitive.
Wind-Up Bird was the first thing I read by Murakami, and I have to agree. Tried Kafka on the Beach and gave up. Sometimes one book is enough.
I can always give plenty of manga recommendations:
Homunculus by Hideo Yamamoto tackles identify through a very trippy/bizarre lens. It's not too long and recently finished printing in English for the first time.
Inuyashiki by Hiroya Oku is a similar length and also complete in English. It has unbelievable plot-points that only make sense in manga/anime, but it covers deep topics like humanity and what a life is capable of.
Dead Dead Demon's Dededededestruction by Inio Asano might first and foremost be described as trippy but also takes on themes of humanity and war (not as dark as Punpun, but still quite thought-provoking).
I'll always push you to read Blood on the Tracks by Shuzo Oshimi but I think it fits for its use of family trauma and gas-lighting where you don't really know who to trust. One of his other works, The Flowers of Evil, is probably "trippier" and I like that story but love Blood on the Tracks.
Last plug I'll give is to Taiyo Matsumoto. "No. 5" is a wild story in a fantastic universe. It can be hard to follow because it's quite nonsensical but it still has gripping action and delves into power and control in a way similar to something like 1984.
@PSNfalcoBrawler If we're talking manga I'd throw in dorohedoro
@rammelbroadcasting oh 100%, I just know you've read it so I wanted to give you more recommendations. I've only read the first volume of Dai Dark by the same mangaka but I can't wait to read more of it!
That last one reminds me of the short story Tunnel Under the World by Pohl. Probably in one of my dad's classic anthologies.
But to echo others, Clive gets really trippy in a lot of his fantast/horror.
The Gome Away World by Nick Harkaway: The army invents a weapon that can remove things from existence, reducing them into the fundamental building blocks of reality called "stuff." The stuff starts reforming into weirdness from people's imaginations. Also there are ninjas.
Thought I was the only fan of this book! Nice pick.
A voyage to Arcturus (1920) by David Lindsay and Lilith (1895) by George Mcdonald are two great stories that I feel can fit in with this category and as a bonus you should also be able to get them for free or very cheap due to their age and how you go about acquiring them.
3:52 - "Man with amnesia finds himself in a isolated town/farm/building/spaceship" novels are dime a dozen. If Crouch managed to be at least a bit innovative here. that's not a small achievement.
Nice. I love discussions like these. Ever since I started reading PKD over 30 years ago I've sought out 'weird'. But I've found that one person's weird can be another person's ordinary. Nothing by PKD strikes me as weird anymore. J.G. Ballard has a lot of weird stuff. Vermillion Sands stands out. I got into Jonathan Lethem once I found out his earliest work was SciFi. Stuff like Gun, With Occasional Music is brilliantly weird. After him I was directed to Jeff VanderMeer. I literally couldn't finish that trilogy. I loved the weirdness, but his stories just go nowhere. Everything Strugatsky is beautifully weird. My weird quest eventually brought me, back in 2011, to the height of weirdness, and the only book in my life I've not finished because it's so good, I don't want to: The Orange Eats Creeps, by Grace Krilanovich . It's simply stunning. And sadly, apparently her only book. Ah well, the quest continues.
John Dies at the End…David Wong
Wind up bird is one of two books I’ve read by Murakami. And the only book I’ve ever read or heard of on this entire list.
Check out The Gone -Away World by Nick Harkaway and, because I can't think of one without the other, The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitch. Love them both. Both are trippy as hell.
One of the weirdest books I've read is In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan. Haruki Murakami is a fan of Brautigan so it's worth checking out. Also Missing Kissinger by Etgar Keret. He writes in the genre of Magical Realism and he's phenomenal. Lastly, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bukgakov and A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. These two authors are the gold standard of magical realism.
"Mangled Hands" by Johnny Stanton is a really strange book.
Rammel you would love Tanith Lee’s Electric Forest! Deliciously weird!!
I was hoping for something REALLY weird. In my collection I already own Cameron Pierce’s “Ass Goblins of Auschwitz,” Mykle Hansen’s “Rampaging Fuckers of Everything on the Crazy Shitting Planet of the Vomit Atmosphere,” Steven Wright’s “Harold,” as well as everything Chuck Palahniuk has ever written. I was hoping for more of that!
Any quiet horror recommendations?. Ive finished reading through a stack of Charles L Grant novels/short stories.
I’d suggest “The Invention of Morel” by Bioy Casares. Shortest trippiest weird book you’ll ever read.
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata is weird but disturbing, traumatic, and a whole bunch of other emotions rolled up into it. I really enjoyed the book, but it is differently in the you either loved it or hated it category.
I’d vote House of Leaves as right up there. You finished it not long ago IIRC
@Yarnchickenfibers_ I did just finish that, and it would be perfect here. I also did two videos in two weeks, both with that book, I try not to use the same book in too many videos in a row. Otherwise, I feel like I'm just repeating myself. Also, get some different books some love
Annihilation was not a Netflix movie! It was in theaters made like 50 mil! But great vid!
Great list! My two favourite weird novels I've read recently are The Fisherman by John Langan and The Hike by Drew Magary.
I think you would love the works of Cartarescu. They're weird and at the same time some of the best written books I've ever read. There's good reason he's always among the candidates for the Nbel prize! :)
@BobJacobs10 Thanks, that sounds great!
Reading Solenoid right now👍
My suggestions for weird books. 2 came to mind.
The City & the City - China Mieville. Murder mystery , political thriller set in 2 citys in different realities/dimensions that overlap. Like reading a murder set in an M.C. Esher lanscape
Geek Love - Katheryn Dunn. Erm, Alternative Reality Rom/Horror. Follow the lives of a family of “Freak Show” performers, each gifted and cursed, damaged and desperate.
I'd like to give a little love to a weird book that deserves to be better known - : Leech, by Hiron Ennes - about a physician who is sent to the "Institute" as a replacement doctor. Things get weird when he finds out the real reason he was sent for.
It has a classical feel to it, with a touch of despair, like Poe, or Dick, or someone like them, but the writing is smoother - not saying he's better, just a smoother writer..
I was hoping to find more books by this underrated author, but apparently he hasn't written any others. Darn it.
If you like philip K dick you may have already read it but it never seems to gets mentioned anywhere on these types of videos. His book called Time out of joint is a really good book. Though actually I'd argue it's possibly not as weird as some of his books. But it deffo hits the spot for questioning reality. I'm reading it at the moment, on the final chapter and I think it might be one of my faverouties of his, up there with ubik.
PKD is my favourite author of all time. But for me, I don't find his work to be 'weird'. I guess it depends on one's definition. I suppose for the average reader ( whatever that is...) you're right.
I believe the Truman Show was a direct rip-off of Time Out of Joint.
"The Wild" by Whitley Streiber. People going into it think it's your average werewolf story, when it's really an R-rated version of "The Shaggy Dog "
The Wayward Pines TV show starts out really good but then diverges drastically from the books and becomes nonsense.
Some if the weirdest books ive read this year are:
The Books of Accidents by Chuck Wendig
Below by Laurel Hightower
Gone to See The River Man by Kristopher Triana (this one is a little uncomfortable at times)
The Hike by Drew Magary
A Town Called Discovery by RR Haywood
Jack & Mr Grin by Anderson Prunty (really bizarre book but pretty uncomfortable to read - definitely took a splatterpunk turn)
To Be Devoured - Sara Tantlinger
A Short Stay In Hell by Steven L Peck
The Call by Peadar O guillan (one of my favorites of the year)
How was the book of accidents? I have that one on my shelf but haven't read it yet.
Roadside Picnic, by Boris & Arkady Strugatsky.
It's inspired so many sci-fi books & franchises (Including the Southern Reach Trilogy) it's super weird but a great read!
Pretty much anything by the Strugatsky bros. would fit into this category tbh 😅
Agreed.
I am really close to finishing the Wayward Pines trilogy! Been enjoying it thus far.
The Bridge. Iain Banks, very dreamlike
Banks is a genius.
I'd been going to recommend The Wasp Factory because it is based on a very odd family dynamic but I remember how peculiar The Bridge was.
@@sampenny4586 Indeed. I first encountered Banks back in '95 accidentally when a traveling friend of mine gave me The Wasp Factory. I devoured it, and then read all his other works. About half way through those I found out he wrote SciFi, which started a lifelong love of those books. But arguably, yeah, I'd say his pure fiction is ever 'weirder' than his SciFi...
@@steved1135 I read The Wasp Factory over 30 years ago; there's one moment in that book that's stayed with me ever since. My favorite of his is Complicity, about a serial killer, but it's not that weird.
@@pwcinla I know what you mean. His non SF fiction I find to be very subtle. Takes me rereads to really grasp. Sign of good writing to me.
Zoo City by L. Beukes is a fun, weird, fantasy read I liked very much.
Good list, wonderful books, thank you.
I can add 3 recommendations:
The Adventures of Burton & Swinburne, a 5-book series in which a time-travel experiment goes horribly wrong, and only the greatest explorer and his friend the transgressive poet can save the British Empire
House of Leaves, which I’m sure is recommended elsewhere in this thread
My Favorite Band Does Not Exist. If I tell you anything about this story, it’ll spoil something, so just dive in and hang on!
1Q84, and The Wind Up Bird Chronicles are way weirder than Kafka on the Shore…Kafka on the Shore has the best ending from him books but 1Q84 and Wind Up Bird Chronicles, Hardboiled Wonderland are way more weird, than Kafka on the shore.
Have you watched Perfume: Story of a Murderer? And have you read the book? If so, which do you prefer?
I just finished reading Absolution. The new 4th book in the Southern Reach.
Its great. Simple as that. Well worthy entry into the Southern Reach.
@Magdalena8008s That's good to hear. Mine just came in the mail after making this video (and remembering the book existed lol) I ordered it. I don't know when I'll get around to reading it though.
The king and queen of magical realism (weird ****) are Jonathan Caroll and Kelly Link.
I finally thought of one The Giver series is pretty weird but also really good 😊
Piers anothony was the king of weird.theres one with a dentist being abducted by alien.they go on a galactic adventure
Marlon James did a ton of research on African folklore for Black Leopard Red Wolf, so a lot of the creatures and myths can be found in various African traditions. That book is extra weird in that the subsequent books in the trilogy tell the story of roughly the same events from the perspectives of other characters, and those accounts contradict each other, Rashomon-like. James has pointed out in interviews that the concept of an unreliable narrator is a very Western concept, because the belief in a single, absolute, verifiable truth outside of individual perspective is almost exclusive to the Western cultural tradition. So only a Western audience would assume that there could even be a “reliable” narrator (i.e., one who provides readers access to the Truth). Personally I think James exaggerates the distinctions, since we find knowingly problematic accounts in Western letters and we find truth claims in non-Western literature, but as broad cultural tendencies I think he is roughly correct.
The Eighth Sacrament takes you all over the place, but not in a trippy way, if that's what you're looking for
China Miéville can be relied on for some very weird sh*t.
That's what someone else said I need to push him up on the TBR
The adventures of Pinocchio.
vurt by jeff noon is pretty out there. first book i ever read and was like 'wtf did i just read?'
What a refreshing video! I love made me realize that I like weird shit too! 😅 Added a few recommendations to my TBR. Again, thanks for this video!! 😊😊
Weird that I can do
Tales of the newton world
These are stories either edited written or inspired by Philip Jose farmer . And his newton universe
My just with in this book I’ve gone from AJ raffles a gentleman thief fighting aliens to couple of stories involving a super intelligent canine who can sound like Sherlock Holmes or Sam spade when he likes and now I’m read a chulu methos story . So you never know what’s coming next .
Have you tried any RA Lafferty or Michael Cisco?
Lafferty is one of a kind. Terrific writer.
Great picks! My bizzaro micro novel, the raft, arrives Jan 6th 2025. Amateur surgery, lovecraftian oddities, and more!
loved the outro song 🔥🔥
Death with interruptions is pretty weird. It's about a country where people suddenly can't die. Then people start migrating out of the country illegally to die. Death is a character too.
I honestly expected to see House of Leaves on this list.
This Wrenched valley by Jenny Kiefer is pretty weird.
What did you think about Run by Blake crouch? I started it recently, but the plot meanders a lot, it's not as fast paced as dark matter.
House of Holes, by Nicholson Baker. He uses language in an interesting way. Is it dirty? I'm not sure. It's a crazy book. The way I found it, was reading his anti-war book Human Smoke, and decided to see what else he had, and found House of Holes. I'm not sure I've ever seen a bigger divergence in content from an author.
3:14 am just finished reading. Bout to go to beoh what's this? A new upload!? Guess where here for the next 15 mins.
Lathe of Heaven by Usula LeGuin was trippy, & clearly inspired by Phillip K. Dick, but the book doesn't imitate. It's it's own thing.
I'll throw a couple of recs at ya.
100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
John Dies at the End (whole series) by David Wong
The Hike by Drew Magary
The City and The City by China Meiville
Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut
A real grab bag of fun stuff
I loved John dies at the End, it went all over the place. It's a series?!?
@@BethR-vf8ne hell yeah it is. Four books deep at this point.
Book two is my favorite. It's titled "This Book is Full of Spiders"
Slapstick is amazing... Hi-ho!
Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan
Earwig by Brian Catling is a very weird book.
What did you think of Recursion by Blake Crouch?
The Hike by Drew Magary. Pretty good book.
i had a great time with this one :)
I’m surprised you didn’t pick Ubik.
William Burroughs was The King of Weird Sh*t and The Naked Lunch was his masterpiece. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Be warned, it is truly strange, thoroughly obscene and wildly hilarious.
You need to look for “jurassichrist” it’s one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read 😂
Great list.
Man black leopard red wolf is craazy, moon witch spider king its veery different. it really makes you thing of the unreliable narrator. In the second book you follow the pov of The witch Sogolon and it the history change a lot
Dr. Rat or The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle are both pretty weird.
Annihilation was a theatrical release from Paramount, not a Netflix film.
Was it? Oops for some reason I thought it was netflix.
Was not expecting a booktuber to bring up Black Leopard Red Wolf. Only place I’ve heard someone talk about it was a gay podcast.
Great list!
But what's the shirt you are wearing? Is there a link?
@davidcarlson4289 I get my book t-shirts from outofprint.com