Haha!! I like the way you talk honestly. And the lighting is kinda cool. Maybe if the color changed subtly over time.. hmm. But it’s cool. Keep it up! Thanks again.
I'm typically multitasking, reading other reviews of other things or pausing to simmer on an interesting idea. The pace is fine. But it's an interesting suggestion, not one I've seen any other youtuber suggest. So hats off.
Your observation on weird content vs weird format makes a lot of sense. I'm reading House of Leaves right now, and it's funny because while everything about it's format is weird, it's plotline and content really isn't weird. If it was stripped of all the additional formatting and ramblings, it would pretty much just be a greek mythology inspired horror story. I haven't read too many books weird in content. Infinite Jest by DFW is probably the closest, it's one of the only books I've read that I have an incredibly hard time telling someone what it's about. When people casually asked me at work, I could never really figure out what to say without having to talk for hours. I also just finished reading The Sailor who fell from grace with the sea by Yukio Mishima. I think it is pretty contemporary overall, but it's main plot event would probably make most people uncomfortable.
Agreed! House of Leaves is such a conventional and depressing story, but people seem to think it’s just an experimental diatribe simply because of its format. It’s quite frustrating. I have never read DFW. For some reason, he has never called to me. The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is one of my favorite novels!
Kafka on the shore was a lifechanging experience for me. I've read it during lockdown and it just stuck with me and changed the way I navigate through life. I've wanted to read The Master & Margarita for quite some time, might give it a try soon! I've already read Heart of a dog by Mikhail Bulgakov (a kind of Flowers for Algernon but with a dog!) and enjoyed it. As per usual, a very good video thank you :)
Tangents are by far my favorite thing love how clearly spoken your monologues are definitely subscribing for more. Wouldn't it be sick to have a top 20 book tangent video?
I've been "trying" to jump into these kinds of weird, surreal, dreamlike books. Haruki Murakami is a great opener to the huge iceberg of weird surrealism stories. "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" by Iain Reid, "Rene's Flesh" by Pinera Virgillio are the recent novels I read that perhaps might interest you? maybe? I have yet to read "Teartro Grottesco" by Thomas Ligotti, and "The Hearing Trumpet" by Leonora Carrington, but I heard great weird things about these stories. Another great video, more books to add to my list! Thank you!
I would definitely want to do a sequel to this video! The topic is fun and there’s no end to the bizarre things that have been printed throughout history. I was not a big fan of Iain Reid or Ligotti, but Leonora Carrington’s writing AND paintings are such a strange delight. She was a truly incredible artist. I was recommended La carne de René previously, but have been unable to get my hands on a copy of Piñera’s work (apparently it’s been long out of print and very expensive). Thank you so much for watching! I’m happy you enjoyed the video! :)
The Divine Child sounds so interesting! I'll add that to my TBR now! This background music... Sooo atmospheric!!! I was about to ask for a religious horror book!!! But I think The Master & Margarita fits the bill Blonde Roots sounds soo fun too!!! Again, Remainder sounds amazing!!!
Thanks again for watching! Glad to hear you liked the background music. I’m getting mixed reviews on it so we’ll see how it plays out. I wouldn’t call Master & Margarita necessarily horror but it definitely has horrific elements, and I would 100% recommend it.
Thanks for the recommendation. Kafka on the shore was very interesting! In a good way! I wish you would give your thoughts 💭 on what happened…. Lots of riddles. Like how many souls of Kafka are there. Is Nakato Kafka and Crow like some trinity or something (originally thought BTW lol,Not that it’s a great one. just finished still wrapping my brain around it) or are they separated?
Thank you so much for watching and commenting! I am definitely not the most qualified person to uncover the mysteries of Kafka on the Shore. I mostly just took it for the bizarro literary journey that it was, and that was good enough for me!
I don’t know if you include plays in your reading list but Beckett’s ‘Endgame’ was pretty damn weird too but you’re right. It’s a very blurry line between weird and disturbing. Your description of ‘How It Is’ could have applied to that play as well. There’s a legless guy who lives in a box for instance. Some say it’s a post-nuclear apocalypse story but with Beckett who knows ?
Master and Margarita is my favorite novel ever as well as the funniest. Why Stalin didn’t have him shot remains one of the greatest literary mysteries ever. In fact that novel was the immediate inspiration for the Stones song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. Great video as always !
I recently read Sarah Kane and did a video on disturbing theater, so plays are most certainly in my radar now, and yes, Samuel Beckett’s entire bibliography could probably fit into this video. Master and Margarita was indeed fantastic! So daring and really a watershed moment of surrealism and acidic political commentary. I’m happy that it survived such harrowing years!
@@PlaguedbyVisions This isn’t really related to this thread but I know you’re interested in French surrealism so it made me curious if you’ve read anything by Antonin Artaud. It’s not really fiction - rather a charting of his severe mental illness but it’s well worth your time anyway. And I have a challenge or maybe a dare to see if it lands in your unreadable pile - sticking with the French surrealist theme I wonder if you could conquer an entire book by Robbe-Grillet. It was so static it made my eyes cross but maybe you can detect a pulse. Also you probably know more about James Joyce than I do and if so please tell me - he HAD to know Finnegans Wake would be unreadable to 99.9% of people on the planet right ? He just had to ! Since you’re always looking for transgressive and weird fiction I can’t forget the novel Flan by Stephen Tunney. It’s about a man and his talking fish (as well as a giant floating eyeball but I don’t want to give too much away) traversing a hellish and freakish hellscape to find his girlfriend Holly. I read this years ago and still haven’t recovered from the ending. I first heard of Tunney as a musician who goes by the name of Dogbowl and I discovered the book because he recorded a soundtrack to it ‘Flan - The Album’ which it can’t hurt you to listen to for a non-spoiler overview. It’s not on Spotify for some dumb reason but it is here on RUclips. Anyway if you do check it out I hope you find it both as disturbing and entertaining as I did. And again I’m thrilled you just discovered my favorite novel ever. Bulgakov wrote another short hilarious satire/novel ‘Heart of a Dog’. You will never forget Mr Underwear I promise ! And the reason Stalin never had Bulgakov shot was because he wrote Stalin’s favorite play and novel ‘The White Guard’. I know it sounds improbable but Stalin was a voracious reader and had more respect for writers than any other group. He infamously described them as ‘engineers of the human soul’. He even let the author of ‘We’ named Zemyatin emigrate after Zemyatin wrote to him personally and said the USSR was becoming an intolerable place for artists to live. That’s another book you may want to check out someday. Ok I took enough of your time. Back to your channel to find out what I want to read next !
After reading this comment I kept thinking it over and eyeing my bookshelf up and down and realized that I really don’t read that much fantasy! I love other sides of speculative fiction (scifi and horror), some of which have fantasy elements, but I don’t really read straight-up fantasy. The closest I could think of was Neil Gaiman’s Ocean at the End of the Lane. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated!
@@PlaguedbyVisions since you are a beginner in the field I would suggest reading The Neverending story from Michael ende and then The lord of the rings. After those you can read the name of the wind wich has great prose and if you like you can read my favorite The chronicles of thomas Covenant by stephen donaldson. This one is very original but is greatly inspired by lord of the rings, some consider it to be the dark version of lotr.
@@erjondividi5303 thank you for such a comprehensive list! Reading this comment, I remembered I HAVE read the Hobbit, lol, so maybe LOTR is a good next step for me. Will definitely give it a shot, thank you!
@@PlaguedbyVisions ok that is a good start. Just in the fellowship of the ring the part of Moria it's a bit boring but when you pass that it all becomes very addicting. So don't stop at that part.
I'm late on discovering your channel (which I really dig!) but I wanted to give my own 'weird' recommendation. Have you heard of Jeff Noon? Vurt is definitely the strangest book I have read. I think of Jeff Noon as a weird as hell, futuristic version of Hunter S. Thompson. If you're not averse to drug culture literature, I'd highly recommend it. Cheers!
I see that Vurt is getting a reprint this August. That’s exciting! Thank you so much for the recommendation. This absolutely sounds like my kind of thing!
Just fell into this dreamy channel, the perfect segue into reality as I soon must stagger out there and face it. Loved all your reviews, can’t wait to hold these books in my hands, seen old editions of many of them all my life and never opened them( Tristram Shandy) , now I can’t wait. 💚💚💚💚💚
Great list thanks. Master and Margherita a classic. My recommend for a bit weird.. Three to see the king by Magnus mills. And in watermelon sugar by Richard Brautigan which is very out there and unique.
Juan Valencia yay Samuel Beckett, I love a tiny prose piece of his called The Lost Ones, anyway have you read The Journal Of Albion Moonlight by Kenneth Patchen It might be more suited to a surrealist list or maybe another unreadable vid, but still ,amazing.
I have not heard of this book, but I do have plans to make a video on surrealist literature so thank you for bringing this to my radar! I also have queued up Les Chants de Maldoror and Nadja.
@@PlaguedbyVisions Maldoror kicks like crazy especially considering its vintage. I was disappointed with Nadja but I was a teen when I read it so I might have been too hungry for thrills, but after Nadja I read some of Freud's dream work with patients in therapy, (poor patients), man he had a strange spooky mind, there is a weird aura of dread around his voice. I can see why the surrealists where attracted to him. The funny thing about Freud is he had no idea he was skewed. He thought he was the plumb-line of rationality. Perhaps that's what gave the stuff I read such a strange frisson. Perhaps it wasn't his patients but Freud that was doing the projecting. Thanks Juan love your posts you are more interested in the Lit than your ego self, it's very refreshing and your book selection is great.
@@007shlomo I love reading Freud because I think his works have a gothic sensibility to them. His case study, Dora, is one of my favorite horror tales, so to speak. I think that’s why he’s dismissed in the sciences, but venerated in the humanities: He truly gets at the heart of what makes fictions unsettling and perverse. His work is so revelatory as to what literary and critical studies entail. I owe him a lot for what I wrote for my college thesis!
I find the Choose your own adventure books interesting books because you can actually play a game in the book, and you can choose different paths that lead to different outcomes maybe one day you will review some of them.
Not a fan of Murakami. He comes across as having a smug 'too big for his britches' tone in his writing that turns me off. After going through a lot of other titles by other writers of weird, imho he's not good enough a writer to be too good for his readers.
I’ve only read enough Murakami to know he, more than anything, piles on so many eccentricities that it really tickles me. I think I just enjoy how strange and fragmented he makes his stories. I really just take him at face value.
@@PlaguedbyVisions That's all good! Being anti-smug is my problem, not anyone else's. There are a lot of celebrated writers I can't enjoy because of it.
Funny story about Tristram Shandy...a professor I TA'd for once asked me what my favorite book was. I said Tristram Shandy (it's somewhere in the top 5 and I didn't want to admit to Jane Eyre). She said, "really? Not many people can...-do- eighteenth century literature. If you can, you should." So I went for a PhD in it, and, in true Shandeist spirit, dropped out. It feels good to see someone besides me mention this book outside an academic setting, so thank you for that.
That’s a great story! I felt similarly. I enjoyed the tangential genius and experimentation with publishing, which could only have come about when the novel was such a young and wondrous thing. And the rest of my classmates HATED it. Thank you for your comments. Not only are we fellow Tristram enthusiasts, we are also fellow PhD dropouts. :) No regrets!
@@PlaguedbyVisions Excellent, thank you. I just discovered your channel yesterday and have very much enjoyed what I've watched so far, keep up the good work!
😃YAAY!!!😃thanks for the shout out, I really enjoyed this. I’m excited for the remainder, the divine child, and the master & margarita. The thumbnail looks great 👍 I like the colors and the font. I thought the lighting and music worked well, it made it very atmospheric.
So happy you got to watch this, Jessica! I had a lot of fun doing it. Glad to hear some of the suggestions piqued your interest. Thanks for the feedback! I've gotten mixed reviews on the music, but the lighting is definitely a keeper for me!
Alot of people wouldn't make it pass the 4 min mark. Without being too rude...its hard to explain a point of view. He nails it. I waited very still for the list it was silly.
Attempting to explain the Atrocity Exhibition generally tends to lapse into prolongued silences while one tries to encompass the shattered rorshach test that is that book.
Have you read anything by Will Self? British author. He writes some really weird literary fiction that has a lot of the uncanny and uncomfortable in it too.
If you want weird try Rico Slade Will Fucking Kill You. It's a Bizarro fiction short story about Arnold Schwarzenegger losing his mind, believing he's John Matrix and going on a killing spree. It's hilarious.
Do you have a book list of novels that have made you cry?? If so, please ignore my comment, I'm new to your channel and haven't gotten to your playlist!!
Thank you for watching! I really appreciate it. I’ve gotten some yes’s and no’s about the music over on Instagram, so I await more feedback. If it is too distracting, I can at least turn it down next time (or do away with it entirely). I certainly don’t plan to use it on all my videos. Thanks for the feedback! 🤙🏽
I dont believe I have found any intentionally weird book 'weird'...the books that take me strange places within and awaken something are the ones that stick with me and for the want of a better word I find weird...masterpieces like Knut Hamsun's Mysteries, Paul Valery's Monsieur Teste, anything by Italo Calvino...or the work of William Burroughs or even The Runaway Soul by Harold Brodkey with its mixture of archaic and modern language, particularly where he explores masturbating in minute poetic detail for an entire chapter..ot the unclassifiable experimentalism of John Hawkes in works such as Blood Orange oh and more recently Julio Cortazars Around the day in Eighty Worlds.....as a side note please tell me you have read Paradiso by Lezama Lima
Hi Juan, I checked out your review here of Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami and think that we probably came to the same conclusion, it's very weird but somehow it was mesmerizing. I have it on Audible and will have to listen to it again because there was so much going on and there was no way I could connect all the dots if indeed there were dots to connect. As for a strange book that I have read, "Such Small Hands" comes to mind, by Andres Barba. Hugs Mags
Thank you for watching! Yes, Murakami is a special kind of strange that’s really captivating and powerful. I love his work. I have never heard if Such Small Things. Thank you for the suggestion!
@@PlaguedbyVisions It's " Such Small Hands," I think it was written in Spanish and then translated into English. You can check it out on Goodreads. Mags
I wasn’t really sure what “bizarro fiction” was, so I looked it up and... ah, yes, Satan’s Burger. 😳 That seemed to be the only work of bizarro fiction I’m familiar with but this definitely is something in line with this channel’s theme and I’d be more than happy to do a further dive into it for a video!
Sam Beckett was my first literary hero as a child..I have performed How it Is on stage among many other pieces....performing his short fiction tends to nullify what would at first appear weird...they are extremely difficult to perform up to a point...what happens over time is that the internal monologue becomes relatable to our own internal monologues
Interesting that your relationship to How It Is was forged through performing it (I would assume out loud). My experience, as with most books, of course, was reading it silently, and I think that transformed it into running thoughts and lamentations, so it made it that much more significant and fluid for me (which is the same reason why I’ve similarly enjoyed the works of Woolf and Faulkner in pure silence - all three wrote such meditative pieces, perhaps not necessarily as literary and philosophical siblings, but definitely... cousins? Lol).
@@PlaguedbyVisions reading Faulkners As I Lay Dying with Becketts Three Novels was an experience I never want to experience again, I was depressed for months after combining those four books....there was a historical aspect to that event though,,,when I was very young say 4 years old my dad would read Waiting For Godot together we did this for a few years and even though I didnt understand exactly know what was going on I found it funny,,until i was 7 yrs old when the ideas it explored started to give me existential nightmares, I would sometimes scream in the middle of the street in terror...they never really went away but I managed to hide them,,but reading those 4 books in silence together in my 20's brought those nightmares back back into full force...I rarely have them now..but I can see the connection between Faulkner and Beckett through those books in particular...performing his work on stage was in my way a catharsis....In a similar way Kafka's Metamorphosis was a story I also had to perform on stage to take away the deeply seated discomfort I felt reading it.
I figured Mr. Vonnegut has had his praises sung by many booktubers. I always try to recommend less popular works to keep things interesting :) but yes, Slaughterhouse-Five is marvelously wacky.
Honestly, if you watch my videos at 1.5 speed they are a lot better and I sound a lot smarter. :-|
Haha!! I like the way you talk honestly. And the lighting is kinda cool. Maybe if the color changed subtly over time.. hmm. But it’s cool. Keep it up! Thanks again.
Well, I really appreciate that! Thank you. The light does have a setting for the color to change over time. I haven’t tried it yet, though! Lol.
I'm typically multitasking, reading other reviews of other things or pausing to simmer on an interesting idea. The pace is fine. But it's an interesting suggestion, not one I've seen any other youtuber suggest. So hats off.
Would you care for a weird book suggestion? I tried to
write one.
Man, I totally envy your level of articulation.
Seamus, I assure you, there’s not much to envy, but always lots to learn!
Likewise, lol.
Does that mean his arms can bend in many directions?
Your observation on weird content vs weird format makes a lot of sense. I'm reading House of Leaves right now, and it's funny because while everything about it's format is weird, it's plotline and content really isn't weird. If it was stripped of all the additional formatting and ramblings, it would pretty much just be a greek mythology inspired horror story.
I haven't read too many books weird in content. Infinite Jest by DFW is probably the closest, it's one of the only books I've read that I have an incredibly hard time telling someone what it's about. When people casually asked me at work, I could never really figure out what to say without having to talk for hours.
I also just finished reading The Sailor who fell from grace with the sea by Yukio Mishima. I think it is pretty contemporary overall, but it's main plot event would probably make most people uncomfortable.
Agreed! House of Leaves is such a conventional and depressing story, but people seem to think it’s just an experimental diatribe simply because of its format. It’s quite frustrating.
I have never read DFW. For some reason, he has never called to me.
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is one of my favorite novels!
BOOKSHELF TOUR NEXT!!!
I can certainly do that as like a 300 subscriber special or something!
@@PlaguedbyVisions YESYESYES
I also loved the lighting... It's so moody and chill at the same time
Yes, please!
I like the last 3 -4 videos. You become better at this. Congratulations!
Thank you so much! I’ve really, really been trying! Lol. I’m glad to hear there’s visible improvement.
@@PlaguedbyVisions that's good. Trust yourself. You're doing just great! 🙌
Great vid as per usual haha, also sidenote i really like the lighting and music it really builds an atmosphere!
Thanks for watching again! I’m happy to hear you enjoyed the music/lighting.
Kafka on the shore was a lifechanging experience for me. I've read it during lockdown and it just stuck with me and changed the way I navigate through life. I've wanted to read The Master & Margarita for quite some time, might give it a try soon! I've already read Heart of a dog by Mikhail Bulgakov (a kind of Flowers for Algernon but with a dog!) and enjoyed it. As per usual, a very good video thank you :)
Tangents are by far my favorite thing love how clearly spoken your monologues are definitely subscribing for more. Wouldn't it be sick to have a top 20 book tangent video?
I've been "trying" to jump into these kinds of weird, surreal, dreamlike books. Haruki Murakami is a great opener to the huge iceberg of weird surrealism stories. "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" by Iain Reid, "Rene's Flesh" by Pinera Virgillio are the recent novels I read that perhaps might interest you? maybe? I have yet to read "Teartro Grottesco" by Thomas Ligotti, and "The Hearing Trumpet" by Leonora Carrington, but I heard great weird things about these stories.
Another great video, more books to add to my list! Thank you!
I would definitely want to do a sequel to this video! The topic is fun and there’s no end to the bizarre things that have been printed throughout history.
I was not a big fan of Iain Reid or Ligotti, but Leonora Carrington’s writing AND paintings are such a strange delight. She was a truly incredible artist. I was recommended La carne de René previously, but have been unable to get my hands on a copy of Piñera’s work (apparently it’s been long out of print and very expensive).
Thank you so much for watching! I’m happy you enjoyed the video! :)
The Divine Child sounds so interesting! I'll add that to my TBR now!
This background music... Sooo atmospheric!!! I was about to ask for a religious horror book!!! But I think The Master & Margarita fits the bill
Blonde Roots sounds soo fun too!!!
Again, Remainder sounds amazing!!!
Thanks again for watching! Glad to hear you liked the background music. I’m getting mixed reviews on it so we’ll see how it plays out. I wouldn’t call Master & Margarita necessarily horror but it definitely has horrific elements, and I would 100% recommend it.
You keep making videos, I'll keep watching.
I really, really appreciate that! Thank you!
Everyone who loves bizarre books should read "Son of Man" by Robert Silverberg. It's one of the strangest books I've ever read.
im late to this video but just saw you are at 1k subscribers!! congrats! it is well deserved
Thank you so much! 😭😭
For me Nightmare Alley, House of Leaves and The Third Policeman
House of Leaves is a great pick!
Weird writer on my shelf is Chuck Palahniuk.
One of the weirder guys out there for sure!
Karen Tei Yamashita is a gem, and deserves to be more renowned
Absolutely, an unsung allegorical genius!
Just gonna go change my channel name because I haven't read ONE of these. Thanks for making my TBR even more stacked.
I think that just speaks more to the fact that writers make too much weird sh*t to keep track of.
Thanks for the recommendation. Kafka on the shore was very interesting! In a good way! I wish you would give your thoughts 💭 on what happened…. Lots of riddles. Like how many souls of Kafka are there. Is Nakato Kafka and Crow like some trinity or something (originally thought BTW lol,Not that it’s a great one. just finished still wrapping my brain around it) or are they separated?
Thank you so much for watching and commenting! I am definitely not the most qualified person to uncover the mysteries of Kafka on the Shore. I mostly just took it for the bizarro literary journey that it was, and that was good enough for me!
I don’t know if you include plays in your reading list but Beckett’s ‘Endgame’ was pretty damn weird too but you’re right. It’s a very blurry line between weird and disturbing. Your description of ‘How It Is’ could have applied to that play as well. There’s a legless guy who lives in a box for instance. Some say it’s a post-nuclear apocalypse story but with Beckett who knows ?
Master and Margarita is my favorite novel ever as well as the funniest. Why Stalin didn’t have him shot remains one of the greatest literary mysteries ever. In fact that novel was the immediate inspiration for the Stones song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. Great video as always !
I recently read Sarah Kane and did a video on disturbing theater, so plays are most certainly in my radar now, and yes, Samuel Beckett’s entire bibliography could probably fit into this video. Master and Margarita was indeed fantastic! So daring and really a watershed moment of surrealism and acidic political commentary. I’m happy that it survived such harrowing years!
@@PlaguedbyVisions This isn’t really related to this thread but I know you’re interested in French surrealism so it made me curious if you’ve read anything by Antonin Artaud. It’s not really fiction - rather a charting of his severe mental illness but it’s well worth your time anyway. And I have a challenge or maybe a dare to see if it lands in your unreadable pile - sticking with the French surrealist theme I wonder if you could conquer an entire book by Robbe-Grillet. It was so static it made my eyes cross but maybe you can detect a pulse. Also you probably know more about James Joyce than I do and if so please tell me - he HAD to know Finnegans Wake would be unreadable to 99.9% of people on the planet right ? He just had to !
Since you’re always looking for transgressive and weird fiction I can’t forget the novel Flan by Stephen Tunney. It’s about a man and his talking fish (as well as a giant floating eyeball but I don’t want to give too much away) traversing a hellish and freakish hellscape to find his girlfriend Holly. I read this years ago and still haven’t recovered from the ending. I first heard of Tunney as a musician who goes by the name of Dogbowl and I discovered the book because he recorded a soundtrack to it ‘Flan - The Album’ which it can’t hurt you to listen to for a non-spoiler overview. It’s not on Spotify for some dumb reason but it is here on RUclips. Anyway if you do check it out I hope you find it both as disturbing and entertaining as I did. And again I’m thrilled you just discovered my favorite novel ever. Bulgakov wrote another short hilarious satire/novel ‘Heart of a Dog’. You will never forget Mr Underwear I promise ! And the reason Stalin never had Bulgakov shot was because he wrote Stalin’s favorite play and novel ‘The White Guard’. I know it sounds improbable but Stalin was a voracious reader and had more respect for writers than any other group. He infamously described them as ‘engineers of the human soul’. He even let the author of ‘We’ named Zemyatin emigrate after Zemyatin wrote to him personally and said the USSR was becoming an intolerable place for artists to live. That’s another book you may want to check out someday. Ok I took enough of your time. Back to your channel to find out what I want to read next !
I was so excited when The Master & Margarita popped up! It is one of my lifetime treasures.
Amazing, chaotic tale!
You read any fantasy novels? A top 10 fantasy reads would be great for the channel
After reading this comment I kept thinking it over and eyeing my bookshelf up and down and realized that I really don’t read that much fantasy! I love other sides of speculative fiction (scifi and horror), some of which have fantasy elements, but I don’t really read straight-up fantasy. The closest I could think of was Neil Gaiman’s Ocean at the End of the Lane. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated!
@@PlaguedbyVisions since you are a beginner in the field I would suggest reading The Neverending story from Michael ende and then The lord of the rings. After those you can read the name of the wind wich has great prose and if you like you can read my favorite The chronicles of thomas Covenant by stephen donaldson. This one is very original but is greatly inspired by lord of the rings, some consider it to be the dark version of lotr.
@@erjondividi5303 thank you for such a comprehensive list! Reading this comment, I remembered I HAVE read the Hobbit, lol, so maybe LOTR is a good next step for me. Will definitely give it a shot, thank you!
@@PlaguedbyVisions ok that is a good start. Just in the fellowship of the ring the part of Moria it's a bit boring but when you pass that it all becomes very addicting. So don't stop at that part.
I'm late on discovering your channel (which I really dig!) but I wanted to give my own 'weird' recommendation. Have you heard of Jeff Noon? Vurt is definitely the strangest book I have read. I think of Jeff Noon as a weird as hell, futuristic version of Hunter S. Thompson. If you're not averse to drug culture literature, I'd highly recommend it. Cheers!
I see that Vurt is getting a reprint this August. That’s exciting! Thank you so much for the recommendation. This absolutely sounds like my kind of thing!
Just fell into this dreamy channel, the perfect segue into reality as I soon must stagger out there and face it. Loved all your reviews, can’t wait to hold these books in my hands, seen old editions of many of them all my life and never opened them( Tristram Shandy) , now I can’t wait. 💚💚💚💚💚
Great list thanks. Master and Margherita a classic. My recommend for a bit weird.. Three to see the king by Magnus mills. And in watermelon sugar by Richard Brautigan which is very out there and unique.
Try a Polish author Gombrowicz if you look for some weird and funny books: Trans-Atlantic or Ferdydurke.
Juan Valencia yay Samuel Beckett, I love a tiny prose piece of his called The Lost Ones, anyway have you read The Journal Of Albion Moonlight by Kenneth Patchen It might be more suited to a surrealist list or maybe another unreadable vid, but still ,amazing.
I have not heard of this book, but I do have plans to make a video on surrealist literature so thank you for bringing this to my radar! I also have queued up Les Chants de Maldoror and Nadja.
@@PlaguedbyVisions Maldoror kicks like crazy especially considering its vintage. I was disappointed with Nadja but I was a teen when I read it so I might have been too hungry for thrills, but after Nadja I read some of Freud's dream work with patients in therapy, (poor patients), man he had a strange spooky mind, there is a weird aura of dread around his voice. I can see why the surrealists where attracted to him. The funny thing about Freud is he had no idea he was skewed. He thought he was the plumb-line of rationality. Perhaps that's what gave the stuff I read such a strange frisson. Perhaps it wasn't his patients but Freud that was doing the projecting.
Thanks Juan love your posts you are more interested in the Lit than your ego self, it's very refreshing and your book selection is great.
@@007shlomo I love reading Freud because I think his works have a gothic sensibility to them. His case study, Dora, is one of my favorite horror tales, so to speak. I think that’s why he’s dismissed in the sciences, but venerated in the humanities: He truly gets at the heart of what makes fictions unsettling and perverse. His work is so revelatory as to what literary and critical studies entail. I owe him a lot for what I wrote for my college thesis!
I find the Choose your own adventure books interesting books because you can actually play a game in the book, and you can choose different paths that lead to different outcomes maybe one day you will review some of them.
You should read "Mangled Hands" By Johnny Stanton, its bonkers in a great way.
Not a fan of Murakami. He comes across as having a smug 'too big for his britches' tone in his writing that turns me off. After going through a lot of other titles by other writers of weird, imho he's not good enough a writer to be too good for his readers.
I’ve only read enough Murakami to know he, more than anything, piles on so many eccentricities that it really tickles me. I think I just enjoy how strange and fragmented he makes his stories. I really just take him at face value.
@@PlaguedbyVisions That's all good! Being anti-smug is my problem, not anyone else's. There are a lot of celebrated writers I can't enjoy because of it.
Been loving this channel. Have you ever read Becketts trilogy? Its one of my favourites of all time
Tristram Shandy is a fabulous book! My high school English teacher assigned it to me for a paper. I howled in laughter as I read.
It is indeed incredible, and even more so by how readable it is even today! The innuendos are to die for.
Funny story about Tristram Shandy...a professor I TA'd for once asked me what my favorite book was. I said Tristram Shandy (it's somewhere in the top 5 and I didn't want to admit to Jane Eyre). She said, "really? Not many people can...-do- eighteenth century literature. If you can, you should." So I went for a PhD in it, and, in true Shandeist spirit, dropped out. It feels good to see someone besides me mention this book outside an academic setting, so thank you for that.
That’s a great story! I felt similarly. I enjoyed the tangential genius and experimentation with publishing, which could only have come about when the novel was such a young and wondrous thing. And the rest of my classmates HATED it.
Thank you for your comments. Not only are we fellow Tristram enthusiasts, we are also fellow PhD dropouts. :) No regrets!
hahaha well done I guess weird is the best description of weird lit.
Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff
la luz se ve bien va con el tema del video, saludos
Don't know if you'll see this, but have you read Nabokov's Pale Fire?
Yes, I have! I have a video called Top 10 Most Mystifying Novels where I talk about it, if you’re interested!
@@PlaguedbyVisions Excellent, thank you. I just discovered your channel yesterday and have very much enjoyed what I've watched so far, keep up the good work!
Interested in DIVINE CHILD, as a I read Bruckner’s EVIL ANGELS, the basis of Roman Polanski’s BITTER MOON (1992)
I think you would really enjoy the Divine Child!
When I saw the video description, “Kafka on the Shore” was the first book that came to my mind.
Trust me, it was one of the first ones to come to mind when putting this video together!
🤯🧐🤔🤕 discombobulated, loved you selection, in-depth analysis and yet non-spoilery👌perfect💯
Thank you so much for such kind, wonderful words! They mean a lot.
😃YAAY!!!😃thanks for the shout out, I really enjoyed this. I’m excited for the remainder, the divine child, and the master & margarita.
The thumbnail looks great 👍 I like the colors and the font. I thought the lighting and music worked well, it made it very atmospheric.
So happy you got to watch this, Jessica! I had a lot of fun doing it. Glad to hear some of the suggestions piqued your interest.
Thanks for the feedback! I've gotten mixed reviews on the music, but the lighting is definitely a keeper for me!
You’re bringing me a lot of books that I would like to have a go at. Thanks for the video!!
Glad to hear it! That is my mission statement, haha.
I could not describe master & margarita any where near as good as you did!!!!! Spot on
And here I thought I was just rambling. 😅 Thank you so much!
Definitely will check out _The Divine Child._
Yes, it’s quite zany and fun!
Alot of people wouldn't make it pass the 4 min mark. Without being too rude...its hard to explain a point of view. He nails it. I waited very still for the list it was silly.
Only the truly devoted survive! 😂
Attempting to explain the Atrocity Exhibition generally tends to lapse into prolongued silences while one tries to encompass the shattered rorshach test that is that book.
Still recuperating from the stroke caused by this video.
Love your recommendations, they compose half of my list on Amazon
So glad to hear it! Thank you so much for watching and for the support!
Have you read anything by Will Self? British author. He writes some really weird literary fiction that has a lot of the uncanny and uncomfortable in it too.
I have a copy of Cock & Bull! It sounds… like something I should read!
I want to read all these selections now! Thanks for your presentation.
By all means, please do! They’re all unique in their own, very very weird way. :)
Just discovered your channel recently. Really enjoying your videos!
Welcome! Thank you for watching!
If you want weird try Rico Slade Will Fucking Kill You. It's a Bizarro fiction short story about Arnold Schwarzenegger losing his mind, believing he's John Matrix and going on a killing spree. It's hilarious.
This sounds way too trashy to resist. 😂 Thank you for the recommendation!
You must read very fast, I love reading but it takes me soooo long to complete.
As far as actual reading speed, I’m pretty average. The key is to consistent and persistent!
Thank you
Do you have any good cultish recs?
Do you have a book list of novels that have made you cry?? If so, please ignore my comment, I'm new to your channel and haven't gotten to your playlist!!
Not necessarily “made me cry” (desensitization does things to you, lol), but I did make a video in the saddest horror books I have read!
@@PlaguedbyVisions
Ok, great..I will definitely check it out!! Thx
Great video! Loving your channel,
I love your videos so much
And they love you INTENSELY.
Was Class Trip a good read?
It wasn’t particularly memorable in mind, but it’s been years. I’d have to reread it!
Is it weird that I've read all these? 🤓
That’s crazy insane
I wanna be you rn
Another great video! The background music was distracting though. IMO
Thank you for watching! I really appreciate it. I’ve gotten some yes’s and no’s about the music over on Instagram, so I await more feedback. If it is too distracting, I can at least turn it down next time (or do away with it entirely). I certainly don’t plan to use it on all my videos. Thanks for the feedback! 🤙🏽
I dont believe I have found any intentionally weird book 'weird'...the books that take me strange places within and awaken something are the ones that stick with me and for the want of a better word I find weird...masterpieces like Knut Hamsun's Mysteries, Paul Valery's Monsieur Teste, anything by Italo Calvino...or the work of William Burroughs or even The Runaway Soul by Harold Brodkey with its mixture of archaic and modern language, particularly where he explores masturbating in minute poetic detail for an entire chapter..ot the unclassifiable experimentalism of John Hawkes in works such as Blood Orange oh and more recently Julio Cortazars Around the day in Eighty Worlds.....as a side note please tell me you have read Paradiso by Lezama Lima
Hi Juan, I checked out your review here of Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami and think that we probably came to the same conclusion, it's very weird but somehow it was mesmerizing. I have it on Audible and will have to listen to it again because there was so much going on and there was no way I could connect all the dots if indeed there were dots to connect. As for a strange book that I have read, "Such Small Hands" comes to mind, by Andres Barba. Hugs Mags
Thank you for watching! Yes, Murakami is a special kind of strange that’s really captivating and powerful. I love his work.
I have never heard if Such Small Things. Thank you for the suggestion!
@@PlaguedbyVisions It's " Such Small Hands," I think it was written in Spanish and then translated into English. You can check it out on Goodreads. Mags
How do you feel about bizarro fiction? Would love to see a video with your thoughts about it!
I wasn’t really sure what “bizarro fiction” was, so I looked it up and... ah, yes, Satan’s Burger. 😳 That seemed to be the only work of bizarro fiction I’m familiar with but this definitely is something in line with this channel’s theme and I’d be more than happy to do a further dive into it for a video!
Sam Beckett was my first literary hero as a child..I have performed How it Is on stage among many other pieces....performing his short fiction tends to nullify what would at first appear weird...they are extremely difficult to perform up to a point...what happens over time is that the internal monologue becomes relatable to our own internal monologues
Interesting that your relationship to How It Is was forged through performing it (I would assume out loud). My experience, as with most books, of course, was reading it silently, and I think that transformed it into running thoughts and lamentations, so it made it that much more significant and fluid for me (which is the same reason why I’ve similarly enjoyed the works of Woolf and Faulkner in pure silence - all three wrote such meditative pieces, perhaps not necessarily as literary and philosophical siblings, but definitely... cousins? Lol).
@@PlaguedbyVisions reading Faulkners As I Lay Dying with Becketts Three Novels was an experience I never want to experience again, I was depressed for months after combining those four books....there was a historical aspect to that event though,,,when I was very young say 4 years old my dad would read Waiting For Godot together we did this for a few years and even though I didnt understand exactly know what was going on I found it funny,,until i was 7 yrs old when the ideas it explored started to give me existential nightmares, I would sometimes scream in the middle of the street in terror...they never really went away but I managed to hide them,,but reading those 4 books in silence together in my 20's brought those nightmares back back into full force...I rarely have them now..but I can see the connection between Faulkner and Beckett through those books in particular...performing his work on stage was in my way a catharsis....In a similar way Kafka's Metamorphosis was a story I also had to perform on stage to take away the deeply seated discomfort I felt reading it.
Regards and Thanks from Tim
I liked the color filter. It suited the subject matter.
Thank you! I thought so, too. :)
No Kurt Vonnegut on the list. Thats a miss.
I figured Mr. Vonnegut has had his praises sung by many booktubers. I always try to recommend less popular works to keep things interesting :) but yes, Slaughterhouse-Five is marvelously wacky.