Hey guys! I’m looking for new books and i just love books with a unique format. Can be plot, writing style or even cover. My most unique reads were battle royale and horrostor. What are yours? Edit: just remember invisible monsters by Chuck Palanhiuk! Another unique book.
I’ve found “children’s” books are frequently very unique whilst still being good. A Series of Unfortunate Events, is a great example of this. Here are two to check out.
The Stars Beneath Our Feet, by David Barclay Moore
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
A few I haven’t seen mentioned in the thread yet:
I think that would probably be Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, although I haven’t finished it.
I’ve never read anything quite as horrible or with a unreliable narrator that justifies his behaviour this hard. The story keeps getting worse too. There’s no clear hope for a long stretch.
If you don’t know the narrator, Humbert Humbert, is the pedophile who goes after the twelve year old Dolores Haze, whom he calls Lolita.
He grooms her, gets her mom killed, and basically traffics her around.
Can be read here: https://online.fliphtml5.com/unwsfj/Lolita---Vladimir-Nabokov/
The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer. Its about a man who quits his job and takes up robbing banks using only philosophy.
Iain M. Banks Feersum Endjin one of the characters narrates the story phonetically.
Alan Duff Once Were Warriors and sequels. Entirely written as interior monologues.
All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld is told backwards. Each chapter takes place before the previous one.
Twenty-One Truths about Love by Matthew Dicks is told entirely in lists.
A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan switches genres about 60% through. It’s best if you know that and nothing else.
Clemens P. Suter’s “Heavenland” a plainly weird crime story. Entertaining though.
I really recommend the Raw Shark Texts. It’s really interesting in that it only works as a book, and it really plays with the meta. I’m told it’s like House of Leaves in that respect, and I loaned it to someone in exchange for their copy of House of Leaves but that’s a way tougher read so I’ve stalled out pretty early.
“The people in the trees” lives in my head rent free, but not 100% in a good way. Huge SA trigger warning (not pervasive in terms of time spent on the topic, but yeah, if you are AT ALL squeamish about that sort of thing, give this one a pass). But it is quite unlike anything else I’ve read and stuck with me in a way other books I randomly grabbed at the library with no context generally do not. Left me very much questioning how I view people and the world and how easy it is to allow monsters to hide in plain sight.
Hoppscotch comes to mind. There are 2 ways to read, first is read chapters 1-56 and discard the rest. Second is follow the author’s order, which is 73, 1, 2, 116, 3, 84… At the end of each chapter it says where you should jump next. Plus there’s a lot of experimental stuff in it, steam of consciousness, news fragments, a chapter where the author made up his own language, fragments of a fictional writer, etc
Only thing is I don’t know how well the original Spanish translates to other languages (tho according to Wikipedia the English translator won some award so should be good).
“The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime” is written in the narrative of a boy with aspergers, read it many years ago and enjoyed it a lot. Like, it really paints an interesting picture of how the world can also be experienced
I remember doing a book report on this in school! Really stuck with me.
Yeah same! I ended up reading all the book very ahead of what my teacher had planned (a couple chapters each week), I was so captivated by it.
