Options
What's the weirdest book you've ever read?
In my case it has to be "The Third Policeman" by Flann O'Brien. It is more impenetrable than James Joyce at his nost impenetrable! It features policeman who talk about little but bicycles - including the suggestion that a man might turn into a bicycle (or a bicycle into a man) if the one rides the other often enough and that one or two of the bicycles outside the police station might indeed be former people who can still apparently move around of their own free will.
One policeman has a wooden chest which has an identical wooden chest in it which has another identical chest in that and so on apparently unto infinity.
Much of the book is taken up with the narrator's quest for a murdered man's cash box - though the murdered man turns up again at one point and has a conversation with the narrator. I wouldn't even like to guess what the ending means or whether the narrator (or one or two of the other characters) are even dead or alive.
It's apparently all to do with time and some all-powerful element (omnium), but if you were to ask me what happened in the book, I haven't got a Scooby.
That's a week of my life I'll never get back!
One policeman has a wooden chest which has an identical wooden chest in it which has another identical chest in that and so on apparently unto infinity.
Much of the book is taken up with the narrator's quest for a murdered man's cash box - though the murdered man turns up again at one point and has a conversation with the narrator. I wouldn't even like to guess what the ending means or whether the narrator (or one or two of the other characters) are even dead or alive.
It's apparently all to do with time and some all-powerful element (omnium), but if you were to ask me what happened in the book, I haven't got a Scooby.
That's a week of my life I'll never get back!
0
Comments
Great book! The film adaptation is out soon. The sequel book 'This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously Dude Don't Touch It ' is pretty odd too.
The Robert Anton Wilson 'Illuminatus!' Trilogy is probably the strangest series of books I've ever read. Very good though!
a quote from this about the policeman being half policeman and half bike via molecular interaction was in one of my chemistry textbooks
I found it very strange but compelling at the same time and it's one of those books that keeps rearing its head in my thoughts.
weird mix of voluntary all 4 limbs amputation, lobotomy, and cybernetics.
You're more likely to "get" this book if you know chemistry. As I understand it, it's a kind of satire on physical and chemical principles (particularly time, spatial dimensions and Heisenberg) and supposedly very funny if you know about that stuff - alas it's way above my head!
you're not exactly selling it very well
I'm not trying to recommend it! Just calling it as I see it. There are many ways you could more enjoyably spend your time than reading this book. Having all your teeth drilled and refilled for example.
this ^ was great.
The same author's The Bridge is probably even weirder, but so weird that I found it very difficult to make sense of it. I know somebody who rates it as a favourite though.
"We" is a superb book. And maybe it's the fact it was written in Russian, but it doesn't feel dated
at all-if you didn't know it was published in 1921,you'd think
"We" could have been written at any time in the 20th century.
It's also the worse book I've ever read.
I can barely remember the plot line it was so tedious to read....but it was still weird.
sexual abuse come under the influence of an Ayn-Rand like philosopher,
Anna Granite, who advocates extreme individual. Although Gaitskill disagrees
with Rand/Granite's philosophy, she does treat her with some sympathy.
Very interesting book.
That's the first book I've ever felt unsettled after reading.
I dont think TWF was particularly weird although I agree about The Bridge, very tricky to understand.
Walking on Glass is another of his which divides opinion - I know quite a few people who have read it and I'm the only one who rates it!
Naked Lunch is the weirdest I've read, closely followed by A Clockwork Orange and anything by Charles Bukowski
it was written later, by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley