Naked Lunch. It’s like being dropped on an island full of weird things with no map.

I would have to say the strangest book by far was City of Dreaming Books by German author Walter Moers. It’s about sentient dinosaurs who love all things books and knowledge and aspire to be writers. One in particular goes on a journey to the greatest city said to have the rarest books and an adventure ensues.

Walter Moers books are all incredible and strange but not all are translated from German yet. I recommend Rumo as well if you do like his style; same universe different time and protagonists.

Cloud Atlas. The way it skips around, even ending a chapter mid sentence. Really fascinating structure.

i read The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins not long ago. it’s a modern fantasy story about a group of orphans raised into adulthood by who is for all intents and purposes, god. content warning for things like extreme violence and gore, sexual assault and child torture, i won’t get into those details but these things are present in the story.

the children are taught by him in this mystical library, isolated from the rest of the world, with each one learning a different discipline in a hyperfixated and certainly unhealthy manner. for example one is taught every aspect of war and combat at the expense of anything else. learning everything in all of the universe and reality in that field to the point where he can telepathically understand what an opponent intends to do next. this doesn’t really result in very well rounded individuals. so pretty much every character is extremely bizzare.

the best way i can think to describe the story would be if the kinds of characters from ancient myths were real, existed in our modern day, and were absolutely not mentally sound. the story is really just completely weird and has no interest in pretending anything should be normal. when confronted with breaking into a house, of course the solution is to recruit a plumber and a pair of lions. our friends at the library don’t know what a telephone is but if you give them the rundown we can have the president of the united states taking orders over the phone in the next 5 minutes.

i do recommend it, despite its oddness there is still an interesting and honestly kind of touching narrative on trauma and acceptance that i think is well told.