I want to see what people on Lemmy are reading. Can be unique in terms of lore, concept or even the cover. Mine are invisible monsters, battle royale and horrorstor. What about yours?

I answer with this a lot on Lemmy but House of Leaves. That fucking book. Everyone should read it once. If you read it multiple times you are a crazy person, and if you are not: trying to understand it will MAKE you a crazy person.

"House of Leaves" made me throw it against the wall.

I did like "XX" a novel by Rian Hughes. Different characters 'speak' in different typefaces, and the story zips through time and space.

"The Iron Dream" by Norman Spinrad is a massive mindfuck. The forward explains that Adolph Hitler came to America in 1922 and managed to find work illustrating science fiction pulps. Eventually he felt confident enough to start writing in English. This book is his masterpiece.

"Flashman" by George Macdonald Fraser. The author follows the career of a successful Victorian gentleman, General Sir Harry Flashman, VC. Flashy is a slaver, rapist, murderer, liar, cheat, coward, and scoundrel who has decided to write his memoirs for posterity.

Thank you for your recomendations! Gonn check them out!

Thank you! Its on my TBR.

Enjoy

Yeah that was my first thought. Didn't finish it because life, but it was really a weird, different experience reading that book. I liked it tho.

Not me, but my spouse read House of Leaves

the Amber books by Zelazny

"The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe.

Its a cold open without exposition into an unknown world. Is it fantasy? Is it sci-fi? There's possible hints of both. The protagonist is the narrator and the character tells the story. Since the character already knows this world, he doesn't both explaining what is happening very often. The style of speech the character uses including the vocabulary isn't quite common. The storytelling is unforgiving because the protagonist has no frame of reference from our world to explain. There's even more to the difficulty in following the story than this, but some of that speaks to the plot points, so I won't explain further.

If you want a hard, but eventually rewarding read, go into it cold without reading any synopsis or reviews.

Here's the opening paragraph from the first page:

"It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which I, the torturer’s apprentice Severian, had so nearly drowned."

EDIT: I just saw that the current Humble Bundle Deal for ebooks has 38 Gene Wolfe books (for $20 for the whole set). This includes "The Book of the New Sun" (3 books).

Get yourself a bit of Christopher Moore or some Neal Stephenson.

Tim Dorsey was great up until the end although there was a lot of same-ness about much of his work.

Work your way through Cory Doctrow's catalog of unique fiction.

I love almost everything by Dean Koontz - he is a magical phrase turner.

You can always sell me on a Kaiju novel.

I liked Amber Diceless RPG. Never really got into the books tho.

How many times are you AI bots going to ask this question?

Edit: This is the fourth time I've seen this exact post.

Anathem by Stephenson fits this bill. Cold open to a universe with no exposition and no viewpoint character that gets things explained to them. It's pretty fucked up until you begin to piece together the clues and build the world logic for yourself.

The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson (not to be confused with that other Robert Wilson) deserves an honorable mention. The story is driven by the appearance of massive monument commemorating a military victory 20 years in the future. As the story progresses more of these future monuments appear as the story drives towards the conditions that will initiate the war.

These are almost cheating, but I’ll go with Gravity’s Rainbow followed by Blood Meridian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity's_Rainbow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Meridian

Runny Babbit by Shel Silverstein

The whole thing is written in spoonerisms, and it can tret gicky to lead out roud ko a tid. Honestly, not his best, but certainly the most unique.

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. Set in a post apocalyptic England where all of society has broken down, even language. Stick with it, your brain will adjust and you won’t notice after the first chapter or so.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.

It's been a good many years since I had my nose in my copy, but I am glad I was able to read it at a time of my life that I could attain some appreciation and understanding of it. Right now, I don't think I could focus my attention long enough to get back into it.

I haven't sought out Hofstadter's other works, but if I could get that mindset back, I'd definitely consider it. I Am a Strange Loop is on my want-to-read list.

And if the surname seems familiar, a character in a popular TV show was given his surname on purpose by the writers.

Alan Lightman's book Einstein's Dreams. It uses stories to explore how time moves, or could move if the laws of the Universe were different.

Many of Stephensons books are like that. I like Snow Crash for the world building that obviously went into the writing, but you have to figure it out along the way.

My ADHD always made it really hard to read an entire book, but one of the last books I read that was cool was Goosebumps: Beware Of The Purple Peanut Butter. I loved that I could choose what to do in a book, it felt like a video game.

Someone handed me Gravity's Rainbow after finding out I'd read Blood Meridian. He said the words, "only you" after handing me the book as he was leaving the country.

I tried. Fuck me I goddam tried.

The reason I loved The Reluctant Fundamentalist is that it's in second person. It's a conversation Hamid had with himself as a young Pakistani-American immigrant, torn between two worlds in post 9/11 America. It's short but evocative.

I liked Amber, but it's not one that I would have picked from Zelazny as being particularly unique. What about, say, Roadmarks? That's one of my favorites.

I once saw in a book store a book called conversations with god 2 or something like that, I picked up thinking let's see what kind of bullshit is in here, I read a random page and I thought, hey that wasn't bad let's see another page, oh this seems good. Then I bought it.

The book was a dialogue between the author and god, what surprised me the most is that it never felt religious and covered concepts I've seen on many other places decades later.

I ended liking the trilogy, and it played a big role on shaping my current beliefs (an odd mix of mostly atheism with a bit of faith on something that is actually irrelevant). I avoided looking the author up just in case he ended up creating a cult or something.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

From my review:

"This is one of those rare books that changes what I think a book can be.

"A beautiful meditation on the human condition as coupled to the — so-called — "Overwatch Effect." It took me a while to catch the rhythm of the book, but once I was in, I was in."

I read it just after it won the Booker Prize. But, I didnt know it had won the Booker Prize when I read it.

I got 200 pages into Gödel Escher Bach, meaning to pick it up again. And yet, still, it sits on my shelf daring me to read it.

It's been 11 years.

Thank you!

Thank you;

Loved the concept!

Whats your favorite book of each writer mentioned?

Thanks!

Blood meridian is a masterpiece!

Thank you!

Omg thats so awesome! Thank you!

Thank you!

Thanks!

Gonna check it out! Thanks.

LMAAAAAAO. I have ADHD and thats why i love unique books. The different format makes focus because of novity.

I can imagine. The concept if very cool.

Thank you!

Damn. It looks very deep. Thanks!

"I read it, but I'm not sure if I finished it."

"Oh, you don't recall whether you finished it or not?"

"I recall it perfectly."

I really enjoyed The Raw Shark Texts. It's a weird page turner. Has a cat.

The Raw Shark Texts

i just started battle royale, they're still on the bus. i've seen the film of course so interested to see how it compares. filth by irvine welsh and under the skin by michel faber are my other favourite books with film adaptations, i've high hopes for this

Maybe The Sybil, by Par Lagerkvist, a sort of parable.

https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/the-sibyl/

I absolutely loved Anathem. Very underappreciated for a Stephenson book.

I like "life at reset" series. Basically guy is playing mmo and on top of leader boards. He gets betrayed by his "friend" ends up as a goblin and can't log out. Through the books explores concepts like rights of a true Ai, dealing with emotions of betrayal, advancements in technology, sacrifice for family, purpose of your life and more. It's 6 books so not a quick read but interesting and thought provoking.

Gnomon by Nick Harkaway.

The book Is set in a near future Britain where surveillance is omnipotent and the accused are interrogated by detectives who read their thoughts.

A suspect dies during an interrogation, highly unusual, so a detective is brought in to investigate the case. She begins to review the thoughts of the suspect and finds not just the suspects memories, but whole other persons whose lives intersect and intertwine created a tapestry narrative that runs counter to reality.

It’s a really Interesting read. I will fully acknowledge its overly long and needed a strong editing pass. But I first read it a decade ago and I still think about it regularly.

Children of Time was an interesting concept that I thought came together well. It's a science fiction book with a split narrative where one half is about science experiments on a distant planet, and the other is about a colony ship that is searching for a new home. Because of the vastness of space, there are long stretches of time that are covered (I believe the book ultimately takes place over a thousand years). The two narratives overlap at different points.

Dungeon Crawler Carl may have one of the weirdest and fun plots I've read in a while. A guy named Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat named Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk are given the opportunity to be on the galaxy's favorite game show. The show is very similar to an RPG with fighting monsters, level ups, rare items, etc. Also, due to unfortunate timing, Carl is participating in the game without wearing any pants.