Yes! That’s it! I’ve never heard of anyone other than myself that had read that book!
Right on the money about the rose garden/wallpaper, and the peanuts!!
(Actually, the doll’s [his name is John-Something, or Something-John . . . I can’t remember exactly] head gets cracked when Maggie first meets the dolls, and is freaked out. She kicks them and runs out in panic. The aunts only discover the secret attic on the day they throw Maggie out.)
Did you enjoy the book?
[quote]
[H]is name is John-Something, or Something-John . . . I can’t remember exactly . . .
[quote]
Timothy John!
Sheesh! I remembered right after I hit “Post Reply!”
How could you like that book? I know almost a full highschool of students that would disagree with you on that. I’m just wondering what you found so interesting about it. At my school they split us up into groups to do in depth projects about it complete with mathematical analysis, flip books, essays, and pictures.
Kitty
My favorite odd little books have already been mentioned, but I can’t help jumping and voicing my opinion anyway.
I recently re-read Flatland. It’s such a thought-provoking little book.
I also love Einstein’s Dreams.
Oooh, and Stansilaw Lem’s The Cyberiad is one of my favorite books. And talk about odd. Boy howdy, that book is odd.
Flatland! That book kinda freaked me out…but it was really interesting. Makes you wonder if our world is really the highest dimention.
I’d have to say that my favorite, quirky little book is Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block. Its so strange, yet so entertaining.
www.addall.com lists two available copies, one for $8.00, the other for $10.50
“Meeting With a Great Beast” By Leonard Wibberly
A touching parable about compassion in the face of despair. It involves elephant hunting, so all you Hemingway fans out there will enjoy it.
Also “the Mouse on Wall Street” by the same author.
An interesting introduction to macroeconomics staged as a sequel to “the Mouse Who Roared.”
Two by Richard Bach… “Jonathan Livingston Seagull" and "Illusions–The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.”
Both very thought-provoking, uplifting, insightful, and hopeful.
I ‘never’ re-read books or watch reruns, but these I’ve read twice and now that I’ve been reminded, will read again this week!
In the realm of fiction, one of my favorite is “The Universal Baseball Association: J. Henry Waugh, Proprietor” by Robert Coover. The books is about a middle-aged man who creates a baseball game played with dice (think Strat-O-Matic or APBA) and gets caught up in the fantasy world of his fictional players.
I guess it depends what you mean by odd.
When little, I loved this book called Billy and the Number Line.
Billy goes into a world populated only by numbers.
The odds are at war against the evens.
The evens, it seems are snobby and think themsleves better than the odds.
Til one day, the odds realize that by jumping onto an even, they make the even an odd.
The evens realize the jig is up, and then they all live together harmoniously.
I just finished “Survivor” by Chuck Palahniuk (no, it has NOTHING to do with Richard Hatch). Throughout the book, the main character sporadically gives all kinds of advice on how to get stains out of stuff, etiquette, and general home care. I want to trash my house just to see if all of it is true. There are a lot of things going on, it’s really funny, and it’s written at a nice, quick pace. It’s the same author that wrote “Fight Club.”
Another favorite is “And the Ass Saw the Angel” by Nick Cave. It’s very dark and gloomy, but written with humor as well. If you like his lyrics and music, you’ll love this book. It has the most unforgettable introduction of a main character ever.
and finally, “The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook” by Joshua Piven, David Borgenicht is a must-have. It tells you how to everything from deliver a baby to escape from killer bees. It even covers my lingering fear of escaping from a car you’ve driven into a lake. You may not need ever to know how to jump from a moving motorcycle to a moving car, but hot-wiring a car may come in handy if an ax murdered is after you. It’s a great book to have in the glove compartment, just in case . . .
All the Little Animals by Walker Stephens(?) It’s hard to describe. You could say it’s about a brain-damaged young man contemplating murder, but that’s not it. Nor is it a fairy tale about a wicked stepparent. And I’m not really sure you could call it a coming-of-age tale, or a commentary on modern life.
I’ll just call it good and let it go at that.
Also, The Need of Change by Julian Street. American adventure in British manor. Hysterical.
I haven’t read “Pioneer, Go Home” since I was a kid. Another good book by Richard Powell is “Don Quixote, USA”. Did you know “Pioneer” was made into an Elvis movie, “Follow that Dream”?
Last month while sick in bed, I read a little book that left me wishing I’d read it when I was a kid: “The Abandoned” by Paul Gallico. It’s fantasy about the lives of stray cats on the streets of London, and a boy who finds himself turned into one of them. The original, British title was “Jennie”. The ending was very sad, but not what I was expecting. It’s really a story about friendship and love.
The Devil’s Day by James Blish (also published as two books titled Black Easter and… hrm, I forget and I can’t find the book). A book about modern day (well, for when it was published) black magic. The story revolves around a magician and a arms dealer who wishes to release all the demons from Hell for 12 hours. After that… well, I hate to spoil a story.
I also love Norton Juster’s works, particularly The Phantom Tollbooth. Oh, and Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison.
Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff. It’s about a group of very disparate characters in and around Cornell University, and it has a Story. You can call it a fantasy, sort of like Alice in Wonderland with frat boys. A sweet, good-natured, crazy book.
I loaned it to a “friend” in 1992, and haven’t seen it anywhere since.
If you’re looking for odd and little books, then Juster’s *The Dot and the Line has got to be near the top (as already mentioned).
However, an odder (and rarer) little book is Guy Billout’s Number 24. It has no text. A man stands at a bus stop numbered “24” and watches as various forms of transportation (car, tank, airplane, etc.) approach. Each, in turn, is bowled over by an enormous craft emerging from between two buildings just before the bus stop. Finally, bus 24 comes down the street and. . . . Well, I don’t want to give it away.
It is only 30 pages long, but the drawings/paintings are wonderful.
Tom~
Moral: To the vector belong the spoils.
I just finished A Scientific Romance by Ronald Wright. It’s quite riveting - it’s either a story about a guy who gets his hands on H G Wells’ time machine (in 1999) or it’s the ramblings of a madman. Chapter 1 appears here. I’m a very slow reader (it took me over 1.5 years to get through Caleb Carr’s The Angel of Darkness,) but I read Wright’s work in three days. That’s almost unheard of for this point in my life.
Just to shift gears completely, my copy of Thomas J. Glover’s Pocket Ref is dog-eared and jammed full of yellow sticky notes marking key pages. Aluminum wire amp capacity, maximum floor joist spans, ASCII codes, airline two letter codes, worldwide area codes, physical growth percentiles for girls and boys, and conversion tables galore. It’s amazing.
Available at Amazon for $0.90
“I, JFK” by Robert Mayer. JFK’s memoirs, written from heaven, with LBJ and others looking over his shoulder and commenting. Like “Blazing Saddles,” in that its one fart scene probably doomed it from achieving true greatness… 
Honorable mention:
“The Silly Book”, author unknown. We had this when I was a kid, and I’ve never seen it again. It was a big contributor to the off-the-wall sense of humor which my sublings and I possess.
Obvious additional choice, at least among this group: “Venus on the Half Shell” by “Kilgore Trout” (actually by Philip Jose Farmer).
Have you read “Invisible Monsters”? I liked it even better the “Survivor”. Plus he has a new book coming out in May.
I’m nominating **“The Circus of Dr. Lao”**by Charles G. Finney
How to describe it? Well, it was written in 1935. It’s about Dr. Lao’s circus (no kidding)the amazing creatures he has collected and what happens when they get to Abalone. It reminds me a little of “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, but no offence to Mr. Bradbury, it’s a lot cooler.
To give you some idea, at the back of the book it provides a convient list of male characters (Dr. Lao: a Chinese, Mr Etaoin: a corrector of errors,** Luther**: a voice not a face; likewise a harried homunculous; likewise ultimatly the owner of a fine statue, Kubla Khan: in his day he was China, An Old-like Party in Golf Pants:a bore…)
female characters: (Kate: a sad memory, A Scullion Maid:she was for sale, she could be had,** The Werewolfwoman**: Maggy Szdolny. There was a curse on her…)
animal characters (The Hound of the Hedges: a dream, Burro: not a white man’s animal…)
gods and godesses (Yottle: an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent lump of bronze…)
and helpful study questions (1. Was it a bear or a Russian or what?
Why didn’t Dr. Lao notice anything unusual when he found Miss. Agnes Birdsong and the satyr in such a compromising posture?
If Apollonius was such a great magician, why did he waste his time fooling around with a little circus?..)
A very tiny exerpt even of the character list even though it’s only 160 pages long.
Plus it has pictures.
I see though, that it’s out of print. But if you see it by chance at a used book sale (like I did) for Yottle’s sake snap it up.