# what are your favorite weird books? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 19, 2004, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866 "2004-05-19T00:17:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/41 "2004-05-21T12:43:51Z")
> [@](#): > > “Flatland: a Romance of Many Dimensions” by Edwin A. Abbott is possibly the weirdest book you’ll ever read. It’s about these different universes where the people exist in different numbers of dimensions (Flatland itself exists in 2 dimensions, for example). It’s just so bizarre you have to like it. I love this, too. There’s been an animated cartoon made of it, and it “inspired” an episode of the original Outer Limits. There have been a number of sequels and imitators, of which I recommend two: **Sphereland** (don’t recall author) takes this to the realm of General Relativity, introducing the idea of the Expansion of the Universe, made somewhat more comprehensible by showing the expansion of the Flatland universe as an expanding sphere. **The Planiverse** by A.K. Dewdney, one-time columnisst for Scientific American. Dewdney apparently ran a newsletter about the Planiverse for years (Martin Gardner reported on it in _his_ SA column), and he distilled the best bits into this one story. The Planiverse is a Flatland with an actual working physics, chemistry, and biology. It’s not just geometric characters inhabiting a plane with vaguely defined gravity – Dewdney’s Planiverse creatures live on discs with 2-D gravity and have a well-worked-out biology and anatomy. Some of the conclusions and ramifications are pretty interesting, but it’s all consistent. (How do you fight a war in a Planiverse? At most, two combatants can see each other at a time, so it comes down to a series of individual combats. How can planiversian circulatory and respiratory systems work without cutting the creatures in half? etc.) Other random weird books: \*\* Rats, Lice, and History: The Biography of a Disease\*\* – The bio of Typhus, rendered in a weird way. Interesting footnotes. I’m convinced that Diamond stole the form of this title for his own “Guns, Germs, and Steel”. **The Knowledge Web** and **The Pinball Effect** by James Burke – The author/host of **Connections** and **The Day the Universe Changed** strikes again. A lot of the stuff in these books showed up in his later Connectionsd series on cable, but these books are written differently from the earlier companion volumes – no color pictures (although some black and white ones), but there are numbers directing you, not to footnotes or end notes, but to other places in the book. It’s sort of the print equivalent of hyperlinks. It makes for a non-linear reading experience. **web of Magic** (forgot the author) – a stranfge book, part fiction, part personal memoir, exploring the practice of magic by fakirs abnd magicians in India. The author’s description of his own hardships in making his way to and meeting with practitioners is as strange as the fictional chapters where he describes people learning to use magic. \*\* Cultural Materialism\*\* by Marvin Harris. Cultural Anthropologist Marvin Harris has written a number of popular books explaining his theory of Cultural Materialism that I find irresistable. He tries to account for the taboo on cows in India, on eating pig among a number of people in Africa and Asia, and for Cargo Cults, among a great many other things. But this is a more technical book explaining and defending his turf, his theory, against all other comers. Deciphering his descriptions is a challenge for an outsider like me (“etic” vs. “emic” distinctions), but it’s worth it to watch him lace into competing theories, like Structuralism. Watching anthropologists duke it out is as much fun as watching theologians battle. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/42 "2004-05-21T14:45:29Z")
> [@Podkayne](#): > > _Hard Boiled Wonderland at the End of the World_ by Haruki Murakami. A spy (?) whose brain has been modified to facilitate his peculiar profession befriends the daughter of a mad scientist. He has to save the world from evil monsters, but in the mean time his own mind is in the process of irrevocably separating into two halves. > > It’s a real genre-buster. Hard-boiled detective novel? Post-cyberpunk? Sciffy thriller? One of my all-time favorite books ever. Great choice. **A Wild Sheep Chase** by Murakami is almost as surreal. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/43 "2004-05-21T16:48:09Z")
Another vote for **Hardboiled Wonderland** , a great weird book! May I also suggest: **Flan** by Stephen Tunney. A post-apocolyptic Candide. It somehow manages to combine a sweetly innocent tone with some of the most horrifying images I’ve ever seen committed to the pages of a novel. **The Codex Seriphinianus** by Luigi Serifini. A massive illustrated encyclopedia of a bizarre fantasy world. Written entirely in an (untranslated) language and script of the author’s own design. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/44 "2004-05-21T17:56:23Z")
Although the _Illuminatus!_, _Historical Illuminatus_ and _Schroedinger’s Cat_ trilogies, together with _Masks of the Illuminati_ (and nearly everything else that Wilson wrote) are without peer… …I highly recommend Angela Carter’s [_The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman_](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140235191/102-1907729-5498514?v=glance). Or anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And _Finnegans Wake_, of course, which continues to drive me out of my mind. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/45 "2004-05-21T19:31:40Z")
Can you Dopers help me find a Weird Book? > **[Bild Lilli--looking for a book](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=257480)** > > After WW2, the German newspaper Bild started a comic strip about a conniving Blonde named Lilli. Sexy, perky, with sultry eyes, pouty lips & a pony tail, she was always hunting for a “sugar daddy”. Later, a doll was made of her. This more or... many thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Indygrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@Indygrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indygrrl)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/46 "2004-05-21T19:40:01Z")
_Cruel Shoes_, by Steve Martin is pretty weird. It’s great, though. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/47 "2004-05-21T19:45:48Z")
\*\*Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates \*\* by Tom Robbins. Holy shit. Hang on to your hat, my friends. This is one strange book. But faaaabulous. ---
**Author:** ![Syntropy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Syntropy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syntropy)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/48 "2004-05-21T19:46:52Z")
> [@Drizzt Do'Urden](#): > > I’m going with **Illuminatus!** Yup. Just mind blowingly bizarre. Own it, like it, still don’t understand it. And right next to it on the shelf: _The Fan Man_ by William Kotzwinkle. Also mindblowingly bizarre, but in a much more fun, laughing so hard you fall off the couch way. Any book with an entire chapter made up of the word “dorky” and very little else is bound for literary greatness. ---
**Author:** ![Bren\_Cameron\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@Bren\_Cameron\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bren_Cameron_1)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2004, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/49 "2004-05-22T00:19:54Z")
> [@Winston Bongo](#): > > I’d also recommend anything by R. A. Lafferty. You pretty much have to take a fan’s word on it, because there is absolutely no way to describe his writing. Harlan Ellison once affectionately dubbed him a “madman,” and that’s about right. The book that sprang to mind when I read the thread title was _Not to Mention Camels_. Wonderful book. I think it broke my brain. And Calvino rocks. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2004, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/50 "2004-05-22T05:00:04Z")
Re Cruel Shoes There are two versions of this book. One contains only the story The Cruel Shoes spaced out at a few sentences a page. The other contains numerous tales including How To Fold Soup, Wrong Number, The Dynamite King, and Shuckin The Jive. Back To The OP The Complete Works Of Edward Leedskalnin These scientific writings explain how you can achiev perpetual motion with magnets. They get stranger from there. Charles Fort Lo!, and The Book Of The Damned Fort collected and retold tales of strange happenings. He wrote of rains of frogs, strange objects seen in the night sky and such in an almost unreadabl prose. The Melancholy Death Of Oysterboy Tim Burton tells fairytales ---
**Author:** ![Tentacle\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba9def/32.png) [@Tentacle\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tentacle_Monster)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2004, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/51 "2004-05-22T15:52:23Z")
Speaking of Tom Robbins, _Skinny Legs And All_ is weird and wonderful. You’ll never look at a can o’ beans the same way. _Still Life With Woodpecker_ is pretty good, too. Oh, yeah, the classic _Portnoy’s Complaint_. Some people identify with the main character in _The Catcher In The Rye_. I identify with Portnoy. How about weird comics? Like anything by Michael Kupperman. the _Excel Saga_ manga, _The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers_, _Zap Comics_ and the like. ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2004, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/52 "2004-05-22T16:06:54Z")
I got Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas yesterday. Read it in bed. Couldn’t put it down. Lost a complete night of sleep. Bastard. Is the other one (Fear and Loathing on the Campain Trail) as good? Is it also about excessive drug use? ---
**Author:** ![Syntropy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Syntropy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syntropy)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2004, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/53 "2004-05-22T16:39:02Z")
Yes, and yes. Hunter continues pretty much where he left off, following on the campaign trail of McGovern. He does a great job of showing just what goes on behind the scenes, the manipulation and how the candidates are presented to the media and the country. I loved it. What’s scaring me is how history has such a nasty habit of repeating… ---
**Author:** ![Gail](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Gail](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gail)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2004, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/54 "2004-05-22T16:40:44Z")
_Observatory Mansions_ by Edward Carey is very weird…like nothing else I’ve ever read. Also, last weekend I read Neil Gaiman’s _Coraline_ —that’s a “children’s book” but it’s weird and scary. ---
**Author:** ![Ross](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e274bd/32.png) [@Ross](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ross)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2004, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866/55 "2004-05-26T18:26:08Z")
You sick little monkeys may enjoy the following: [13 Steps to Mentalism](http://www.magictricks.co.uk/prodshow.asp?code=239), reputedly the best of its kind. Straightforward magician’s-magician guide to all kinds of mindreading tricks. [The Full Facts Books of Cold Reading](http://www.ianrowland.com/ItemsToBuy/ColdReading/ColdReadingMain1.html), a vast and comprehensive guide to making people think you’ve guessed their birthday. That sort of thing. Fascinating. Randi-endorsed. Not to be used to take over the world, or Randi will be onto you like a whippet on a bunny. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-weird-books/245866.md?page=2)