Are you ready to step outside your comfort zone? Welcome back to Book Break! In this video
I am going to talk to you about a bunch of book recommendations if you're looking for something
a little bit different. I can guarantee you have never read anything like the books on this list
before - unless you've specifically read one of these books of course, but they are each very much
one of a kind. So first up, Rabbits by Terry Miles. This is set in the same world as the
Rabbits podcast. If you listen to that it was this pseudo documentary podcast about a missing
person investigation that led the narrator into this alternate reality game called Rabbits, or
The Game, which has been secretly going on for decades. So the game has been taking
place under all of our noses all this time. So if you suddenly start noticing strange coincidences,
like the same number appearing over and over again in your life, or strange discrepancies,
like the building across the road definitely used to have two windows and now it just has one,
it might be time to start following the clues and playing the game. Then I couldn't decide which of
my Helen Oyeyemi collection to show off to you, because she is such a weird and wonderful writer,
but I settled on perhaps her strangest: Mr Fox. Every time you pick up a Helen Oyeyemi book
you are in for a different experience, and Mr Fox is no exception. So this is partly a short story
collection, partly a novel, partly a battle of the wits. So Mr Fox is a novelist in the 1930s,
and Mary Foxe, with an e, is his muse - until she comes to life and starts to talk back.
So throughout the book, the two Foxes engage in this competition, and we are jumping in and
out of different stories that each of them are writing as part of this challenge. Often they're
versions of the Bluebeard story being retold. And then also throughout the book, Mr Fox's wife also
starts to get her own voice - and a fairy tale ending. So that was Helen Oyeyemi, and another
writer who you can always trust to give you a whole new unique experience is China Mieville.
So I've got here This Census-Taker, which is a horror novella that starts with a young boy
witnessing some traumatic event. And it's narrated from an unspecified point in the
future, and the story slips between first person, third person, even second person,
sometimes even within a single sentence. And you constantly have to work out what's real and what
isn't. The horrible thing that this boy witnessed at the start is just one of many horrible things
that may have happened. And talking of things that may or may not have happened,
probably the most famous book I've got on this list is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.
So there is so much going on in this book, and it has such a huge cult following. At the centre of
this book is the story of the Navidson family who move into a new house that they discover is bigger
on the inside than the outside - a literally impossible situation that they try to brush off,
until their two children go missing. So that would already be a very unusual story,
but that is just one aspect of this book. First we have to meet Johnny Truant, who describes himself
as an unreliable narrator, who is looking for a new apartment. And one of the apartments that
he visits used to be lived in by an elderly blind man named Zampano who has recently died, and left
behind in the apartment a manuscript that Johnny becomes completely obsessed with. The manuscript
is a thick academic study of the documentary the Navidson record, which is the documentary
that Will Navidson made about that creepy house that his family moved into. And Zampano
talks a lot about this documentary, and how it achieved massive international success, only
the film never seems to have existed. Johnny can't find any evidence of it. It is absolutely bizarre,
every page is a completely different experience, and you will lose all sense of reality. A book
that really puts you, the reader, at the centre of the mystery is S by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst.
So this book is disguised. What you receive if you buy this book is The Ship of Theseus by
V.M. Strika. It looks like an old library book, it's even got the little library sticker here,
and when you open it you discover that there are tons and tons of notes written in the margins. So
you can really get like sucked in and believe that you just stumbled across this old book
and you are uncovering a mystery. As well as the notes in the margins, you also get little
postcards tucked between the pages, letters, we've got a little newspaper extract here,
there are so many stories within stories to read here, that you'll actually find
whole articles and forums online of people discussing the best way to read this book.
Do you read the book itself first and then go back and read the notes in the margins? Do you take it
chapter by chapter? There's loads of different opinions out there. At the back here you have
a little decoder which I never even figured out how to use, I didn't even get deep enough into
the mystery to work out where that played in. Now this chunkster here is XX by Rian Hughes.
Rian Hughes is a graphic designer, and graphic design is key to this book. It is part sci-fi
graphic novel about man's first contact with alien life, and it is part a meta novel where their
extra-textual elements are really part of the story itself. Hughes apparently
wrote this book directly into InDesign, that's how key the design elements are to the book itself.
It's one of the most intriguing looking books I've ever seen, and it's almost a thousand pages long,
so this book will take you on a journey. Oreo by Fran Ross is a satire from the 70s about a girl
with a Black mother and Jewish father, which was equally shocking to both families, who sets off on
a mission to find her estranged father. And the book constantly interrupts the plot with little
charts, random extracts from diaries, word games, homework assignments, it's a very fun and playful
book and it's sort of a slant on the Theseus and the Minotaur story, but with a very feminist
angle. And it's also very very funny. The book is like half jokes. Hopscotch by Julio Corteza
is called Hopscotch because it reads like a game of hopscotch, jumping you from one chapter to
another. So when you open the book you are given two choices. You can start from the beginning and
read forward, or you can follow a different path that takes you from chapter to chapter, seemingly
in a completely random order, missing out some of the chapters from the traditional path, and then
also adding in a few extras that aren't in the main story. So I know which path I would choose.
And then another book that gives you a strange choice like that is the Dictionary of the Khazars
by Milorad Pavic. So this has two versions: a male and a female. They are completely identical except
for one crucial paragraph. So you're encouraged to read yours and then find someone who has the
other version and compare. But the strangeness doesn't end there. The book itself completely
rejects any semblance of a traditional plot. It is the imagined book of knowledge of the Khazars,
so it's a collection of folk stories and history of this fictional culture, though inspired by
real events. The Field by Robert Seethaler is unusual because this one is narrated by
the inhabitants of the town's cemetery. So it's sort of a collection of interrelated stories,
as each of the late inhabitants of this town tells their story from when they were alive. So together
it paints a picture of a community viewed from below. So it's very sad at times, very moving,
but each of these stories really explores the meaning that each life holds. Then there's
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata. So she is the author of Convenience Store Woman and she wrote something
a lot more bizarre for her second book. At first it reads like a YA story about two 11 year olds,
but don't be fooled: it gets very dark and twisted. The three main characters in this
novel decide to reject the rules of society, that they call ‘The Factory’. They see themselves as
aliens, different from earthlings like you and me. In this book society is brainwashing,
but the alternative is pretty disturbing. The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson is about a family
of performance artists with two grown-up children called Annie and Buster, who are not particularly
well adjusted after a childhood growing up with parents who were dedicated to practical jokes and
public pranks and generally subverting normality, and using the children (who they called child A
and child B) as props in their performances. So in this book we follow Annie and Buster now
grown up returning home after their careers have started flailing. But soon after they return home,
the parents disappear, leading Annie and Buster to lead the investigation, constantly unsure
if this is just another of their elaborate pranks. And finally The Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall.
In this one Eric Sanderson wakes up with no memory of who or where he is. A note tells him
to see Dr Randall, who informs him that he is suffering from acute memory loss after
the tragic death of his lover Cleo two years earlier. But as Eric starts discovering clues
left behind for him by the first Eric Sanderson, you start to realize there is a whole other story
going on all together. And this story has a shark in it that swims through currents of information
and feeds off memory, it is very conceptual, very weird, and I was completely obsessed with this. So
I will link here to a video where we recommended more quirky books if you're looking to step
outside your comfort zone a little bit more, but I would love to know your favourite books like this
that just feel completely brand new, unlike anything you've come across before. I can't get
enough of them so do leave a comment below with your recommendations and we'll see you next time!