'Mistral's Kiss' by Laurell K. Hamilton
i thought it was just a nice fun gothic vampire novel. i read it for fun....and i still have no idea what the point, plot and meaning of that story was.
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'Mistral's Kiss' by Laurell K. Hamilton
i thought it was just a nice fun gothic vampire novel. i read it for fun....and i still have no idea what the point, plot and meaning of that story was.
Hmmm. I like some of Alice Hoffman's work but her novel Here on Earth, is just weird. I didn't like it at all. It is a modern, "sexed up" version of Wuthering Heights.
Haha. I haven't heard of that novel, but I can just see someone trying to do that. I mean, there is already so much passion and drama in Wuthering Heights. Actually, the writer Maryse Conde from Guadeloupe has a novel that redoes Wuthering Heights in the Caribbean. It has some sex scenes in it, but not overwhelmingly so. It's called Windward Heights in English.Quote:
Originally Posted by kathycf
Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel.
It is a story about a Mexican girl who is not allowed to get married because she is the youngest daughter and needs to take care of her aging mother. So her older sister marries her boyfriend. Each chapter begins with a recipe that somehow have strange effects on those who eat it. Fore example she cries in the wedding cake and everyone at the party becomes terrible. Her older sister ends up dying of excess gas. She finally marries the man of her dreams at the end, and the house explodes into fireworks.
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson, premier gonzo journalist. Truely bizzare, but in the best possible sense of the word. And if anyone mentions that movie with Johnnie Depp, well I just hope it doesn't happen as that film was a crime against fiction [actually, y'now I have a horrible suspicion it was true] and nature.
That reminds me Kathy, i thought her book the Ice Queen was really weird.Quote:
Originally Posted by kathycf
Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut was a little weird, I read it a few years ago. Strangest characters I ever saw. :P
I agree with you. I had to read it for Canadian literature and I almost physically forced myself to do it. :sick: There's also this book by Raymond Queneau "Exercises in Style". He tells the same short story in 99 different ways...Quote:
Originally Posted by Derringer
@ Haven....Quote:
Originally Posted by Haven
no point in mentioning the bats........:lol:
"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, laughers, screamers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into locked a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. :lol: "
My aunt recommeneded that book! She said it was quite good.Quote:
Originally Posted by _JadeRain_
I'd have to say the weirdest book I can think of right now was The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk. I read it recently for a book club, and no one really enjoyed it. Oh! And Steinbeck's The Red Pony. What a waste of time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by _JadeRain_
There was a film based on this book. I quite liked it, really. Sort of magical realism, like GG Marquez.
I never said it wasn't a good book. I said it was weird. It was surely the strangest book I ever read.
Bluesky, where on earth did you get that from? Thank you. It is such a brillliant thing you have done. I haven't read this for years [never watched that movie! Gag!]. It's like Christmas coming early. I love Hunter, the premier gonzo journalist and miss him terribly after he shot himself in the face. What was going on that night?Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueSkyGB
Haven [aka Raoul Duke: Lawyer and confidante to the Gonzo journalist]: You can turn your back on a person, but, never turn your back on a drug. Especially when it's waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eye. :D
Dr. Gonzo: I have to go.
Raoul Duke: Go?
Dr. Gonzo: Yes. Leave the country. Tonight.
Raoul Duke: Calm down. You'll be straight in a few hours.
Dr. Gonzo: No. This is serious. One more hour in this town and I'll kill somebody!
I'll PM you on GB.
Okay just searched everywhere for a big smoochie kiss smilie - another gap in the market...
Well, Hoffman often writes in this everyday magic/realism sort of a way. While most of her stuff is weird, I tend to like it. I really should have clarified earlier that I found Here on Earth to be both weird and distasteful. Sometimes weird is good. Niamh, I know you hate Wuthering Heights, but that isn't the reason why I disliked Here on Earth....I just thought it was creepy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niamh
:eek: :eek2: :eek: Wow!Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueSkyGB
Haven, would this one do? :ladysman: :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Haven
Wow...didn't expect that.....LOL:lol:
Thanks Kathy and Haven....
Kathy, I think that we have our answer, seems like the perfect 'smoochie kiss'. Night night to you and BlueSky. :yawnb:Quote:
Originally Posted by kathycf
It's not weird, it's just beautiful. One of the loveliest books I've ever read.Quote:
Originally Posted by _JadeRain_
Mostly, I think, I like to read weird stuff.
Anything by:
- Haruki Murakami
- Angela Carter
Is generally on the strange side.
Started reading A Clockwork Orange once and couldn't understand a word of it, so I guess that's the strangest book I didn't quite read.
Probably not that weird, but A Wrinkle in Time
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bii
Hehe, I was lucky with this one, I had a glossary at the end of the book. Though it was tiring to look at the back of the book every 5 words.
It's a close fight between Ulysses and Metamorphosis. Though Kafka is at least readable without the urge to throw yourself from the rooftops...
I found Alice in Wonderland...truly bizaare. Maybe as a child,I couldn't care less so long as rabbits and caterpillars and cards entertain me. But I'm now a grown-up trying to stick to reason and logic. After the book, all can ask is....what?
Man...this is one book that needs some interpreting.
I would have to say the weirdest book i've ever read was Brave New World by Huxley. Expecially the opening with the little kids and stuff. I read it a few years ago and it's at the top of my weird list.
I've recently read The Freakshow, by Brian Smith, and I'm sure it's the wierdest book I've ever read, or ever expect to read. A book would have to be wierd on steroids to beat this one!
After further reflection I realized that Of Grammatology by Derrida was, by far, the weirdest book that I have read. I strongly suspect that it was a joke by him.
House of Leaves. Don't remember who wrote it, but it was weird, fun, but weird.
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. I know it's supposed to be about philosophy and all, but the ending is just, well, weird. I won't say anything more than that in case anyone is reading the book right now.
[QUOTE=CaptureLife;387132]
When I was younger, I read the book Lizard Music by Daniel Manus Pinkwater. I know it was fantasy, but still... Synopsis: a young boy stays up late watching tv. When it goes off the air (it's the 70s), strange lizards appear and play hypnotizing music. He goes on what appears to be a drug-induced adventure with a man who has a chicken for a pet.[QUOTE]
...I've been wondering what the name of that book was for the past decade or so. It's even stranger how these things just pop up.
I just read it and I, too, found it quite weird :D Entertaining, though :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by jedi
I've just remembered another very wierd book I read about 15 years ago - Giles Goat-boy. Very well done, but wierd!
The Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs
So weird until the final chapter/postface that kind of ties the whole thing together.
This little aside is purely to expedite 'weirdness'...
Man...this is one book that needs some interpretingQuote:
Originally Posted by jedi
I found Alice in Wonderland...truly bizaare. Maybe as a child,I couldn't care less so long as rabbits and caterpillars and cards entertain me. But I'm now a grown-up trying to stick to reason and logic. After the book, all can ask is....what?
Hi if you guys are interested the post 'Complete the Thought' on 'Games' is doing an Alice thing at the moment. Great fun!! Heads up, she's in Hades at the moment and Cerebus the 3-headed dog had just eaten a bit of one of her cakes and has shrunk to the size of a West Highland Terrier and she's about to do a deal with Charon... over a Bic lighter... Well,Quote:
Originally Posted by Annamariah
might have moved on since I last looked. :D
Wasn't this the book that he wrote and just flung the finished pages over his head and then gathered them all together at the end in a kind of mish-mash. Believe so. Might also have been around the time that he and his wife, Jane played 'William Tell'...and he accidently shot her through the head with an arrow... Sadly, she did not survive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark F.
I think he shot her in the face with a hand gun, actually. He was released after 13 days of jail.
The Naked Lunch was written by Burroughs in Tangier and edited by Kerouac and Ginsberg later on.
callmeburroughs.tripod.com/joan.htmQuote:
Heir's Pistol Kills His Wife; He Denies Playing Wm. Tell
Mexico City, Sept. 7 (AP)--William Seward Burroughs, 37, first admitted then denied today that he was playing William Tell when his gun killed his pretty, young wife during a drinking party last night. William S. Burroughs, c.1951
Maybe he did, maybe he didn't play Wm. Tell [extrapolating, arrow, Wm. Tell]... seems not substantiated, might have been a tabloid fabrication. Very sad. 13 days of jail... doesn't seem enough.
Re the flinging the pages over his shoulder as he wrote, trying to remember, if that was actually in the Naked Lunch? I think that it was, actually got a really good memory of it, even talked about it with others who had read the novel. He was doing meth amphetamine with of course heroin. Kerouac is my hero, haven't read that much Ginsberg, but sure they would have been supremo editors for even this challenge. Excellent genre piece. Really glad you mentioned it.
Glad I could help!Quote:
Originally Posted by Cherubino
Yeah he was playing William Tell but with a hand gun. It happened in Mexico where he fled to avoid imprisonment for holding (heroin, benzedrine? I forget).Quote:
Originally Posted by Haven
I agree with others that Alice in Wonderland and the works Kafka and Joyce are indeed quite odd. I also think the passages of Anais Nin's diary entries dealing with her unusually close relationship with her father very outlandish as well. Even with such strangeness, these authors are able to construct the bizarre with wonderful prose.
Georges Bataille's work is quite bizarre as well
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It's a heavy tome indeed, including footnotes! It's set in the not-so-distance future when all of the chickens of contemporary society
come home to roost. I think that awful movie The Ring
ripped off one of the plot elements in Infinite Jest.
That story wasn't in Naked Lunch or in another of his novels, but it has appeared in different forms in biographies, and it was assested to by a number of people, which is why there was no legal action against him.Quote:
Originally Posted by Haven
I recently just bought Naked Lunch...I haven't started it though :redface: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is pretty strange...good, but different.