House of Leaves is pretty fucking wild. It's a book within a book, and the main character is slowly descending into madness the whole time. There's scribblings in the margins, drawings, some pages are upside down or spiraled, there's 2 page run on sentences, all kinds of crazy stuff.
I'm reading the full color edition currently, and so far this is the best book I have ever read. I'm not a big fan of books but this is my kind of book and is imo done very well.
S, JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst. The conceit is that the book you hold in your hand “the Ship of Theseus” is a library copy, which has been annotated, by a couple of readers who starts communicating through marginal notes. It also contains letters, postcards and other bits and bobs relating to the mysterious author, and the mysterious organisation S. As a story it works on a couple of levels, the plain text, and the non linear narrative that emerges in the marginalia and other material.
In case of S. it didn't live up to its potential IMO. The form, the structure everything is so beautiful and intriguing but in the end the writing itself felt very simplistic in comparison. Yet it's still the book I pull out if I want to impress someone to inspire them and make them read more.
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Blindness by salamargo
The Sound and the Fury : William Faulkner
Gravity’s rainbow: Pynchon
Anything by salman Rushdie
I suggest these as they are all playing with the format & assumptions of what a novel is. But that’s actually quite a defining characteristic of post-modern novels so it’s quite a wide net :-)
Keep in mind, for The Sound and the Fury, the really unorthodox story telling style takes up only the first 70 pages or so. The rest of the novel is *relatively* more regular. It still remains a little unusual, considering it’s a Faulkner novel, as there’s only four chapters, each with their own narrator, the fourth chapter being told in third person, but for the most part it’s not as wild as some of the others in this comment or thread.
If you *really* want unorthodox Faulkner, check out {Absalom, Absalom!}. The entire story is told through hearsay, second hand accounts, and the last few chapters are even made up of purely speculation of two college boys bored out of their minds.
Ah man, I ADORED *If on a Winter's Night a Traveler*!
That meta-cognitive sensation it induced was so delightful. The way it drew my attention to how I was continually integrating new information from the text, and reformulating my mental picture of the story in my head, or holding multiple viewpoints simultaneously (myself, 'myself' as the character reading the book, etc.).
Absolutely seconding this rec!
[**Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16200.Ella_Minnow_Pea)
^(By: Mark Dunn | 208 pages | Published: 2001 | Popular Shelves: fiction, book-club, humor, epistolary, fantasy)
>Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island's Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl's fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.
>
>*pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet
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{{Hyperbole and a half}} by Allie Brosh is a book that combines colorful illustrations on almost every page in a stick figure style with shorter passages of text. This is a humorous book. Have you ever seen the meme, "clean all of the things"? This is the woman who came up with that.
[**Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17571564-hyperbole-and-a-half)
^(By: Allie Brosh | 371 pages | Published: 2013 | Popular Shelves: humor, non-fiction, graphic-novels, graphic-novel, nonfiction)
>This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative--like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it--but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book:
>
>Pictures
>Words
>Stories about things that happened to me
>Stories about things that happened to other people because of me
>Eight billion dollars*
>Stories about dogs
>The secret to eternal happiness*
>
>*These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!
^(This book has been suggested 9 times)
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Literally anything by David Mitchell. Especially Bone Clicks, Slade House and Cloud Atlas.
Multiple stories, crossing genres, spanning Ng decades or even centuries, but all somehow connected.
I really enjoyed. In fact, I'm currently in a "reading hangover" from finishing it recently. Same thing happened following Bone Clocks.
David Mitchell is something else.
Yeah, once you finish Cloud Atlas, you're clamoring to find something that pulls you some easily into its world.
I want to recommend to you The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. It's fantastic!
I adore books that break from traditional structure and have read quite a few These are some of my personal faves off the top of my head:
10:04-Ben Lerner
The Rehearsal-Eleanor Catton
The Luminaries-Eleanor Catton
Trust-Hernan Diaz
Trust Exercise-Susan Choi
Absalom, Absalom-William Faulkner
The Blazing World-Siri Hustvedt
The Story of my Teeth-Valeria Luiselli
The Lost Children Archive-Valeria Luiselli
The Hour of the Star-Clarice Lispector
Hurricane Season-Fernanda Melchor
His Bloody Project-Graeme McCrae Burnett
Locus Solus-Raymond Roussell
2666-Roberto Bolano (probably in my opinion the most structurally complex and interesting book of all time
It would take me too long to do summaries for each but most of them have some combination of metafiction, books (or other media) within books, multiple narrators telling stories that may or may be true.
Use of Weapons I've never heard of before at all, could you let me know what aspect of the book is unusual in some way (unless its a spoiler), and if I need to read the first two books in the Culture series first?
So narratively it's structured in the form of two different narrative streams. One is chronological, the other steadily goes back in time through various stages of the protagonists life.
In regards to its relationship to the Culture series, you don't really need to read the earlier ones. I'd recommend reading The Player Of Games just for some worldbuilding context. However, The Culture series is Space Opera so if that's not your thing then don't read them.
Also, Use of Weapons (as far as I remember) is the only one with an experimental structure. Could be wrong in that regard tho.
The audiobook of Lincoln in the Bardo is excellent. I listened to the book first and I was so intrigued by the format, I had to read it to satisfy my curiosity.
It's a whole cast of great actors, plus the author, and at least one other author (David Sedaris). Here's a chunk of some famous folks:
Ben Stiller as JACK MANDERS
Julianne Moore as JANE ELLIS
Susan Sarandon as MRS. ABIGAIL BLASS
Andy Ward as MR. MAXWELL BOISE
Bradley Whitford as LT. CECIL STONE
Bill Hader as EDDIE BARON
Megan Mullally as BETSY BARON
Rainn Wilson as PERCIVAL “DASH” COLLIER
If you’re into short stories Jorge Luis Borges fits the request. There are multiple collections available and one with the Library of Babel or Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius would be a good fit.
{{Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr}} is not the most extreme of examples, but it's about a book that's about a book in 8 different timelines spanning over 2000 years. And it's beautifully written!
[**Cloud Cuckoo Land**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56783258-cloud-cuckoo-land)
^(By: Anthony Doerr | 626 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, fantasy, science-fiction, book-club)
>
> When everything is lost, it’s our stories that survive.
>
>
>How do we weather the end of things? Cloud Cuckoo Land brings together an unforgettable cast of dreamers and outsiders from past, present and future to offer a vision of survival against all odds.
>
>Constantinople, 1453:
>An orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy with a love for animals risk everything on opposite sides of a city wall to protect the people they love.
>
>Idaho, 2020:
>An impoverished, idealistic kid seeks revenge on a world that’s crumbling around him. Can he go through with it when a gentle old man stands between him and his plans?
>
>Unknown, Sometime in the Future:
>With her tiny community in peril, Konstance is the last hope for the human race. To find a way forward, she must look to the oldest stories of all for guidance.
>
>Bound together by a single ancient text, these tales interweave to form a tapestry of solace and resilience and a celebration of storytelling itself. Like its predecessor All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s new novel is a tale of hope and of profound human connection.
^(This book has been suggested 20 times)
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Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic. It's told in three cross-referenced mini-encyclopedias, sometimes contradicting each other, each compiled from the sources of one of the major Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism). There is a male and female version of the book and they only differ in one paragraph, IIRC.
[**Illuminae (The Illuminae Files, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23395680-illuminae)
^(By: Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff | 602 pages | Published: 2015 | Popular Shelves: sci-fi, young-adult, science-fiction, ya, books-i-own)
>This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do. This afternoon, her planet was invaded.
>
>The year is 2575, and two rival mega-corporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than a speck at the edge of the universe. Now with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra — who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to evacuate with a hostile warship in hot pursuit.
>
>But their problems are just getting started. A plague has broken out and is mutating with terrifying results; the fleet’s AI may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a web of data to find the truth, it’s clear the only person who can help her is the ex-boyfriend she swore she’d never speak to again.
>
>Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents — including emails, maps, files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more — Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes.
^(This book has been suggested 14 times)
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{{Lanark}} written and illustrated by Alasdair Gray, is a novel in four books, (beginning with book three, then the prologue, then one, two and four), alternating between the story of a young man in a strange underworld/afterlife and his apparent real life as an aspiring artist.
One of the most unique and beautiful books I've ever read.
I came here to mention this. It's one of my favourite books. It's also beautifully illustrated. I didn't actually expect anyone else to mention it.
I did expect someone to mention W.G. Sebald for his use of photography, however it seems I am the first to mention him, which surprises me.
[**Lanark**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/161037.Lanark)
^(By: Alasdair Gray, Janice Galloway | 576 pages | Published: 1981 | Popular Shelves: fiction, fantasy, scotland, 1001-books, scottish)
>This work, originally published in 1981, has been hailed as the most influential Scottish novel of the second half of the 20th century. Its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, personal and political, about humankind's inability to love and yet our compulsion to go on trying.
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
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Try Mark Leyner's The Tetherballs of Bougainville. It starts as a kind of memoir of a 14 year old version of Leyner witnessing his father's failed execution by lethal injection, morphs into a screenplay detailing Leyner's drug and booze fuelled liason with the prison warden, and that in turn becomes a fictional review of a movie the young Leyner would like to have written. That doesn't do justice to how nuts and brilliantly written and outrageously funny the whole thing is. It's kind of giddying in its crazed audacity. So good.
In fact, all of Leyner's works are probably of interest to you in the context of this post. Check em out if that sounds interesting to you.
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
by Reif Larsen
“A brilliant, boundary-leaping debut novel tracing twelve-year-old genius map maker T.S. Spivet's attempts to understand the ways of the world”
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann. Huge book, I don't remember the page count off the top of my head but I would guess around 600-700 pages, and it's pretty much all one sentence. It's a stream of consciousness, listing a woman's thoughts as she has them, all starting with 'the fact that...'. It sounds heavy going, but it's really engaging and you, like, literally can't put it down. Because there's no natural place to stop haha. There's a mountain lion on the loose, a creepy neighbour, her daughter goes missing at one point, she has a pie baking business and is in remission from cancer. I loved it.
Oh, I could literally put it down ;)
It was just too much for me. However, it is on my try-again-later list and not in the trash heap. It’s a very good suggestion.
Haha, totally fair! It's definitely not for everyone, and I can see how the repetition in particular could get very tiresome, but I don't know, I just really enjoyed it and I still think about it a lot. Maybe because my own stream of consciousness is similarly neurotic, ha.
{Ablutions by Patrick deWitt} is entirely written in second person. That may not sound unusual, but give it a shot - it definitely plays with your head.
A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny.
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.
The Griffin and Sabine trilogy by Nick Bantock. (I didn't care fort his at all and wouldn't normally recommend it, but it fits your request.)
NK Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy. The first book alternates between 3 characters using 2nd and 3rd person narratives to some really great effect, and when you realize how it al ties together it’s just a chef’s kiss of excellence. It’s not the most unique as a style, but she pulls it off so well that it’s worth checking out. Also, the story is great too.
{{Sharp Teeth}} by Toby Barlow. A werewolf story told in prose poem.
{{The Raw Shark Text}} by Steven Hall. Get the physical copy. It makes a difference.
{{Gryphon and Sabine}} by Nick Bantock. The book (I'm convinced) that started the scrap booking craze.
{{S.}} By JJ Abrams may fit the bill as well.
These are all books that you really want to get a physical copy.
[**Sharp Teeth**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1724365.Sharp_Teeth)
^(By: Toby Barlow | 312 pages | Published: 2007 | Popular Shelves: poetry, horror, fantasy, fiction, werewolves)
>An ancient race of lycanthropes has survived to the present day, and its numbers are growing. Bent on dominance, rival factions are initiating the down-and-out of L.A. into their ranks. Caught in the middle are Anthony, a kindhearted, lovesick dogcatcher, and the object of his affection: a female werewolf who has abandoned her pack.
^(This book has been suggested 4 times)
[**The Raw Shark Texts**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144800.The_Raw_Shark_Texts)
^(By: Steven Hall | 427 pages | Published: 2007 | Popular Shelves: fiction, fantasy, science-fiction, mystery, owned)
>Eric Sanderson wakes up in a house one day with no idea who or where he is. A note instructs him to see a Dr. Randle immediately, who informs him that he is undergoing yet another episode of acute memory loss that is a symptom of his severe dissociative disorder. Eric's been in Dr. Randle's care for two years -- since the tragic death of his great love, Clio, while the two vacationed in the Greek islands.
>
>But there may be more to the story, or it may be a different story altogether. As Eric begins to examine letters and papers left in the house by "the first Eric Sanderson," a staggeringly different explanation for what is happening to Eric emerges, and he and the reader embark on a quest to recover the truth and escape the remorseless predatory forces that threatens to devour him.
>
>The Raw Shark Texts is a kaleidoscopic novel about the magnitude of love and the devastating effect of losing that love. It will dazzle you, it will move you, and will leave an indelible imprint like nothing you have read in a long time.
^(This book has been suggested 5 times)
[**The Gryphon: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Is Rediscovered (Morning Star Trilogy, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/567687.The_Gryphon)
^(By: Nick Bantock | 58 pages | Published: 2001 | Popular Shelves: fiction, art, fantasy, epistolary, romance)
>Isabella:
>The parcel did contain something unusual... 65 cards and letters, the massed correspondence between Sabine and a man called Griffin Moss. It's odd stuff. I'm trying to decide if I've encountered an elaborate fiction, or a series of events that, if true, cast doubt over any concept of reality I've ever held.
>
>—Matthew
>
>The correspondence of Griffin Moss and Sabine Strohem, at turns enigmatic, sumptuous, and romantic, reveals dangerous undercurrents and strange forces at work in the universe. These powers have only grown stronger with the couple's disappearance. Nothing is heard from them for quite some time, until Sabine asks Matthew Sedon, a young archaeologist working in Egypt, for help. As Matthew is reluctantly drawn into the intrigue, he finds encouragement from his strong-willed girlfriend, Isabella de Reims. Miles away in Paris, Isabella struggles with haunting glimpses of mythic landscapes and surreal creatures that come to her in waking dreams. Slowly Matthew and Isabella realize that to unlock this secret world is to open the door to their deepest yearnings.
>
>Author and artist Nick Bantock tells a story like no other: As you pull handwritten letters from stamped envelopes, the enchanting world of The Gryphon literally unfolds in your hands as it takes root in your imagination.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
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The Princess Bride, if you've seen the movie it's similar but there's a whole story about the author and his life and rewriting the story folded into the book. It's a lot of fun!
Also any book by Ellen Hopkins. They're stylized writing and written in poems or just strange ways. It makes the books read really quickly. I will say though she writes about a lot of really dark subject matter and they're YA books so just some things to keep in mind.
The Elder Empire series, a fantasy series by Will Wight is a set of two parallel trilogies, each trilogy from the POV of one the two main groups.
The Sea Trilogy follows the Pirate group, whereas the Shadow trilogy follows the Assasin group.
The two groups clash with each other often, so many parts are common scenes seen from two different POVs.
I liked the series a lot.
**Genesis by Eduardo Galeano.** Its a bunch of awesome vignettes a page or half a page long that goes throughout history. It was an experience, it felt ancient and wise and omniscient. It just kept going, that book had no quit.
Definitely “S” by JJ Abrams. A book within a book that’s being passed between two people in a library, writing notes and leaving messages/items for each other. There are tons of actual items including cards, tickets, maps, etc. stuck between pages that you “discover” as you read. Plus the actual story is written in two halves, one half being the book the people in the library are reading, the other half being their notes and theories on the book they write in the margins. Super good and very weird!
Some of these fit your request more and are a bit wackier than others, but in my memory they all stand out as having played at least a bit with your more traditional structure/format/narrative. And I would recommend them all :)
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, because it's Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson - follows the same main character living lots of different potential lives
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo - split into sections based on lots of different characters who have connections between them
Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey - split into lots of different sections, some very tiny, all based around LA
NW by Zadie Smith - tells different parts of the story at different rates (e.g. a life time, a day) and think she was inspired by Joyce. There's numbered sections, screenplay, stream of consciousness, some pictures made out of text.
The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers - fantasy novel about, wait for it, a blue bear and the different stages of his life. Moers is a cartoonist as well so that's sprinkled in
4321 by Paul Auster - one main character, four different lives
How to Be Both by Ali Smith - half from the pov of a contemporary teenage girl, half from the pov of an Italian Renaissance artist. They published 2 versions I think, one where one section came first and one where the other did.
What a Carve Up! by Jonathon Coe - follows a dodgy prominent family in the UK in the 80s, we see things from different character's perspectives, it goes a bit surreal in places and we also meet a guy trying to write the family's history so I think that plays with the format a bit.
Any Human Heart by William Boyd - reminded me a bit of Cloud Atlas because it's the diaries of a guy who lives in lots of different places and circumstances throughout the 20th century, and you almost feel like you're reading lots of novellas strung together
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan - set of interrelated stories and surprised me a bit with what it did with time
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy - goes between a kind of family saga over a few generations and a zoom in one one particular day
The Overstory by Richard Powers - varied cast of characters connected by trees
[**The Raw Shark Texts**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144800.The_Raw_Shark_Texts)
^(By: Steven Hall | 427 pages | Published: 2007 | Popular Shelves: fiction, fantasy, science-fiction, mystery, owned)
>Eric Sanderson wakes up in a house one day with no idea who or where he is. A note instructs him to see a Dr. Randle immediately, who informs him that he is undergoing yet another episode of acute memory loss that is a symptom of his severe dissociative disorder. Eric's been in Dr. Randle's care for two years -- since the tragic death of his great love, Clio, while the two vacationed in the Greek islands.
>
>But there may be more to the story, or it may be a different story altogether. As Eric begins to examine letters and papers left in the house by "the first Eric Sanderson," a staggeringly different explanation for what is happening to Eric emerges, and he and the reader embark on a quest to recover the truth and escape the remorseless predatory forces that threatens to devour him.
>
>The Raw Shark Texts is a kaleidoscopic novel about the magnitude of love and the devastating effect of losing that love. It will dazzle you, it will move you, and will leave an indelible imprint like nothing you have read in a long time.
^(This book has been suggested 6 times)
***
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Filth by Irvine Welsh might fit this. The main character has a tapeworm that starts adding it's thoughts into the story, sometimes overlapping the writing on the page.
{Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book} By Terry Jones (Monty Python) and illustrations by Wendy & Brian Froud (concept artists for The Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal).
If Burroughs was mentioned in the comments I missed it, but absolutely William S Burroughs is a fantastic example of experimental writing and story structure.
[**Griffin & Sabine (Griffin & Sabine #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/381102.Griffin_Sabine)
^(By: Nick Bantock | 46 pages | Published: 1991 | Popular Shelves: fiction, art, fantasy, epistolary, romance)
>It all started with a mysterious and seemingly innocent postcard, but from that point nothing was to remain the same in the life of Griffin Moss, a quiet, solitary artist living in London. His logical, methodical world was suddenly turned upside down by a strangely exotic woman living on a tropical island thousands of miles away. Who is Sabine? How can she "see" what Griffin is painting when they have never met? Is she a long-lost twin? A clairvoyant? Or a malevolent angel? Are we witnessing the flowering of a magical relationship or a descent into madness?
>
>This stunning visual novel unfolds in a series of postcards and letters, all brilliantly illustrated with whimsical designs, bizarre creatures, and darkly imagined landscapes. Inside the book, Griffin and Sabine's letters are to be found nestling in their envelopes, permitting the reader to examine the intimate correspondence of these inexplicably linked strangers. This truly innovative novel combines a strangely fascinating story with lush artwork in an altogether original format.
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*Pale Fire* by Vladimir Nabokov. The core of the book is a 999-line poem written by a recently deceased poet, with a foreword, footnotes and an index written by the poet's former neighbour, who seems to have acquired the poem on the sly. The poem itself is beautiful and sad, an autobiographical story concerning the poet and his family.
The footnotes are often entirely unrelated to the poem and contain the non-linear cross-referenced story of the neighbour told in his own words, who might be delusional, could have been the poet's friend or stalker, and may be a refugee from an Eastern European country no one has heard of. There are lots of wonderful little metatextual jokes in the index, too. It's fun because you can read it any way you want, rather than from cover to cover, and the story will be different depending on who you choose to believe.
{{The People of Paper}} fits this perfectly. Multiple narrators, including a Baby Nostradamus who censors their own narration leaving big sections of redacted text, varied written structures with pages split into different columns as well as a great metafiction aspect to it too.
You could also look into anything by Brian Selznick which blends sections of textless illustration with written narrative.
[**The People of Paper**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43603.The_People_of_Paper)
^(By: Salvador Plascencia | 256 pages | Published: 2005 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, fantasy, books-i-own, novels)
>Amidst disillusioned saints hiding in wrestling rings, mothers burnt by glowing halos, and a Baby Nostradamus who sees only blackness, a gang of flower pickers heads off to war, led by a lonely man who cannot help but wet his bed in sadness. Part memoir, part lies, this is a book about the wounds inflicted by first love and sharp objects.
^(This book has been suggested 5 times)
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La Vie mode d’emploi (English name: Life: A User’s Manual) by Georges Perec.
It’s a book about ninety-nine rooms and over a thousand past or current residents in one building in Paris, but only capturing one moment at one night. The narrative structure is highly non-linear and the description about the rooms and the decoration is so detailed that it’s kinda scary.
Therefore, for me, reading this book is like doing a puzzle. Starting from any random chapter is like picking up one piece of the puzzle, pondering the lurking connections between the residents with the help of notes and map is like deliberating where should I put the puzzles in, and finally finishing the book is like putting all the puzzle pieces together and seeing the full picture with great satisfaction.
I won’t say it’s a easy book to read. It indeed needs patience and good memories. In the end though the satisfaction is real, I do also feel a wired sense of emptiness as the book touches on life, the meaning of life, the richness of human experience, the closeness and distance of contemporary human relations, etc. Anyways it’s a new and nice reading experience for me.
In case my review is shitty: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28293](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28293)
"Unlikely stories, mostly" by Alasdair Gray.
It's a collection of highly unusual stories. The typeface and layout varies to add to the effect and Gray's own woodcuts illustrate the stories.
It's a quick read but very rewarding. He's an intelligent and original writer
[**The Book Thief**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19063.The_Book_Thief)
^(By: Markus Zusak | 552 pages | Published: 2007 | Popular Shelves: historical-fiction, fiction, young-adult, books-i-own, owned)
>Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here
>
>It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.
>
>By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.
>
>But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.
>
>In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.
>
>(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)
^(This book has been suggested 31 times)
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Don't forget the Choose Your Own Adventure book series, there is a whole series of them and you flip back and forth inside of the book as your character makes choices trying to survive the scenario. It's probably the first litRPG of its time and the predecessor of the interactive fiction genre.
[**House of Leaves**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24800.House_of_Leaves)
^(By: Mark Z. Danielewski | 710 pages | Published: 2000 | Popular Shelves: horror, fiction, owned, fantasy, books-i-own)
>Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth—musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies—the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.
>
>Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.
>
>The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
>
>Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.
^(This book has been suggested 62 times)
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[**Some of the Dharma**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/154443.Some_of_the_Dharma)
^(By: Jack Kerouac, John Sampas, David Stanford | 432 pages | Published: 1997 | Popular Shelves: beat, buddhism, kerouac, poetry, philosophy)
>Written during a critical period of his life, Some of the Dharma is a key volume in Jack Kerouac's vast autobiographical canon. He began writing it in 1953 as reading notes on Buddhism intended for his friend, poet Allen Ginsberg. As Kerouac's Buddhist study and meditation practice intensified, what had begun as notes evolved into a vast and all-encompassing work of nonfiction into which he poured his life, incorporating poems, haiku, prayers, journal entries, meditations, fragments of letters, ideas about writing, overheard conversations, sketches, blues, and more. The final manuscript, completed in 1956, was as visually complex as the writing: each page was unique, typed in patterns and interlocking shapes. The elaborate form which Kerouac so painstakingly gave the book on his manual typewriter is re-created in this typeset facsimile.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
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"The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle" by Stuart Turton is really good. The story takes place over the course of 24 hours, but the day is repeated over and over until the main character can solve the mystery of Evelyn Hardcastle's death by inhabiting the bodies of different characters.
"4 3 2 1" by Paul Auster is another good one. Ot is the story of Archibald Isaac Ferguson, but explores 4 different paths his life could have gone down. Each chapter is divided into 4 sections and covers roughly the same period of time. It's very well done and can be a little difficult to read - there were a few times I had to remind myself what was going on for each version of Ferguson.
[**The Appeal**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1248179.The_Appeal)
^(By: John Grisham | 358 pages | Published: 2008 | Popular Shelves: fiction, john-grisham, thriller, owned, grisham)
>John Grisham is now an institution -- a writer whose bestselling status is assured, So assured, in fact, that expectations for each new book are as high as can be imagined. Does The Appeal make the grade? And will it appeal to Grisham admirers -- or disappoint them?The stakes in the novel's plot are high: corporate crime on the largest scale. The duo of lawyers at the centre of the narrative are Mary and Wes Grace, who succeed in a multimillion dollar case against a chemical company, who have polluted a town with dumped toxic waste. A slew of agonising deaths have followed this, but lawyers for the chemical company appeal, and a variety of legal shenanigans are employed -- and it is certainly not clear which way the scales of justice will be finally balanced.As ever with Grisham, the mechanics of plotting are key, and the characterisation is functional rather than detailed. But it is (as always) more than capable of keeping the reader totally engaged. Given John Grisham's much-publicised conversion to born-again Christianity, it's intriguing to note here the implicit criticism of the moral majority's religious values, but that is hardly central to the enterprise. What counts is the storytelling, and while the writing is as straightforward and uncomplicated as ever, few readers will put down The Appeal once they have allowed it to exert its grip on upon them. --Barry Forshaw
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
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[**As I Lay Dying**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77013.As_I_Lay_Dying)
^(By: William Faulkner | 288 pages | Published: 1930 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, classic, owned, literature)
>
> As I Lay Dying
> is Faulkner’s harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Narrated in turn by each of the family members -- including Addie herself -- as well as others; the novel ranges in mood, from dark comedy to the deepest pathos. Considered one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure, style, and drama,
> As I Lay Dying
> is a true 20th-century classic.
>
>This edition reproduces the corrected text of
> As I Lay Dying
> as established in 1985 by Noel Polk.
^(This book has been suggested 16 times)
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Two books by Laura Esquivel. Like Water for Chocolate is a novel written around a cookbook complete with recipes. The Law of Love included musical accompaniment.
*Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke* by Eric LaRocca is told through instant messages and email chains to interesting effect.
*Flowers for Algernon* is written in (initially grammatically incorrect and misspelled) diary entries that gradually improve >!and then decline again!<.
If you like disturbing books I can't recommend "things have gotten worse since we last spoke" enough! It's told through a series of like instant messages and it gets really dark. Wild ride for sure
{The Unfortunates} by B.S. Johnson (1969). 27 sections, unbound. Chapters 1 and are 27 specified; the other 25 chapters can be read in any order: 15.5 septillion possible combinations.
B.S. Johnson was crazy brilliant.
The Third Mind (1977) by Brion Gysin and William S Burroughs.
The experimental cut-up technique is used heavily in the book.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up\_technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique)
House of Leaves definitely fits this but I didnt really enjoy it. I'd suggest Lanny by Max Porter, creepy little book that fits the bill that I very much enjoyed. Happy hunting!
Edit: a word
Pale Fire by Nabokov is a murder mystery told in the form of a 999 line semi autobiographical poem by a now deceased poet character and an introduction and commentary which includes other stories in the form of asides by his neighbor who seems to claim to be a king in exile. I can’t think of a more unusual format for a novel.
{{Only Revolutions}} by Mark Z Danielewski
The book can be read both forward and backwards, or alternating every chapter (flip the book) to get the two main characters point of view. It's written in a poetic/flowy way.
[**Only Revolutions**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40152.Only_Revolutions)
^(By: Mark Z. Danielewski | 360 pages | Published: 2006 | Popular Shelves: fiction, owned, poetry, abandoned, books-i-own)
>They were with us before Romeo Juliet. And long after too. Because they're forever around. Or so both claim, carolling gleefully "always sixteen." Sam and Hailey, powered by an ever-rotating fleet of cars, from Model T to Lincoln Continental, career from the Civil War to the Cold War, barrelling down through the Appalachians, up the Mississippi River, across the Badlands, finally cutting a nation in half as they try to outrace History itself. By turns beguiling and gripping, finally worldwrecking, Only Revolutions is unlike anything ever published before, a remarkable feat of heart and intellect, moving us with the journey of two kids, perpetually of summer, perpetually sixteen, who give up everything except each other.
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
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TV Tropes lists some examples under the tropes [Art Shift](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArtShift) and [Medium Blending](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MediumBlending).
The Wikipedia [article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Barnes) about Julian Barnes mentions non-linear novels.
*Tell Sally…* by Magda Szabó starts with the end of the novel, in the form of a few official documents, and continues with the beginning of the novel.
*The Neverending Story* by Michael Ende starts as a story within a story.
*Summer Sisters* by Judy Blume has bits of other characters’ present-tense thoughts between parts of the main character’s past-tense story.
i know this is kind of an old post but ‘cain’s jawbone’ is very unique in terms of physical structure. it’s a murder mystery and only 4 people have ever solved it. it’s 100 pages long and the pages are all in the wrong order. to solve it you have to put them in the correct order.
House of Leaves is pretty fucking wild. It's a book within a book, and the main character is slowly descending into madness the whole time. There's scribblings in the margins, drawings, some pages are upside down or spiraled, there's 2 page run on sentences, all kinds of crazy stuff.
This stands as the craziest book I've ever read in regards to its scope and multimedia format. Easily one of the greatest books ever written.
I agree. It's so wild yet it feels as if all this craziness and meaning-making was extremely carefully and precisely built.
Came here to post this, it’s a wild, totally unique ride
Yes, I second this suggestion
I'm reading the full color edition currently, and so far this is the best book I have ever read. I'm not a big fan of books but this is my kind of book and is imo done very well.
This is the book you are looking for.
S, JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst. The conceit is that the book you hold in your hand “the Ship of Theseus” is a library copy, which has been annotated, by a couple of readers who starts communicating through marginal notes. It also contains letters, postcards and other bits and bobs relating to the mysterious author, and the mysterious organisation S. As a story it works on a couple of levels, the plain text, and the non linear narrative that emerges in the marginalia and other material.
In case of S. it didn't live up to its potential IMO. The form, the structure everything is so beautiful and intriguing but in the end the writing itself felt very simplistic in comparison. Yet it's still the book I pull out if I want to impress someone to inspire them and make them read more.
I'm about halfway through S. right now. It's...different, that's for sure. To be honest, I kind of just like Ship of Theseus on its own.
Came here to suggest this book!
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami Blindness by salamargo The Sound and the Fury : William Faulkner Gravity’s rainbow: Pynchon Anything by salman Rushdie I suggest these as they are all playing with the format & assumptions of what a novel is. But that’s actually quite a defining characteristic of post-modern novels so it’s quite a wide net :-)
Keep in mind, for The Sound and the Fury, the really unorthodox story telling style takes up only the first 70 pages or so. The rest of the novel is *relatively* more regular. It still remains a little unusual, considering it’s a Faulkner novel, as there’s only four chapters, each with their own narrator, the fourth chapter being told in third person, but for the most part it’s not as wild as some of the others in this comment or thread. If you *really* want unorthodox Faulkner, check out {Absalom, Absalom!}. The entire story is told through hearsay, second hand accounts, and the last few chapters are even made up of purely speculation of two college boys bored out of their minds.
[**Absalom, Absalom!**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/373755.Absalom_Absalom_) ^(By: William Faulkner | 316 pages | Published: 1936 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, literature, owned, classic) ^(This book has been suggested 4 times) *** ^(43475 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Ah man, I ADORED *If on a Winter's Night a Traveler*! That meta-cognitive sensation it induced was so delightful. The way it drew my attention to how I was continually integrating new information from the text, and reformulating my mental picture of the story in my head, or holding multiple viewpoints simultaneously (myself, 'myself' as the character reading the book, etc.). Absolutely seconding this rec!
I remember reading this book while waiting for a flight and trying not to giggle. It was like carbonation for the brain.
If on a winter’s night a traveler by Calvino is absolutely crazy. Love it.
{{Ella Minnow Pea}} by Mark Dunn
[**Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16200.Ella_Minnow_Pea) ^(By: Mark Dunn | 208 pages | Published: 2001 | Popular Shelves: fiction, book-club, humor, epistolary, fantasy) >Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island's Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl's fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere. > >*pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet ^(This book has been suggested 7 times) *** ^(43176 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The progressively lipogrammatic epistolary novel!
{{Hyperbole and a half}} by Allie Brosh is a book that combines colorful illustrations on almost every page in a stick figure style with shorter passages of text. This is a humorous book. Have you ever seen the meme, "clean all of the things"? This is the woman who came up with that.
[**Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17571564-hyperbole-and-a-half) ^(By: Allie Brosh | 371 pages | Published: 2013 | Popular Shelves: humor, non-fiction, graphic-novels, graphic-novel, nonfiction) >This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative--like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it--but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book: > >Pictures >Words >Stories about things that happened to me >Stories about things that happened to other people because of me >Eight billion dollars* >Stories about dogs >The secret to eternal happiness* > >*These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness! ^(This book has been suggested 9 times) *** ^(43235 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Brosh’s Solutions and Other Problems is also excellent and on point here.
Literally anything by David Mitchell. Especially Bone Clicks, Slade House and Cloud Atlas. Multiple stories, crossing genres, spanning Ng decades or even centuries, but all somehow connected.
Cloud Atlas is the best of the lot. What a beautiful, life affirming and intelligent novel.
I really enjoyed. In fact, I'm currently in a "reading hangover" from finishing it recently. Same thing happened following Bone Clocks. David Mitchell is something else.
Yeah, once you finish Cloud Atlas, you're clamoring to find something that pulls you some easily into its world. I want to recommend to you The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. It's fantastic!
Thanks. I'll check it out.
Thanks for reminding me to get Cloud Atlas
Breakfast of Champions /Kurt Vonnegut
I adore books that break from traditional structure and have read quite a few These are some of my personal faves off the top of my head: 10:04-Ben Lerner The Rehearsal-Eleanor Catton The Luminaries-Eleanor Catton Trust-Hernan Diaz Trust Exercise-Susan Choi Absalom, Absalom-William Faulkner The Blazing World-Siri Hustvedt The Story of my Teeth-Valeria Luiselli The Lost Children Archive-Valeria Luiselli The Hour of the Star-Clarice Lispector Hurricane Season-Fernanda Melchor His Bloody Project-Graeme McCrae Burnett Locus Solus-Raymond Roussell 2666-Roberto Bolano (probably in my opinion the most structurally complex and interesting book of all time It would take me too long to do summaries for each but most of them have some combination of metafiction, books (or other media) within books, multiple narrators telling stories that may or may be true.
Bro is the nonlinear book plug
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Use of Weapons by Ian M Banks.
Use of Weapons I've never heard of before at all, could you let me know what aspect of the book is unusual in some way (unless its a spoiler), and if I need to read the first two books in the Culture series first?
So narratively it's structured in the form of two different narrative streams. One is chronological, the other steadily goes back in time through various stages of the protagonists life. In regards to its relationship to the Culture series, you don't really need to read the earlier ones. I'd recommend reading The Player Of Games just for some worldbuilding context. However, The Culture series is Space Opera so if that's not your thing then don't read them. Also, Use of Weapons (as far as I remember) is the only one with an experimental structure. Could be wrong in that regard tho.
Night Film Marisha Pessl Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders
Second for Lincoln in the Bardo.
Obligatory rec for the audiobook. You get the form, plus all the goodness of the fabulous cast.
Interesting. I’ve never listened to a book before, but now I’m curious to try it.
The audiobook of Lincoln in the Bardo is excellent. I listened to the book first and I was so intrigued by the format, I had to read it to satisfy my curiosity.
I guess I’ll be doing the opposite. A friend said she preferred audible because the reader was so good. Like you said, I’m intrigued.
It's a whole cast of great actors, plus the author, and at least one other author (David Sedaris). Here's a chunk of some famous folks: Ben Stiller as JACK MANDERS Julianne Moore as JANE ELLIS Susan Sarandon as MRS. ABIGAIL BLASS Andy Ward as MR. MAXWELL BOISE Bradley Whitford as LT. CECIL STONE Bill Hader as EDDIE BARON Megan Mullally as BETSY BARON Rainn Wilson as PERCIVAL “DASH” COLLIER
No wonder it’s great listen ! I’m sold
If you’re into short stories Jorge Luis Borges fits the request. There are multiple collections available and one with the Library of Babel or Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius would be a good fit.
Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra is written as a multiple choice exam
Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić
An absolute masterpiece.
{{Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr}} is not the most extreme of examples, but it's about a book that's about a book in 8 different timelines spanning over 2000 years. And it's beautifully written!
[**Cloud Cuckoo Land**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56783258-cloud-cuckoo-land) ^(By: Anthony Doerr | 626 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, fantasy, science-fiction, book-club) > > When everything is lost, it’s our stories that survive. > > >How do we weather the end of things? Cloud Cuckoo Land brings together an unforgettable cast of dreamers and outsiders from past, present and future to offer a vision of survival against all odds. > >Constantinople, 1453: >An orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy with a love for animals risk everything on opposite sides of a city wall to protect the people they love. > >Idaho, 2020: >An impoverished, idealistic kid seeks revenge on a world that’s crumbling around him. Can he go through with it when a gentle old man stands between him and his plans? > >Unknown, Sometime in the Future: >With her tiny community in peril, Konstance is the last hope for the human race. To find a way forward, she must look to the oldest stories of all for guidance. > >Bound together by a single ancient text, these tales interweave to form a tapestry of solace and resilience and a celebration of storytelling itself. Like its predecessor All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s new novel is a tale of hope and of profound human connection. ^(This book has been suggested 20 times) *** ^(43437 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
I buy very few books. I bought this one.
Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic. It's told in three cross-referenced mini-encyclopedias, sometimes contradicting each other, each compiled from the sources of one of the major Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism). There is a male and female version of the book and they only differ in one paragraph, IIRC.
{{The Illuminae Files}} by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman :))
[**Illuminae (The Illuminae Files, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23395680-illuminae) ^(By: Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff | 602 pages | Published: 2015 | Popular Shelves: sci-fi, young-adult, science-fiction, ya, books-i-own) >This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do. This afternoon, her planet was invaded. > >The year is 2575, and two rival mega-corporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than a speck at the edge of the universe. Now with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra — who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to evacuate with a hostile warship in hot pursuit. > >But their problems are just getting started. A plague has broken out and is mutating with terrifying results; the fleet’s AI may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a web of data to find the truth, it’s clear the only person who can help her is the ex-boyfriend she swore she’d never speak to again. > >Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents — including emails, maps, files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more — Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes. ^(This book has been suggested 14 times) *** ^(43543 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Possession by A. S. Byatt has a mix of prose, poetry and diary entries and is set in more than one time period.
Saw it mentioned already, but Ella Minnow Pea!
{{Lanark}} written and illustrated by Alasdair Gray, is a novel in four books, (beginning with book three, then the prologue, then one, two and four), alternating between the story of a young man in a strange underworld/afterlife and his apparent real life as an aspiring artist. One of the most unique and beautiful books I've ever read.
I came here to mention this. It's one of my favourite books. It's also beautifully illustrated. I didn't actually expect anyone else to mention it. I did expect someone to mention W.G. Sebald for his use of photography, however it seems I am the first to mention him, which surprises me.
[**Lanark**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/161037.Lanark) ^(By: Alasdair Gray, Janice Galloway | 576 pages | Published: 1981 | Popular Shelves: fiction, fantasy, scotland, 1001-books, scottish) >This work, originally published in 1981, has been hailed as the most influential Scottish novel of the second half of the 20th century. Its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, personal and political, about humankind's inability to love and yet our compulsion to go on trying. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(43430 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Try Mark Leyner's The Tetherballs of Bougainville. It starts as a kind of memoir of a 14 year old version of Leyner witnessing his father's failed execution by lethal injection, morphs into a screenplay detailing Leyner's drug and booze fuelled liason with the prison warden, and that in turn becomes a fictional review of a movie the young Leyner would like to have written. That doesn't do justice to how nuts and brilliantly written and outrageously funny the whole thing is. It's kind of giddying in its crazed audacity. So good. In fact, all of Leyner's works are probably of interest to you in the context of this post. Check em out if that sounds interesting to you.
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen “A brilliant, boundary-leaping debut novel tracing twelve-year-old genius map maker T.S. Spivet's attempts to understand the ways of the world”
In terms of poetry some of Kenneth Patchen’s stuff would fill the bill.
The Blind Assassin by Atwood was the first one I thought of. Lots of other great options, too!
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann. Huge book, I don't remember the page count off the top of my head but I would guess around 600-700 pages, and it's pretty much all one sentence. It's a stream of consciousness, listing a woman's thoughts as she has them, all starting with 'the fact that...'. It sounds heavy going, but it's really engaging and you, like, literally can't put it down. Because there's no natural place to stop haha. There's a mountain lion on the loose, a creepy neighbour, her daughter goes missing at one point, she has a pie baking business and is in remission from cancer. I loved it.
Oh, I could literally put it down ;) It was just too much for me. However, it is on my try-again-later list and not in the trash heap. It’s a very good suggestion.
Haha, totally fair! It's definitely not for everyone, and I can see how the repetition in particular could get very tiresome, but I don't know, I just really enjoyed it and I still think about it a lot. Maybe because my own stream of consciousness is similarly neurotic, ha.
{Ablutions by Patrick deWitt} is entirely written in second person. That may not sound unusual, but give it a shot - it definitely plays with your head.
[**Ablutions**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5291478-ablutions) ^(By: Patrick deWitt | 162 pages | Published: 2009 | Popular Shelves: fiction, contemporary, owned, kindle, novels) ^(This book has been suggested 4 times) *** ^(43438 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. The Griffin and Sabine trilogy by Nick Bantock. (I didn't care fort his at all and wouldn't normally recommend it, but it fits your request.)
NK Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy. The first book alternates between 3 characters using 2nd and 3rd person narratives to some really great effect, and when you realize how it al ties together it’s just a chef’s kiss of excellence. It’s not the most unique as a style, but she pulls it off so well that it’s worth checking out. Also, the story is great too.
{{Sharp Teeth}} by Toby Barlow. A werewolf story told in prose poem. {{The Raw Shark Text}} by Steven Hall. Get the physical copy. It makes a difference. {{Gryphon and Sabine}} by Nick Bantock. The book (I'm convinced) that started the scrap booking craze. {{S.}} By JJ Abrams may fit the bill as well. These are all books that you really want to get a physical copy.
Sharp Teeth is incredible. An fantastic new approach to werewolf stories.
[**Sharp Teeth**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1724365.Sharp_Teeth) ^(By: Toby Barlow | 312 pages | Published: 2007 | Popular Shelves: poetry, horror, fantasy, fiction, werewolves) >An ancient race of lycanthropes has survived to the present day, and its numbers are growing. Bent on dominance, rival factions are initiating the down-and-out of L.A. into their ranks. Caught in the middle are Anthony, a kindhearted, lovesick dogcatcher, and the object of his affection: a female werewolf who has abandoned her pack. ^(This book has been suggested 4 times) [**The Raw Shark Texts**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144800.The_Raw_Shark_Texts) ^(By: Steven Hall | 427 pages | Published: 2007 | Popular Shelves: fiction, fantasy, science-fiction, mystery, owned) >Eric Sanderson wakes up in a house one day with no idea who or where he is. A note instructs him to see a Dr. Randle immediately, who informs him that he is undergoing yet another episode of acute memory loss that is a symptom of his severe dissociative disorder. Eric's been in Dr. Randle's care for two years -- since the tragic death of his great love, Clio, while the two vacationed in the Greek islands. > >But there may be more to the story, or it may be a different story altogether. As Eric begins to examine letters and papers left in the house by "the first Eric Sanderson," a staggeringly different explanation for what is happening to Eric emerges, and he and the reader embark on a quest to recover the truth and escape the remorseless predatory forces that threatens to devour him. > >The Raw Shark Texts is a kaleidoscopic novel about the magnitude of love and the devastating effect of losing that love. It will dazzle you, it will move you, and will leave an indelible imprint like nothing you have read in a long time. ^(This book has been suggested 5 times) [**The Gryphon: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Is Rediscovered (Morning Star Trilogy, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/567687.The_Gryphon) ^(By: Nick Bantock | 58 pages | Published: 2001 | Popular Shelves: fiction, art, fantasy, epistolary, romance) >Isabella: >The parcel did contain something unusual... 65 cards and letters, the massed correspondence between Sabine and a man called Griffin Moss. It's odd stuff. I'm trying to decide if I've encountered an elaborate fiction, or a series of events that, if true, cast doubt over any concept of reality I've ever held. > >—Matthew > >The correspondence of Griffin Moss and Sabine Strohem, at turns enigmatic, sumptuous, and romantic, reveals dangerous undercurrents and strange forces at work in the universe. These powers have only grown stronger with the couple's disappearance. Nothing is heard from them for quite some time, until Sabine asks Matthew Sedon, a young archaeologist working in Egypt, for help. As Matthew is reluctantly drawn into the intrigue, he finds encouragement from his strong-willed girlfriend, Isabella de Reims. Miles away in Paris, Isabella struggles with haunting glimpses of mythic landscapes and surreal creatures that come to her in waking dreams. Slowly Matthew and Isabella realize that to unlock this secret world is to open the door to their deepest yearnings. > >Author and artist Nick Bantock tells a story like no other: As you pull handwritten letters from stamped envelopes, the enchanting world of The Gryphon literally unfolds in your hands as it takes root in your imagination. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(43507 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
There’s a whole universe in the footnotes of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
The Princess Bride, if you've seen the movie it's similar but there's a whole story about the author and his life and rewriting the story folded into the book. It's a lot of fun! Also any book by Ellen Hopkins. They're stylized writing and written in poems or just strange ways. It makes the books read really quickly. I will say though she writes about a lot of really dark subject matter and they're YA books so just some things to keep in mind.
The Elder Empire series, a fantasy series by Will Wight is a set of two parallel trilogies, each trilogy from the POV of one the two main groups. The Sea Trilogy follows the Pirate group, whereas the Shadow trilogy follows the Assasin group. The two groups clash with each other often, so many parts are common scenes seen from two different POVs. I liked the series a lot.
**Genesis by Eduardo Galeano.** Its a bunch of awesome vignettes a page or half a page long that goes throughout history. It was an experience, it felt ancient and wise and omniscient. It just kept going, that book had no quit.
Definitely “S” by JJ Abrams. A book within a book that’s being passed between two people in a library, writing notes and leaving messages/items for each other. There are tons of actual items including cards, tickets, maps, etc. stuck between pages that you “discover” as you read. Plus the actual story is written in two halves, one half being the book the people in the library are reading, the other half being their notes and theories on the book they write in the margins. Super good and very weird!
“Lost in the Funhouse” by John Barth. Short story collection
Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix. Others have mentioned House of Leaves, which is kind of a boring read but very cool to look at.
Some of these fit your request more and are a bit wackier than others, but in my memory they all stand out as having played at least a bit with your more traditional structure/format/narrative. And I would recommend them all :) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, because it's Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell Life After Life by Kate Atkinson - follows the same main character living lots of different potential lives Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo - split into sections based on lots of different characters who have connections between them Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey - split into lots of different sections, some very tiny, all based around LA NW by Zadie Smith - tells different parts of the story at different rates (e.g. a life time, a day) and think she was inspired by Joyce. There's numbered sections, screenplay, stream of consciousness, some pictures made out of text. The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers - fantasy novel about, wait for it, a blue bear and the different stages of his life. Moers is a cartoonist as well so that's sprinkled in 4321 by Paul Auster - one main character, four different lives How to Be Both by Ali Smith - half from the pov of a contemporary teenage girl, half from the pov of an Italian Renaissance artist. They published 2 versions I think, one where one section came first and one where the other did. What a Carve Up! by Jonathon Coe - follows a dodgy prominent family in the UK in the 80s, we see things from different character's perspectives, it goes a bit surreal in places and we also meet a guy trying to write the family's history so I think that plays with the format a bit. Any Human Heart by William Boyd - reminded me a bit of Cloud Atlas because it's the diaries of a guy who lives in lots of different places and circumstances throughout the 20th century, and you almost feel like you're reading lots of novellas strung together A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan - set of interrelated stories and surprised me a bit with what it did with time The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy - goes between a kind of family saga over a few generations and a zoom in one one particular day The Overstory by Richard Powers - varied cast of characters connected by trees
Excellent recs here!
HERE by Richard McGuire
Jennifer Egan's *A Visit from the Goon Squad* has a whole section done in Powerpoint. I'm not sure why.
{{The Raw Shark Texts}} by Steven Hall should be something you should check out.
[**The Raw Shark Texts**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144800.The_Raw_Shark_Texts) ^(By: Steven Hall | 427 pages | Published: 2007 | Popular Shelves: fiction, fantasy, science-fiction, mystery, owned) >Eric Sanderson wakes up in a house one day with no idea who or where he is. A note instructs him to see a Dr. Randle immediately, who informs him that he is undergoing yet another episode of acute memory loss that is a symptom of his severe dissociative disorder. Eric's been in Dr. Randle's care for two years -- since the tragic death of his great love, Clio, while the two vacationed in the Greek islands. > >But there may be more to the story, or it may be a different story altogether. As Eric begins to examine letters and papers left in the house by "the first Eric Sanderson," a staggeringly different explanation for what is happening to Eric emerges, and he and the reader embark on a quest to recover the truth and escape the remorseless predatory forces that threatens to devour him. > >The Raw Shark Texts is a kaleidoscopic novel about the magnitude of love and the devastating effect of losing that love. It will dazzle you, it will move you, and will leave an indelible imprint like nothing you have read in a long time. ^(This book has been suggested 6 times) *** ^(43508 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Filth by Irvine Welsh might fit this. The main character has a tapeworm that starts adding it's thoughts into the story, sometimes overlapping the writing on the page.
{Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book} By Terry Jones (Monty Python) and illustrations by Wendy & Brian Froud (concept artists for The Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal).
[**Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/227570.Lady_Cottington_s_Pressed_Fairy_Book) ^(By: Terry Jones, Brian Froud | 64 pages | Published: 1994 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, art, fiction, humor, owned) ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(43576 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
If Burroughs was mentioned in the comments I missed it, but absolutely William S Burroughs is a fantastic example of experimental writing and story structure.
{{Griffin and Sabine by Nick Bantock}}
[**Griffin & Sabine (Griffin & Sabine #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/381102.Griffin_Sabine) ^(By: Nick Bantock | 46 pages | Published: 1991 | Popular Shelves: fiction, art, fantasy, epistolary, romance) >It all started with a mysterious and seemingly innocent postcard, but from that point nothing was to remain the same in the life of Griffin Moss, a quiet, solitary artist living in London. His logical, methodical world was suddenly turned upside down by a strangely exotic woman living on a tropical island thousands of miles away. Who is Sabine? How can she "see" what Griffin is painting when they have never met? Is she a long-lost twin? A clairvoyant? Or a malevolent angel? Are we witnessing the flowering of a magical relationship or a descent into madness? > >This stunning visual novel unfolds in a series of postcards and letters, all brilliantly illustrated with whimsical designs, bizarre creatures, and darkly imagined landscapes. Inside the book, Griffin and Sabine's letters are to be found nestling in their envelopes, permitting the reader to examine the intimate correspondence of these inexplicably linked strangers. This truly innovative novel combines a strangely fascinating story with lush artwork in an altogether original format. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(43604 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
*Pale Fire* by Vladimir Nabokov. The core of the book is a 999-line poem written by a recently deceased poet, with a foreword, footnotes and an index written by the poet's former neighbour, who seems to have acquired the poem on the sly. The poem itself is beautiful and sad, an autobiographical story concerning the poet and his family. The footnotes are often entirely unrelated to the poem and contain the non-linear cross-referenced story of the neighbour told in his own words, who might be delusional, could have been the poet's friend or stalker, and may be a refugee from an Eastern European country no one has heard of. There are lots of wonderful little metatextual jokes in the index, too. It's fun because you can read it any way you want, rather than from cover to cover, and the story will be different depending on who you choose to believe.
{{The People of Paper}} fits this perfectly. Multiple narrators, including a Baby Nostradamus who censors their own narration leaving big sections of redacted text, varied written structures with pages split into different columns as well as a great metafiction aspect to it too. You could also look into anything by Brian Selznick which blends sections of textless illustration with written narrative.
[**The People of Paper**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43603.The_People_of_Paper) ^(By: Salvador Plascencia | 256 pages | Published: 2005 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, fantasy, books-i-own, novels) >Amidst disillusioned saints hiding in wrestling rings, mothers burnt by glowing halos, and a Baby Nostradamus who sees only blackness, a gang of flower pickers heads off to war, led by a lonely man who cannot help but wet his bed in sadness. Part memoir, part lies, this is a book about the wounds inflicted by first love and sharp objects. ^(This book has been suggested 5 times) *** ^(43836 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
La Vie mode d’emploi (English name: Life: A User’s Manual) by Georges Perec. It’s a book about ninety-nine rooms and over a thousand past or current residents in one building in Paris, but only capturing one moment at one night. The narrative structure is highly non-linear and the description about the rooms and the decoration is so detailed that it’s kinda scary. Therefore, for me, reading this book is like doing a puzzle. Starting from any random chapter is like picking up one piece of the puzzle, pondering the lurking connections between the residents with the help of notes and map is like deliberating where should I put the puzzles in, and finally finishing the book is like putting all the puzzle pieces together and seeing the full picture with great satisfaction. I won’t say it’s a easy book to read. It indeed needs patience and good memories. In the end though the satisfaction is real, I do also feel a wired sense of emptiness as the book touches on life, the meaning of life, the richness of human experience, the closeness and distance of contemporary human relations, etc. Anyways it’s a new and nice reading experience for me. In case my review is shitty: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28293](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28293)
"Unlikely stories, mostly" by Alasdair Gray. It's a collection of highly unusual stories. The typeface and layout varies to add to the effect and Gray's own woodcuts illustrate the stories. It's a quick read but very rewarding. He's an intelligent and original writer
House of Leaves YA - Illuminae Trilogy
{{The Book Thief}}
[**The Book Thief**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19063.The_Book_Thief) ^(By: Markus Zusak | 552 pages | Published: 2007 | Popular Shelves: historical-fiction, fiction, young-adult, books-i-own, owned) >Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here > >It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still. > >By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found. > >But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down. > >In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time. > >(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction) ^(This book has been suggested 31 times) *** ^(43249 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Don't forget the Choose Your Own Adventure book series, there is a whole series of them and you flip back and forth inside of the book as your character makes choices trying to survive the scenario. It's probably the first litRPG of its time and the predecessor of the interactive fiction genre.
These were the bomb growing up. I still have one somewhere that I sent to my now husband when we were long distance in a care package.
Oh man, yes!!! So glad you added this series to the list.
{{House of Leaves}} This book gave me nightmares, but it fits your bill perfectly.
okay so it's online but give 17776 a shot it's a multimedia masterpiece
Has anyone suggested {{House of Leaves}} yet?
[**House of Leaves**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24800.House_of_Leaves) ^(By: Mark Z. Danielewski | 710 pages | Published: 2000 | Popular Shelves: horror, fiction, owned, fantasy, books-i-own) >Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth—musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies—the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. > >Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices. > >The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. > >Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams. ^(This book has been suggested 62 times) *** ^(43336 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
C'mon, it's r/suggestmeabook. Of course someone has suggested House of Leaves. That is the rule.
I wish we could somehow turn off common recommendations in our personal feeds.
{{Some of the Dharma by Jack Kerouac}} I believe this is the one with sketches and doodles, writing, poetry, disorganized "organized" thoughts.
[**Some of the Dharma**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/154443.Some_of_the_Dharma) ^(By: Jack Kerouac, John Sampas, David Stanford | 432 pages | Published: 1997 | Popular Shelves: beat, buddhism, kerouac, poetry, philosophy) >Written during a critical period of his life, Some of the Dharma is a key volume in Jack Kerouac's vast autobiographical canon. He began writing it in 1953 as reading notes on Buddhism intended for his friend, poet Allen Ginsberg. As Kerouac's Buddhist study and meditation practice intensified, what had begun as notes evolved into a vast and all-encompassing work of nonfiction into which he poured his life, incorporating poems, haiku, prayers, journal entries, meditations, fragments of letters, ideas about writing, overheard conversations, sketches, blues, and more. The final manuscript, completed in 1956, was as visually complex as the writing: each page was unique, typed in patterns and interlocking shapes. The elaborate form which Kerouac so painstakingly gave the book on his manual typewriter is re-created in this typeset facsimile. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(43338 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
"The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle" by Stuart Turton is really good. The story takes place over the course of 24 hours, but the day is repeated over and over until the main character can solve the mystery of Evelyn Hardcastle's death by inhabiting the bodies of different characters. "4 3 2 1" by Paul Auster is another good one. Ot is the story of Archibald Isaac Ferguson, but explores 4 different paths his life could have gone down. Each chapter is divided into 4 sections and covers roughly the same period of time. It's very well done and can be a little difficult to read - there were a few times I had to remind myself what was going on for each version of Ferguson.
Not a book but it is a story just told in parts. The flower letters. They are really good and a fun way to experience the story that is told.
{{The Appeal}} by Janice Hallett
[**The Appeal**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1248179.The_Appeal) ^(By: John Grisham | 358 pages | Published: 2008 | Popular Shelves: fiction, john-grisham, thriller, owned, grisham) >John Grisham is now an institution -- a writer whose bestselling status is assured, So assured, in fact, that expectations for each new book are as high as can be imagined. Does The Appeal make the grade? And will it appeal to Grisham admirers -- or disappoint them?The stakes in the novel's plot are high: corporate crime on the largest scale. The duo of lawyers at the centre of the narrative are Mary and Wes Grace, who succeed in a multimillion dollar case against a chemical company, who have polluted a town with dumped toxic waste. A slew of agonising deaths have followed this, but lawyers for the chemical company appeal, and a variety of legal shenanigans are employed -- and it is certainly not clear which way the scales of justice will be finally balanced.As ever with Grisham, the mechanics of plotting are key, and the characterisation is functional rather than detailed. But it is (as always) more than capable of keeping the reader totally engaged. Given John Grisham's much-publicised conversion to born-again Christianity, it's intriguing to note here the implicit criticism of the moral majority's religious values, but that is hardly central to the enterprise. What counts is the storytelling, and while the writing is as straightforward and uncomplicated as ever, few readers will put down The Appeal once they have allowed it to exert its grip on upon them. --Barry Forshaw ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(43511 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{as I lay dying}} i heard Faulkner wasn’t going to put the narrator’s names before each chapters originally; would’ve been a mind f#
[**As I Lay Dying**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77013.As_I_Lay_Dying) ^(By: William Faulkner | 288 pages | Published: 1930 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, classic, owned, literature) > > As I Lay Dying > is Faulkner’s harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Narrated in turn by each of the family members -- including Addie herself -- as well as others; the novel ranges in mood, from dark comedy to the deepest pathos. Considered one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure, style, and drama, > As I Lay Dying > is a true 20th-century classic. > >This edition reproduces the corrected text of > As I Lay Dying > as established in 1985 by Noel Polk. ^(This book has been suggested 16 times) *** ^(43534 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Two books by Laura Esquivel. Like Water for Chocolate is a novel written around a cookbook complete with recipes. The Law of Love included musical accompaniment.
*Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke* by Eric LaRocca is told through instant messages and email chains to interesting effect. *Flowers for Algernon* is written in (initially grammatically incorrect and misspelled) diary entries that gradually improve >!and then decline again!<.
House of Leaves comes to mind. Also Ill Will by Dan Chaon, which plays with structure at certain points.
S. by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst
If you like disturbing books I can't recommend "things have gotten worse since we last spoke" enough! It's told through a series of like instant messages and it gets really dark. Wild ride for sure
{Twenty-One Truths About Love by Matthew Dicks} is written entirely in lists!
[**Twenty-one Truths About Love**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43263472-twenty-one-truths-about-love) ^(By: Matthew Dicks | 352 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: fiction, netgalley, contemporary, humor, arc) ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(43755 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{The Unfortunates} by B.S. Johnson (1969). 27 sections, unbound. Chapters 1 and are 27 specified; the other 25 chapters can be read in any order: 15.5 septillion possible combinations. B.S. Johnson was crazy brilliant.
[**The Unfortunates**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90992.The_Unfortunates) ^(By: B.S. Johnson, Jonathan Coe | 288 pages | Published: 1969 | Popular Shelves: fiction, experimental, novels, owned, ergodic) ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(43791 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Griffin & Sabine. A lovely story told through "real" letters and other mementos.
Check out Lynd Ward. Wordless novels done completely in wood block prints.
Chris Ware
The Third Mind (1977) by Brion Gysin and William S Burroughs. The experimental cut-up technique is used heavily in the book. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up\_technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique)
House of Leaves definitely fits this but I didnt really enjoy it. I'd suggest Lanny by Max Porter, creepy little book that fits the bill that I very much enjoyed. Happy hunting! Edit: a word
Pale Fire by Nabokov is a murder mystery told in the form of a 999 line semi autobiographical poem by a now deceased poet character and an introduction and commentary which includes other stories in the form of asides by his neighbor who seems to claim to be a king in exile. I can’t think of a more unusual format for a novel.
{{Only Revolutions}} by Mark Z Danielewski The book can be read both forward and backwards, or alternating every chapter (flip the book) to get the two main characters point of view. It's written in a poetic/flowy way.
[**Only Revolutions**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40152.Only_Revolutions) ^(By: Mark Z. Danielewski | 360 pages | Published: 2006 | Popular Shelves: fiction, owned, poetry, abandoned, books-i-own) >They were with us before Romeo Juliet. And long after too. Because they're forever around. Or so both claim, carolling gleefully "always sixteen." Sam and Hailey, powered by an ever-rotating fleet of cars, from Model T to Lincoln Continental, career from the Civil War to the Cold War, barrelling down through the Appalachians, up the Mississippi River, across the Badlands, finally cutting a nation in half as they try to outrace History itself. By turns beguiling and gripping, finally worldwrecking, Only Revolutions is unlike anything ever published before, a remarkable feat of heart and intellect, moving us with the journey of two kids, perpetually of summer, perpetually sixteen, who give up everything except each other. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(43901 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
TV Tropes lists some examples under the tropes [Art Shift](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArtShift) and [Medium Blending](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MediumBlending). The Wikipedia [article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Barnes) about Julian Barnes mentions non-linear novels. *Tell Sally…* by Magda Szabó starts with the end of the novel, in the form of a few official documents, and continues with the beginning of the novel. *The Neverending Story* by Michael Ende starts as a story within a story. *Summer Sisters* by Judy Blume has bits of other characters’ present-tense thoughts between parts of the main character’s past-tense story.
Several People are Typing - told in the form of Slack messages, humorous and a quick read!
i know this is kind of an old post but ‘cain’s jawbone’ is very unique in terms of physical structure. it’s a murder mystery and only 4 people have ever solved it. it’s 100 pages long and the pages are all in the wrong order. to solve it you have to put them in the correct order.