Unusual Books and Where to Find Them

Books are comforting. Despite the peculiarities of every author, each genre has its predictable elements. When a reader rests their fingers on the spine or settles their earbuds into their ears, they can feel or hear the heartbeat of that genre’s schema, and they know the rhythm of the storyline: when characters will be introduced, the near-inevitability of the love interest or friendship, the dizzying build-up of action towards the end, typically prophesized by the diminishing number of pages or minutes until the end of the story. Veteran readers know the hero’s journey by heart and the three-act structure.

But what about the stories that escape the restraints of genre conventions, page format, or character tropes?

Step into your local library to catch one of these wild titles.

Turn to the first chapter of “Invisible Monsters: Remix” by Chuck Palahniuk…. Or do you start at Chapter 41? Everyone knows you start at Chapter 1. But the instructions at the end of the introduction are explicit, “Now. Please. Jump to Chapter 41.” And there it is—Chapter 1 seems to have an explanation of the book: it and the introduction express how this book is meant to be read like a Sears Catalog (for those who remember what that is, the author, himself, laments its passing), that it is meant to be “ten thousand fashion separates that mix and match to create maybe five tasteful outfits,” instead of one cohesive narrative. This is a book that disguises whether you’re at the beginning, middle, or end and leaves the reader dazed, wondering: “Was I really supposed to start at Chapter 41 where someone is walking around with a shotgun in a wedding dress?!”

Or perhaps you would like a book whose chapter chronology is more typical. Just be careful when you pick up “S.” by Doug Dorst and J. J. Abrams. You might be surprised by what falls out between the pages: a Konfidentiell letter translated from German, a postcard from Brazil, and maybe, a cipher wheel for hidden messages. Don’t be alarmed by the thousands of handwritten annotations along the “Ship of Theseus’” margins – yes, you read that right, the main text is “The Ship of Theseus” by acclaimed V. M. Straka and translated by F. X. Caldeira. No, you did not pick up the wrong book. Look closer at the notes scribbled in the margins. They weren’t left there by your ordinary library vandal. Dorst and Abrams artfully weave three stories together, “The Ship of Theseus,” political intrigue evident in the translator’s footnotes, and of two readers who use this book to pass notes about secret societies and romance. They’re layered like a millefleur cake, leaving the reader to decide whether you want to take a bite and read one page at a time, ingesting all three stories simultaneously, or peel each layer off from the bottom down, reading just the “Ship of Theseus” before seeing the intrigue of the footnotes and annotations.

There are other curiosities to be found. “House of Leaves” by Danielewski nests a story within a story, heavy with footnotes, pages missing squares of text, segments written backward, struck-out paragraphs, and full two-page spreads with the eerily spaced words, (“The                 after                math,”) in this terrifying tale of mounting horror. The infamous “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace will wind you in an unsteady path around a film by the same name; one so entertaining viewers die upon watching it, so enthralling that the United States government has to stop a terrorist organization from disseminating it to the public.

The dreamlike lilt of James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” can be started at any point in the novel and continues in a never-ending cycle, ending mid-sentence before that same sentence picks up in the first chapter. And there’s “Vellum” by Hal Duncan, where each character is an archetype, altering slightly per section. Each section takes place in a different dimension, with each dimensional identity waging the same war differently. The possibilities in such stories are infinite.

You can settle back into the predictability of a book’s normal heartbeat and take comfort in its genre conventions. You can let a book lament its passing by the dwindling number of pages like it is running out of inky tears to tell its tale. Sometimes, though, if you’re feeling adventurous, you can appreciate the tameness of those novels by comparison to the zaniness of others. Whether those that are wild or those that are tame, what are you waiting for? Pick up a book and turn to Chapter… 1?

Written by Heather Miller, Haymarket Gainesville Library