This is my 799th post. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.... well, besides the 800th post. I KNOW that, but what the heck will I post about? Food? Books? Random thoughts on life? Even I don't know at this point.
But for now...
and this week's question is:
What is the weirdest/strangest/craziest book you’ve read?
This is easy---I have a tie, tho. Both books have been for one of my bookclubs, The Lit Wits.
On Friday night we met to discuss
Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.
It was---really strange. It's hard to describe a strange book. I can't find the words. So let me just give you what Goodreads says:
Jitterbug Perfume
is an epic.
Which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn’t conclude until nine o’clock tonight (Paris time).
It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle.
The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat-horned god.
If the liquid in the bottle actually is the secret essence of the universe, as some folks seem to think, it had better be discovered soon because it is leaking and there is only a drop or two left
I will say again, that although, this was tied for one of the strangest books I've ever read, it was also interesting, and kept me reading to the very end. I was not about to put it down, because I had to figure out what the hell was going on.
Also, I'm sure smarter people than me 'got' this book and 'loved' it. I feel stupid now.
I think everyone in my book club felt a bit stupid too. It made for great discussion tho. I mean it covered, The god Pan, perfume and the reasons why perfume was used/invented, present day Seattle, Paris and New Orleans, as well as ancient death rituals. Oh yeah, and kissing hadn't been discovered at the beginning of them book, but sex? Oh man sex had been discovered! And there was lots of it in this book.
It's really a hard book to describe. (sigh)
We had a great time at book club tho--we always do!
(these kinds of books are the ones we will talk about for months to come)
The second book which tied for the strangest is:
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
and again, Goodreads says:
Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and pater familias set out–with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes–to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There’s Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious–and dangerous–asset.
As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.
I couldn't say it better myself.
We Lit Wits consider this book our signature book, because we were both horrified and intrigued at the same time. We all finished it. And we give it to any newcomer to the group.
So those two are the strangest books I've ever read in my life.
What about you?
1 comment:
Well, at least y'all aren't afraid to branch out and try something different!
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