Top Ten Tuesday | Books To Read If You Are In The Mood For Something Different

This weekly meme was was created by The Broke and the Bookish. This today’s theme is a “Ten Books To Read If You Are In The Mood For X“. 

I chose to go with “books to read if you’re in the mood for something different,” which is a pretty loose topic and obviously dependent on what you’ve read already. What’s different to me might not be different to you if you read a lot in that genre. Whatever, let’s roll. 

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Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Obviously I’m including my recent favorite. This is a fantasy novel about Karou, a girl who lives half in Prague and half in “Elsewhere” with her Chimaera friends/family. It’s also a romance, which might turn some of you off but the romance is so intriguing, I’m flailing all over myself just thinking about it. It’s such an unique take on YA fantasy and the writing is stunning. Read it. [review]

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Vicious

Another favorite. If you haven’t heard about it yet, it’s a story about “supervillains” trying to kill each other. Victor and Eli used to be best friends in college, but then they found out how to get superpowers and all went to hell. I want to build a shrine to this book, it’s phenomenal. It’s so well written and all the characters are great. I don’t re-read books unless the title has “Harry Potter and the” in it, but I’m making an exception for this one when the sequel comes out. [review]

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More Than This

Oh, Patrick Ness. I love this book, it was a complete page-turner for me. Some think the beginning is slow, but I thought the beginning was the best part. It’s best to go into this book completely blind, but it starts with the main character dying… and then waking up, somewhere completely different. This book is a mindfuck in the best of ways. [revew]

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The Knife of Never Letting Go

Another Patrick Ness book, because why not. This is a dystopian trilogy about New World,  a planet where everyone can hear each other’s thoughts (including animals, though they don’t have a lot of interesting stuff to say, it’s mostly just hilarious). What sets this apart the most is probably the writing style, because it’s written the way people talk, so in dialect. It might be hard to get into for some, but it’s worth it. If you think reading it is too annoying then I really recommend the audiobook. I listened to the audiobook of the first novel and then read the second. It was great. [review of book one] [review of book two]

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Horrorstör

This is where it gets weird. This is a bizarre little book. It’s a horror story set in a knock-off IKEA called Orsk. The employees start to suspect someone’s hiding in the store at night, so they decide to stay the night and investigate. Always a good idea… The writing in this book might not be the best, and the characters are pretty simple, but I thought it was fun and actually pretty creepy at times. The cover looks like an IKEA catalog and inside there are furniture designs (or whatever they’re called) with bizarre and ridiculous names (at times Swedish or pseudo-Swedish, so extra hilarious for us Scandinavians). I was entertained. [review]

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Cloud Atlas

I used the movie cover because it illustrates the different genres in this book pretty well. This was an assigned read for me, I never would have picked it up if it wasn’t for that. And to be honest I probably wouldn’t have gotten through the first chapter if I didn’t have to read it. This is a book that consists of six novellas, all in a different genre and a different time period. Yet somehow, they’re connected. It’s weird, sometimes hard to read (but sometimes really simple, it depends on which story you’re on), and very clever. It makes you go BUT WHICH STORY IS THE REAL ONE OH MY GOD. In the end I really enjoyed it.

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House of Leaves

This book is in a league of its own. I read it five years ago or so and it’s still one of my favorite books. It’s amazing and it’s so complex, you need to really commit to reading this. At times it reads like a textbook, at times it reads like a horror novel that makes the back of your neck prickle. I can’t really explain this book, I keep trying but I think it needs its own post. Basically it’s a story within a story, with annotations and notes where you’ll have to flip back and forth. First off, it’s about a house that’s larger on the outside than inside, naturally the family that lives there are confused. The investigation begins in a series of films called The Navidson Records. Now a blind man named Zampano is investigating these records, but dies and leaves behind him all his scattered notes. With me so far? Okay. His unfinished work then ends up in the hands Johnny Truant, who becomes obsessed with Zampano’s work and attempts to complete it, but his mental state is… questionable. Additionally there are anonymous editors and everything is a glorious mess.

Do not read this as an ebook. Just don’t. You need a physical copy, one you can turn around and flip back and forth in easily. You’ll need to turn it in all kinds of directions, you’ll also need a mirror, possibly a magnifying glass, and pen and paper because you’ll be deciphering some real creepy stuff. 

I’ve also read Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, which I believe was one of the inspirations for House of Leaves.

I’ve heard it changes every time you read it, depending on what order you read what in, so I’m also planning on re-reading it soon. 

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Have you read any of these? Do you know of any similar books, especially ones written in a different format, like House of Leaves? I call this format porn, alternatively layout porn. I have Illuminae and Night Film on my tbr, though the latter isn’t that out there but it has some quirks I like.

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