The Weirdest Books You Have Read

Since I am almost a professional at Interlibrary Loan, I have read many, many weird books in my day. Some gems:

Miss Ulysses of Puka-Puka, by Florence "Johnnie" Frisby (A white South Sea Trader's daughter grows up in the Cook Islands during the 1930s, and her mother is a Native Woman.) Actually, I read about it in another book, and it sounded interesting. It was, particularly when the author bought a mechanical toy mouse in Tahiti and impressed the folks back in Puka-Puka with it. They had never seen anything like it before in their lives. The author also strongly recommended that other traders do the same.

Jogging Round the World: riders and drivers, with curious steeds or vehicles, in strange lands and at home by Edith Dunham, published in 1905. It was mostly a book full of photos of weird vehicles, and my mother and I were intrigued by the word "jogging" and wondered what it meant back in 1905!

The World Of the Young Pioneer, by Stanislav Furin. An encyclopedia of the Communist Young Pioneer organization. Originally written in Russian, of course, but I've read an English version a few times. Half of it is an encyclopedia and the other half is some 100 pictures of Young Pioneers doing various things. Very interesting stuff. In the book it blithely states that "Communism is the fairest form of government...." It was written in the early 80s.

Roadside Japan: A huge book full of Japanese roadside attractions, museums, and amusement parks.

To continue your travel theme, Half Safe by Ben Carlin, subtitled Across the Atlantic by Jeep (yes, truly, the Atlantic, by Jeep), illustrated with photos, is a strange book rendered even more bizarre by the author's uncanny resemblance to Robin Williams (I kept envisioning the "movie version").

I'm working part-time as a Library assistant, and the weirdest interlibrary loan I ever handled was probably one for a book about ski waxing called something like "Wax Right! Modern Ski wax Techniques".

I guess it's not that strange, but I remember this distinct feeling of weirdness as I sent it... possibly because it was in early September.

Wierd on purpose - Animals of the Ocean, in Particular the Giant Squid

Just wierd - Outhouses of the West

Os.

Leadville is a book about the A40 Westway approach road to London. I've read it twice.

Do Plays I've seen/read count?

"Orgasmo Adulto Escapes from the Zoo"

I've not read it yet (I just got it), but Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! promises to be weird on some level.

Os.

#4- by the same authors as Animals of the Ocean, which I've been seeeking for some time now...
Your Disgusting Head.

The owners of Bolerium Books (www.bolerium.com) have an in-store collection of books with titles starting with the words "The Romance of...." The best title in their collection: The Romance of Proctology!

The most Disturbing non-fiction work that I have read is 'THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT because the kinds of neurological disorders that can disrupt one's mental functions, without one becoming insane, were so bizarre and uncontrollable that it was Scary to think that someone's mind can go that much out of control.
One of the simpler one's was when a man's sense of smell became enhanced to the point that just being in a crowd of people was enough to make him nauseous. He eventually could not leave his home due to the overwhelming intensity of the smells in the outside world. Check it out, and good luck.

Another was, no kidding, How to Survive the Coming War with the Robots or something like that.

#8 - I found Giraffes? Giraffes! and Your Disgusting Head on a remainder table two years ago. Can't wait to find Animals of the Ocean.

Heyyy, I've heard of The Man who mistook his Wife for a Hat, about a guy with split personality disorder or something. It's something you read if you study Psychology, I think

The man who mistook his wife for a hat was written by Oliver Sacks who also wrote Awakenings and a number of other fascinating books. The movie Awakenings, with Robin Williams as Dr. Sacks, was based on this book.

10/12/13,

I loved The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. It is a great collection of stories of savants, aphashics (sic), and shocking memory loss, sometimes as the result of VD.

This is not really the weirdest book I've ever read, but it is a classic combination of Ozark sociology and sophomoric, dirty jokes. It's called Pissing in the Snow and other Ozark Folk Tales.

#14-I found a copy of Pissing in the Snow at a library book sale just a few days after reading a mention of it on LT and deciding that I NEEDED A COPY IMMEDIATELY.

Sorry, I just don't think these are weird enough. My own list:

Lenin's Embalmers, a story of the son of the man first entrusted to preserve Lenin's body, and his wonderful career

Ellen, or the Old Pine: a book "discovered" by the science writer Martin Gardner, in which an old pine tree teaches a little girl geometry for 1,000 pages

Science and Sanity, by Count Alfred Korzybski: the founder of a movement that is still around; the book itself is extremely strange, and includes peg-board models of consciousness as experienced by dogs.

Jean-Pierre Brisset, The science of God, or, The creation of man: a book by a psychotic man, who claimed he could understand the language of frogs, which was based on Latin

More?

More? Definitely!

...my wishlist if filling up rapidly *hrhrhr* Definitly more, please.

I will have to look my collection over, to check for weirder possibilities.

A possibility now is:
The sayings of Lao Zi (sic), Book 2. Ed. and illus.* by Tsai Chih Chung. Tr. by
Kuh Ko Kiang.
84 p

series: Asiapac Comic Series
sub-series: The Silence of the Wise

Singapore, Asiapac, May, 1992

There is not a word of Chinese in the book, except for about 35 words on the last page (verso of a "Coming Soon..." advertising page.)

*The illustrations are completely in comic strip format. Other than the dialogue in the comic strips, there is no text. (There is an introduction of (=) 3 pages, and chapter(?) headings.)

On #19

The book in #19 is of course The Tao Te Ching of (as the name is often spelled) Lao Tzu. Pretty good translation, too, as far as I can evaluate it, not knowing Chinese, but having read 10 or twelve other translations.

The "weirdness I perceived was in the format, not the conents.

Targeted at folks who like weird: Frank Buckland's Curious Men: Being a Collection of Freaks, Frauds, and Fine Fellows. Gathered by an iminent Victorian

Weird on purpose: Lisa Brown's Baby Make Me Breakfast, containing ideas on how babies can be more useful. A board book with simple images so baby can understand them.

Not as weird as it sounds: Pissing in the Snow, collected by Vance Randolph

Doomed from the start: English as She is Spoke by José da Fonseca. Back in 1855, Jose and his buddy wanted to create a Portugese to English dictionary for travelers, but they didn't know English. But, apparently they had an English/French dictionary and a French/Portugese dictionary, so they set out to produce their much needed travel tool, giving us such useful English phrases as "That are the dishes whose you must be and to abstain", and "He has spit in my coat".

Os.

#21

I bet that book is extracted from Buckland`s Curiosities of Natural History.

Buckland wrote a number of books (and has since been the subject of a number of books), but `Curiosities` is probably the best known. It runs to three of four volumes and there have been numerous books drawing mainly on those as a source.

He was not especially scientific in his approach (as I imagine you`ve discovered ! ), but was much admired by Darwin, though the feeling was not mutual. I think there`s still a Buckland Foundation or similar today, though I`ve no idea what they do.

#2 muumi

"To continue your travel theme, Half Safe by Ben Carlin, subtitled Across the Atlantic by Jeep (yes, truly, the Atlantic, by Jeep), illustrated with photos, is a strange book rendered even more bizarre by the author's uncanny resemblance to Robin Williams (I kept envisioning the "movie version")."

Haha … that sounded so strange muumi that I simply had to ‘google’ it … found this link, about one minute in the man himself in action riding the waves in a jeep with what I’m assuming is his wife passing him a ‘tab’! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Gqi-RlbO0

>22 nickhoonaloon:
Yup, that's what it is. I think this small collection from the original is enough, though. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I doubt I'd feel the need for 3 or 4 volumes along the same line.

Os.

I agree, Pissing in the Snow is no where near as weird as some of these other titles. But it if you are an 8th grade male or an Ozark sociologist, it is the best book of all time.

>19 rolandperkins: Lao Zi ... no need for "sic", Zi is the proper pinyin spelling of the name. Bit odd that the author/translator names aren't in pinyin though.

>23 yosarian: Fabulous video of Half Safe. The guy was just a bit obsessed, but as long as you don't actually have to live with him (especially for months at a time in a jeep) that kind makes the best adventure stories.

Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Seraphini. this is a book written in a font and language that are completely unintelligible. The text is basically "explanations" of weird drawings that are themselves unexplainable. There are only a few copies in print, I got a copy on ILL.

Probably my oddest, one which would also appeal to 8th grade males, is Le Petomane by Jean Nohain. It is a brief biography and commentary on the life of Joseph Pujol, whose amazing ability to control the volume, pitch and length of his farts gained him great fame as a performer at the Moulin Rouge in the early 1900s.

Avid, I've read it...back in the 60s, mind you.

>28 aviddiva:
an offbeat book in my library (The History of Farting) has, of course, a chapter devoted to Pujol.

Os.

Read a book today while attempting to shelf read (at which I am no good) at work (I work at a small campus library as a shelver). The book was a little tome by Giorgio Samorini and called Animals and Psychedelics. Apparently Samorini is one of Italy's great experts on psychedelic drugs. Very interesting quick little read. For example, I didn't know that elephants like to get drunk and that hseep are fond of cannabis. I also learned that Hawaii was a good place for growing marijuana. Samorini told a funny story about how he climbed a hill to show some goats a psychedelic plant and how the goats butted him down the hill, with him rolling, in a stampede to try to get at the plant!

Wisconsin Death Trip has eerie photos combined with bizarre news stories e.g. homeless camps of tramps invading towns, and then leaving again like marauding mongol hordes.

The most peculiar books that I ever saw were art books with drawings by a French artist named Jean Giraud, who signs his art 'Moebius'. There was very little text in the book and the bizarre drawings were somewhat of the science-fiction or surrealist style. They were like nothing else I have seen before or since, and I follow the art scene. Many people find them to be creepy.

33>Moebius is a rather popular cartoonist, unless I'm horribly mistaken. A story of his provides the basis for a segment in the animated anthology film Heavy Metal.

I own both Wisconsin Death Trip and books by Moebius and I don't think either of them are very weird! I have Codex Seraphinianus too - now, that's a weird book.

I have a lot of weird books, like some old hygiene books that use X rays to show how different types of douche bottles work better than others, and various religious works. I can't resist things like this at garage sales. Most of them are boxed up in the garage at the moment.

Have just acquired 'Bizarre Books; a Compendium of Classic Oddities' (2006). The should be a standard reference for those of us interested in literary Curiosities.
Another strange book was about The Spontaneous Combustion of Human Beings. And it was about reports of people who suddenly burst into flames for no reason and are almost completely reduced to ashes. It was total nonsense.

I have read a couple of oddball books:
Let's go play at the Adams': a book about a group of kids who take their babysitter hostage and kill her...
My Secret Life...a book that was the precusor to the PEnthouse forum letters...

A recent unusual book purchase was the Ford Treasury of Station Wagon Living. I almost feel guilty about laughing when I first saw it. Now I'm convinced that mastering the tips in this book will enable any family (and their pets) to enjoy a comfortable life in a 1957 Ford Station Wagon, especially if they splurge for the rooftop Sky-Vue Sleeper!

I just picked up Mommy Knows Worst by James Lileks. Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting. It has great pictures and advertisements.

For a book about the weirdest people: Geek Love about purposely birthing freaky kids and how normal and freaky they grow up to be. Worth reading again and again.

Weirdest book for me personally to read Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba a book written in poetry about a boy who escapes the holocaust by accidentally emigrating to Cuba. Weird for me because I don't read poetry books and I never would have thought of Jews escaping to Cuba. One of my favorite books of the year.

The Book of the SubGenius by JR "Bob" Dobbs and Kooks by Donna Kossy are 2 very weird books.

Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov is incredibly weird. An alternate history novel about an incestuous love affair, written with the usual erudite, labyrinthine flair we come to expect from Nabokov.