• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Books with Special Characteristics/Features/Gimmicks

direstraits

direstraits

Well-Known Member
Ok, I want to know what's the most interesting, special book that you know of that's pushing what is generally regarded as fiction or even a normal book. The book or story must have some special characteristic that distinguishes it from being what you and I would call a 'normal' book. It helps if it's a good read, but I'm looking for originality here, not readability.

I'll start.

Jonathan Safran Foer loved Street of Crocodiles by Polish author Bruno Schultz, so much so that he made a completely new novel by redacting the words/text of the book, and turned it into Tree Of Codes. Even the title Tree of Codes is a redaction of letters from Street of Crocodiles. The entire book of Tree of Codes features pages with cut out words and letters, and you need to actually put in a blank page behind every page you read to make the reading easier, otherwise you're just seeing through the book.

Here's a video of the book:

It's not available where I am, but when it finally arrived in the post I was immediately awed by it. Nothing like actually holding the book in your hand. :)

Your turn.
 
The Invention of Hugo Cabret,
Brian Selznick, which I still want to find a copy of. Not a novel, not a graphic novel but somewhere inbetween. Turned into a beautiful movie by Martin Scorsese. It is the story of Georges Méliès pioneer of film
 
The Last Witchfinder, by James Morrow

It's almost like two books in one. There's the novel by Morrow, interspersed with excerpts from Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. The excerpts from Newton's work have a direct connection to what is going on in the storyline of Morrow's novel. The lines of text of the novel shrink in length until they are only one word long, and that word is the first word of the passage by Newton from his Principia Mathematica that relates to what you've just read of the novel.

To see what I mean, refer to this webpage:

http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2006/04/the_last_.shtml
 
Meadow, White Raven, excellent suggestions! Both look fascinating... have you guys read the books? Any good?

(Ok, Meadow, you probably haven't yet read it, since you don't have a copy, but you may have already read it anyway somehow...)
 
LOL no I haven't read it but I have seen the movie which was just brilliant and then I discovered it was based on a book ....
 
Yes, I have read The Last Witchfinder, and it's very good. I'd definitely recommend it!

I forgot to say in my post above, that when the passages from Newton's work come to an end, the lines of text do the same shrinking down trick, and the last word of the Newton work, becomes the first word of the continuation of Morrow's story.
 
Ok, here's another one.

Hopscotch, by Julio Cortazar, is a novel that can be read in several ways, instead of the traditional way of reading from left to right (geez, that sounds weird even to me). From Wikipedia:

An author's note suggests that the book would best be read in one of two possible ways, either progressively from chapters 1 to 56 or by "hopscotching" through the entire set of 155 chapters according to a "Table of Instructions" designated by the author. Cortazar also leaves the reader the option of choosing his/her own unique path through the narrative.
Click to expand...
 
direstraits said:
Ok, here's another one.

Hopscotch, by Julio Cortazar, is a novel that can be read in several ways, instead of the traditional way of reading from left to right (geez, that sounds weird even to me). From Wikipedia:
Click to expand...

That sounds like a literary version of a choose your own adventure type interactive book :)
 
Ok, here's yet another one (geez, you guys are hard to please :)).

There's a book that's written entirely without the letter 'e' called A Void, by Georges Perec. Originally written in French, it was translated into English, also without using the letter 'e' (which is really an incredibly feat, and really opened by eyes to the wonderful work translators do).

There's another book called Gadsby that also without 'e', and that's written by Ernest Vincent Wright. Less amazing, because it wasn't devoid of 'e' in two different languages. :D
 
I've not read either yet, but Perec isn't a fly-by-night author, and he's pretty well known for his other works, especially Life, A User's Manual.

I was just checking Wikipedia, and found that he has another novel that uses words that only has the vowel 'e', called The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex.

Huh.
 
direstraits said:
I've not read either yet, but Perec isn't a fly-by-night author, and he's pretty well known for his other works, especially Life, A User's Manual.

I was just checking Wikipedia, and found that he has another novel that uses words that only has the vowel 'e', called The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex.

Huh.
Click to expand...
Pretty impressive if that actually makes a novel that's worth reading. That has to require skill and lots of time. Seems a strange limitation to put on writing though, but perhaps it forces paths that would have never been discovered in the usual ways.
 
Humans are capable of great feats of derring-do and ingenuity when they put their mind's to it. :) History is littered with examples
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top