h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish. The first chapter contains only words beginning with an A. Second chapter as A and B... the central chapter uses all the letters there are, and after that you are going back down to only A's in the last chapter...

Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk. Pagination runs backwards. The last page is page 1.

Y.

Odd...

I suppose one could also mention a certain Mr. Pratchett who has been known to write entire books without using any chapters at all.

I came across this when I was considering having another tattoo done:

"Author Shelley Jackson invites participants for her new work entitled
"Skin." Each participant agrees to have one word of this story
tattooed upon his or her body. The text will be published nowhere else,
and the author will not permit it to be summarized, quoted, described,
set to music, or adapted for film, theater, television or any other
medium. The full text will be known only to participants. In the event
that insufficiant participants come forward to complete the first and
only edition of the story within the author¹s lifetime, the incomplete
version will be considered definitive."

I never got round to applying though, so I have no idea whether the project was ever finished or not. You didn't get to choose your own word, and you couldn't have the word "hand" tattooed on your hand, for instance.

I dont think ive ever heard of ANY of these books... and i call myself a book lover..... *hangs head in shame*
Im heading off to a bookstore tomorrow to see what i can find!!

i did read one recently though called 'the curious incident of the dog in the night time' which is written from the perspective of a kid with aspergers syndrome... and the chapters are numbered in prime numbers...
there are also a number of mathematical equations and such in the book which had me stumped for a bit!!

Talking of chess, there's 'Alice through the looking glass'

Sounds as if at least some of these 'novelty' books are good to read too!

You can't beat the original 'novelty' book, Lawrence Sterne's 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy'. There are frequent bits where the reader is asked to fill in the story, there's a black page to mourn a character's death, and it takes a third of the book for the main character/narrator to get himself born. A fascinating read, and you can often pick up relatively cheap copies as it's a "classic" (in bookshop/publisher terms that tends to mean 'old'!).

The first 40 pages or so of Illuminatus read like they were written on a massive trip - the narrative jumps through time and space almost in mid-sentance. A tough start to a crazy book. Then again what would you expect from something co-authored by Robert Anton Wilson....
BCNU - Crescent

Ah yes, Feeshum Endjinn is a very interesting read. Separated into 10 sections of 4 chapters each, with each chapter of the four following another character. Hence (in case that's not clear, and I fear it may not be), the first chapter of each section is about one character, the second chapter of each section follows another character, and so on.

But there's other twists inside that, as you assume that all the chapters in each section is happening at the same time, but they aren't. One of the character is (in some bizarre way) the previous life of one of the other characters. There's other stuff too, but that's enough to give away, I think.

And for other Iain M. Banks trickery, there's Use of Weapons. In that book there's two plot strands, one which goes forward in time, and one which goes backwards. The chapters which run in 'normal' time are all numbered 'normally'. The chapters going backwards in time are numbered with roman numerals, starting at XII (or XIII, I can't quite remember) and finishing at I. The forwards and backwards chapters are placed alternately in the book, just to add to the confusion.

Oh, and 'Squares of the City', can be appreciated as a straightforward book of politictal intrigue, but there is also the knowledge of this chess game underlying the whole thing.


Geggs

Riddley Walker - written in post-holocaust English, incredible book, by Russell Hoban

A Humament - er, quite tricky to describe . . . by Tom Phillips . . . its an old victorian novel (a human momument) which he has drawn and painted all over, picking out odd words and letters to create a whole new story. Absolutely beautiful.

Riddley Walker! My very favourite book... Written in post-holocaust English, indeed, with all sort of interesting allusions from Punch and Judy to the garden of Eden. They visit all sorts of well-known Kentish locations such as Horny Boy and Do It Over. Utterly compelling, and phooey to anyone who says they can't get into it because of the 'weird' language (unless they're a non-native speaker of English, of course).

Tristram Shandy (this was a very strange book for its time......
http://www.gifu-u.ac.jp/~masaru/TS/contents.html

Glad to see "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" being mentioned, but what about "Life of PI".


That must surely classify as unusual?



G

What's that all about then?
At a guess I'd say that the numbers of letters in each word corresponds to the value of pi? Hmmmmm, that would be interesting. And bloody hard to do.

This ad was in a dating column in a paper:


A tall well-built woman with good
reputation, who can cook frogs
legs, who appreciates a good fuc-
schia garden, classical music and talk-
ing without getting too serious.


But please read only lines 1, 3 and 5

Life of Pi is about a boy left stranded on a life raft, with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a Bengal tiger.

The boy's name is Pi( as in 3.1415926535897932) as his real name is piscine (as in french for swimming pool), but he is fed up with all the 'pissing' teasing, so decides to become an irrational number.

The book is about the nature of reality, religion, and whether or not bannanas float.

Great read.

G

I keep noticing Zen and the art of MOTORCYCLE MAINTENance. Anyone read that here?

Hi Spinks (wash your mind out)
Yes i have tried to read Zen & the... % times and i got to the same point almost and gave up through sheer "i really couldn't care less-e-ness".Why did i go back and try,people told me how good it was.like lord of the rings another that i tried to like,after other people were raving(1st wave of rave)about it.like robert rankin ,cant stand terry pratchett.Go figure

Darn shift key 5 times

I must have a look at that, David. It sounds fascinating!