Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

Just for fun: What is the strangest, most odd book you have read lately?

Last night I started systematically reading MIT Guide to Lock Picking by Ted the Tool. A little booklet describing how locks work and how to pick them. Probably some of the content is obsolete by now. This book has a special meaning to me. I had my first encounter with the Internet in 1992. Before everything. The Internet was a limited number of computers connected by a network, such that you could access the content of the public directories of another computer by FTP - if you knew the name or number to call. Beside newsgroups there where two things: The anarchist's cookbook and the MIT Guide to Lock Picking. The anarchist's cookbook sounded a bit too dangerous, so I did not look at that, but I was so fascinated by the MIT Guide to Lock Picking - especially the diagrams - that I paid for a printout - the only possible way I could save a copy.

If you go to the Wiki page for Lockspot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locksport
It is prominently mentioned in the history section.

Another candidate of strangest and most odd is this 5-page science fiction “short story” APPLICATION FOR THE DELEGATION OF FIRST CONTACT: QUESTIONNAIRE, PART B
Can be read here:
https://www.thebooksmugglers.com/2015...

First time I hear of lock-picking as a sport!
The sci-fi short story also looks intriguing, don't want to read the reviews when it's probably faster to read the story itself. Thank you as always!

For me, sadly the "strangest books" shelf got no addition this year. I did read a very odd children's stories collection where vegetables and sausages live together on a tree, but another book by the same author was much better.


There was also a book of faux-literary jokes featuring the Russian classical authors, that used to go around in samizdat since some 1975 or so - and now it's been republished with copious commentary and criticism. I found the commentary much too much: it took up 4 times as many pages as the original content.


These are in Russian both, hardly to be used for recommendations...

Oddest "book". The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I gave it 4 stars immediately for originality, but it stayed with me. Over time I found myself more and more creeped out by it. Ghosts raising a baby in a graveyard is just too awful.

The Nose by Nikolai Gogol is one of the oddest books that I've read.

Piyangie wrote: "The Nose by Nikolai Gogol is one of the oddest books that I've read."

I also thought about "The Nose". It is strange.

The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, but I read it in French, Les Boutiques de cannelle.

Lynn wrote: "Oddest "book". The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I gave it 4 stars immediately for originality, but it stayed with me."

I need to read that one.

J_BlueFlower wrote: "Lynn wrote: "Oddest "book". The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I gave it 4 stars immediately for originality, but it stayed with me."

I need to read that one."

It's a graphic novel...

Depending on one's definition of strange/odd, it could be any of the following:

Oreo - Fran Ross
Ring - Kōji Suzuki
Zofloya - Charlotte Dacre
Hopscotch - Julio Cortázar
The Etched City - K.J. Bishop

Pick your poison.

Ulysses by James Joyce (Joyce tried too hard to complicate the art. I will try again 2021.)

Inferno by Dante Alighieri (I tried too hard to do multiple reads within one read.)

Odd for different reasons and of different people's making.

For me it was "The hour of the star" by Clarice Lispector.

Jesus wrote: "For me it was "The hour of the star" by Clarice Lispector."

Have you read any of her others? She's really quite marvelous (for the most part).

My oddest book was easily Nijigahara Holograph which is a horror graphic novel. The first line of my review says that my thought when I was done was "What the hell did I just read?"

These are great--I love strange books. I'm particularly curious about Nente's vegetables and sausages on a tree. Wish I read Russian!

I think out of mine so far, I'll pick the horrific short story Incarnations of Burned Children and the haunting but not quite as hard to read Space Invaders, which is actually structured on the video game.

Las elegidas by Jorge Volpi
A novel in verse about sex slavery among undocumented workers in the US. An almost Biblical tone for a barbaric story. Literally gave me nightmares.

Aubrey wrote: "Jesus wrote: "For me it was "The hour of the star" by Clarice Lispector."

Have you read any of her others? She's really quite marvelous (for the most part)."

I haven't yet, but I will definitely read more of her works in the future. I really enjoyed this one, despite how odd I found it. Do you have any recommendations as to which of her books should I read next?

Nente wrote: "First time I hear of lock-picking as a sport!..."

If that was strange try this one:

The sport is so big there is a marked for handmade luxury picks:
https://ratyoke.com/portfolio/

They look very Harry Potterish to me.