The Wildest, Most Mind-Bending (and Fun!) Books I've Read

[00:00:00]Sometimes you want fiction to take you on a journey not only to another world but into another headsp space, a completely different way of seeing the world where up is down, things are topsyturvy that will leave you utterly changed thereafter. Well, here are five of the wildest, most mind-bending, but also importantly fun to read books that I've read that I have for you today.

[00:00:22]Each will take you on a journey that is hallucinatory, utterly strange, will leave you completely gobsmacked at the end, but importantly will not disturb you too much. This list was actually pretty hard to put together because a lot of times books that are mind-bending are also really nightmarish and strange in weird dark ways. things like Samuel Delane's Dogrren, which is this hallucinatory sci-fi novel full of sex and weirdness and drugs and devices, but left me feeling much more disturbed than healed at the end. While it is a fantastical work, or things like Carlos Fuentes' Terranostra, which is probably one of the most difficult books I've ever read, a long Mexican masterpiece, which is full of really violent imagery.

[00:01:12]You even have classics like James Joyce, Finnegan's Wake or Ulisses, which while really mind-bending and hallucinatory are very challenging reads and are quite long and so they don't have that same sense of fun and adventure that these books have that you can get through in a day if you really just want to have fun with them. This video is exclusively for the fun, mind-bending, weird stuff, which is a pretty small category. So, as always, I would love to have your own recommendations in the comments to add to this relatively narrow category. And as always, if you like this sort of content, you can like and subscribe.

[00:01:46]Come up with videos by weekly in author deep dives as well as these fun little book listing categories to have some book recommendations for your book list.

[00:01:54]And I always end up really annoyingly with more books coming out than I came in because you all add such great reads to here. So, some of these are actually from things that I've picked up through YouTube and Tik Tok and social media, and they've all blown my mind. So, let's get into some of the most fun, mind-bending, hallucinatory books that will change your life, hopefully in good ways. The first author I want to talk about today is the inimitable Amos Tutola, a Nigerian writer who just came out with these fantastic short almost nolla length stories that incorporate Yoraba folktales into these really almost fairy tale-like fastpaced works that just take you on journeys into magical realms. You could really talk about any of his books. I've unfortunately only read his first two cuz he's actually kind of hard to get a hold of here. So today I'm going to talk about the book of his that I read most recently this year which reignited my love for him which is my life in the bush of ghost his second novel. His first one the palm wine drinker I read several years ago was my introduction to Toola and it is a wild ride. A guy goes in search of a tapster who taps the palm trees to make palm wine. He meets a character called the complete gentleman who's essentially just a skull wanders around kidnapping people for body parts.

[00:03:14]He spends some time in a tree. There's various magical items that procure things for him. It's a fantastical journey and I think my life in the bush of ghost just ups the ante even more.

[00:03:24]Here we have a protagonist whose village is attacked and so he flees into the bush. But unfortunately for him it is the bush of ghosts which is full of many different towns of ghosts, dozens of them. There's the bush of smelly ghosts.

[00:03:37]There's a bush of ghosts missing limbs.

[00:03:39]There's all these various weird creatures. He gets transformed into a donkey. He gets himself shoved into a vase and his neck elongates and his head becomes very big and he rolls around trying to escape. He even goes into the village of ugly ghosts and he finds a ghost so ugly that he almost gets captured again because he keeps trying to chase this ugly ghost around so he can get a better look at her because he can't stop laughing at her. And this book is one of the most laugh out loud, hilarious things that I've come across.

[00:04:08]There's just all these really fun jokes and adventures. It's relatively broad humor, but it's just a really lovely almost oral fairy tale telling to this.

[00:04:18]And I think part of this has to be Toullah's use of language. The way that Tutllah uses English is unlike any other writer that I have read. It is not like any really conventional first language speaker would use it. The way that he uses connecting words like so, but therefore just don't really mesh with the sentences and adds this almost way of knocking you off balance. But the stories flow so quickly that you really don't have time to catch your balance or your breath before you're moving on to the next thing. This works in the palm mine drinker as well. There was actually some controversy when Tutllah's books first came out because they didn't portray the image of Africa that a lot of African intellectuals were trying to convey this more modern intellectual way of going through and there was some backlash since they were published by an English publisher. But Chinua defended Tutola and I think there's been a massive re-evaluation of his work is this really fantastical worldview into Europe culture and African history and this really interesting way of perceiving the world. But never before have I ever been as discombobulated as I have been by his books. They're just so hallucinatory. Nothing really makes sense. We just go from scene to scene where more outrageous magical things happen. It seems like no natural laws are ever obeyed. And our protagonist is stuck in this bush of ghost for years and years and years going on all of these adventures. So just pick up any Tutolla book. But this has had a relatively big influence. It apparently inspired a Eno album which I have not listened to, but it also inspired one of my favorite small little books of Canadian poetry. The Seventh Town of Ghost, which was nominated for a provincial award here in Ontario last year. didn't win despite me or cheering for it. but is also a really fun thing that takes this ancestors spirits and this hauntingness to explore a wholly different subject because you can pull so much out of Tutollah's work that I think he's just a really fantastic author to get to because he remains unique in his way of approaching not only language but subject matter to really give you a perspective in your buff folklore that you might not get particularly for me in a Canadian adian western perspective. If you've read Ben Oak's The Famished Road, which I have, I was actually not a big fan of that book because it feels like Tutollah light.

[00:06:47]Like you're taking all of the fun things out of Tutola and just having a bit of magic in there. But Toullah is full boore. He's intense. He never lets up.

[00:06:58]So if you have read Oakri and you liked the famous road, I promise you you're going to absolutely love any toller you pick up because he is absolutely a firestorm of a writer. Next, we have a writer who I've only read one book of, but it was fantastic. And to be fair to me, she's much more famous as a surrealist artist than as a writer. And that is Leonora Carrington, a British writer who spent a lot of time in Mexico and had a really relatively traumatic early life in the wars and fled to Mexico. She also had a lot of mental health challenges, particularly from that trauma that she had. But the way that she channels everything into her writing is just transformative. And the Hearing Trumpet is the only book of hers that I read and I was completely unprepared for it because it starts out almost like a rolled doll story. It's this old woman who is in a house with her family that doesn't appreciate her.

[00:07:56]She's relatively deaf. So her friend gives her a giant hearing trumpet and the first thing she hears with it is that her daughter-in-law has convinced her son to pack her off to a old folks home and she is put there and it is almost a very whimsical place. There's a house that looks like a cake. There's a house that looks like a shoe. There's all these old uh eccentric characters going about and there's an odd picture of a religious figure above the uh dining table that is a nun and things start to be a little weird and then they go full boore. What helps with the ro doll nature at the beginning is particularly these really lovely handdrawn almost etchings. They sort of look like Edward Steed cartoons where they're a bit whimsical but also a bit menacingly dark and they just add a really lovely atmosphere. And then they're served as we go into a religious conspiracy involving secret societies that would make Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code blush. And things accelerate further and further. And this isn't really spoilers, but it accelerates into an almost escatological end times where there are elder gods, but transposed into sort of a feminist lens. It becomes more magical, more surreal, more existentialist. You have no idea what's happening. And the way that this book sneaks up on you is astounding. Even if you know what's coming, and if you watch this video, you will, you are not prepared for how Carrington does this. And I think just the way it goes from this relatively charming and nice narrator in this whimsical little retirement home of eccentric characters to this fullon assault of weirdness is just mind-bending. I read this book in a couple days and it is absolutely I think capital S surreal. If you haven't picked up Carrington, I know I'm very late to the game and I need to pick up some more of her stuff. I just read this a few months ago, but absolutely check this out. It is one of the wildest, weirdest books that I have read and I think more books should have fun illustrations because it definitely adds to the appeal. Next, I know it's kind of cheating since I did do an entire video deep dive into Clarice Leper's work. It almost has 60,000 views on YouTube. It's by far my most viewed video, but if you're going to talk about weird, wild, mind-bending work, you have to talk about Clarice Lecte. And I would say that her most fun reading and mindbending at the same time book would have to be Agua Viva. And I think it's just because it washes over you so well.

[00:10:29]Some of her other works like The Passion According to GH or Out of the Star are a bit too dark. And I think this is just a really good mix of both just absolutely astounding pros that flows through you as well as subject matter that's a bit lighter in tone and a bit less aggressively existential. It is still very existential. The perspective is from a woman who is missing her lover.

[00:10:56]She's in her hotel room and she's just talking about in this very sensual way about the language of love and the things that she loves. There's a lot of seafood. There's colors, there's water flowing. It's a relatively short novel, but it will just bathe over you. And I've said again and again about Lee that she writes like no one else. Almost in a similar way to Tutola in just the combinations of the words are like things you have never encountered before. For Tutah, it's more the sentences strung together. Whereas Le Spectre, it's the word choice and just it's like an alien trying to talk about language and the human experience using words correctly but in combinations that no one is ever used to. And I think Aguviva continues this way where you just have never thought of combining these words in this way. But the image that it creates, the emotion, the philosophical questions and answers are all so unique within that world that Lee creates. This is a fantastic combination of both pros and subject matter. Both being absolutely mind-bending. And I think the subject matter of Love is just really wonderfully intricately combined throughout this. You can read any of her works to absolutely have your mind blown. But I think this is a very pleasant relatively short one that will absolutely just blow your mind and is a great introduction to Lepe. though maybe Hour of the Star is a bit more accessible, it's not going to blow your mind as much, even if I prefer Hour of the Star over any of the other works of hers that I've read. For my fourth pick, I actually really do want to shout out the comment section because a while back I did a ranking of the last 10 years of English language Booker Prize winners.

[00:12:39]And I had spoilers, Paul Bees is the sellout as my favorite Booker winner of the last 10 years. And someone in the comments said, "If you like BD, you should absolutely read Ishmail Reed's Mumbo Jumbo." And I read Mumbo Jumbo, and it is absolutely astounding fun. And I've actually I'm almost halfway through Flight to Canada, which is also just wild. And if you have not read any Ishmael Reed, I highly encourage you to check him out because he is a very again unique writer. Mumbo Jumbo takes place in 1920s America, the jazz age, and there is a social contagion, a disease spreading through America that has all the white people worried. It's called Jessru. And it is a celebration, dancing, singing's essentially black culture spreading through America. And there is a large section of the population that wants it stopped. You have secret white societies trying to stop people. You have a really colorful cast of black characters doing voodoo and trying to get everything together and fight against these white people.

[00:13:43]You have a really fun sort of exploration of US history and finance and presidents and rumors about black presidents going through it and it is a very jazzy writing style read has a lot of fun. this float over into Flight to Canada as well. But I think that in Mumbo Jumbo it works really well just because of the timeline. And you have fun things like there are no numbers that are actually written out as numbers like three spelled T H re e. You'll have three cars but it will only be that numeral put in. And there's this fun, this playfulness mixed with this really weird alternative history that takes a surrealist approach to the spread of black culture in in 1920s America in a really fantastic, interesting, and relatively readable and short way that I think is just really fun and fresh even 50 years after this book was published.

[00:14:38]So, unfortunately, this time it is actually really helpful to read the comments. Luckily, my comment section is usually full of a lot of fun and great people. So, thank you commenter who put me on to Ishmail Reed. I'll probably read a couple more of his books because he's just a very interesting writer.

[00:14:53]Again, that really explorative, explosive pro style with a really surreal subject matter is just something I can't get past and had a lot of fun reading Mumbo Jumbo and having a lot of fun reading Flight to Canada as well.

[00:15:06]For my last pick, there's really no one else that I can choose than probably the greatest most meta surrealist writer, which is Flan O'Brien and his novel At Swim: Two Birds. I would actually argue that The Third Policeman, which I featured in another video, is even more surreal, but for that, it's much more nightmarish and dark to me, whereas At Swim Two Birds is just meta at a whole other level. I actually debated having Tristram Chandi, a 18th century continually almost post-modern book about a guy narrating his life and he doesn't even get to his own birth until like the fourth chapter that's really meta and fun. But this is just a whole other level. The novel is about so many different things intersecting. It's mostly the overstory is a university student who really wants to make it big and so he's writing several different stories at once with different characters and the characters end up meeting in the stories come alive and they exit the pages of the novel and start to attack the narrator because they realize when he's sleeping they can actually live normal lives and not be in these really over-the-top narratives that he's in. It's super fun and self-reerential. It's not anything too too serious, but I think the joy of this is not only in the language, which is unfortunately, you sort of have to make the comparison choice and just fun and vibrant and bubbly, but also in just the construction of how this goes. It starts out relatively slowly. I'd compare it almost to the hearing trumpet and that you're going along, you're like, "Okay, I'm not sure how this is going." But when it hits the halfway mark, you are just going full out. And it's just a really fun, wild ride to just take a concept of characters coming alive and interacting with their creator to a wholly different level. And I think it's just a really beautiful one. I'd even say uh if you want a more American version of this, I just finished uh Robert Coover's uh the Universal Baseball Association, Jay. a Henry Wah proprie proprietor about a guy who creates a fantasy baseball league and it ends up sort of consuming his life. That is again too dark for this video. But again, I'm just a big sucker for the sort of meta referential world that you create comes alive. I think at Swim Two Birds is linguistically adventurous and conceptually I think not as adventurous as some of these other ones, but the way that he constructs it just works so perfectly until you just sit bang with an end, which is just super fun. So, there you have it. Five of the wildest, most mind-bending and fun reading experiences that I have ever had in my reading of over a thousand books. So, if you have any more suggestions or comments, please leave them. Like and subscribe as always for more of the content. I'm actually over the moon that this channel is doing so well. I've been recognized in public a few times and just really nice to spread my love for weird and fantastical books and see people vibe with them and have other weird and fun readers just add their own to them. I now have more than 600 books in my to be read list. So, thank you, but also curse you because this is just adding a lot of things to read. But I've had a really lovely reading time with you this year. It's been fantastic to see the channel grow. Fingers crossed I can get over 10,000 subscribers this year. I was thinking of any video that I would do for a 10K and I thought maybe a deep dive into James Joyce's Ulyses would be fun because it's a book that I've always sort of struggled with and I think that might provide some good motivation. So, if you're watching at the end of this video and you want to subscribe and dive into Ulisses with me, I think it would be a lot of fun. And hey, it's a little bit of motivation for me to keep making these and really just talking to you about some really great books. And I hope if you pick these up, you really do enjoy them as much as I did because that's the great thing about literature. You can escape into wholly completely different and really monoomaniacal worlds where just this one person has dreamed up so very much.

[00:19:13]That's something that I always just treasure in books and it's the perfection of novels is just escaping into the weirdest world that anyone can possibly imagine and create with words.

[00:19:24]As always, I will talk to you soon and thank you so much for supporting this channel. It has been a grand adventure and hopefully you'll continue to go on some great adventures with me, not just in these fantastic books.