whimsical books you should read (but they keep getting weirder) 🧚🌀

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]So, I heard you want to bring a little bit more whimsy into your life. Well, a little fairy told me about all the best books that will bring you to a whimsical place. We'll go down a rabbit hole all the way to all the strange and bizarre books that will satisfy your weirdest sight. Let's enter the forest.

[00:00:32]Let's start with the books that are whimsical and viby. They're a little silly. They're a little magical, a little fairy taleesque. I would say that the ultimate whimsical girl is Alice from Alice in Wonderland. And that is why I highly recommend reading Alice in Wonderland and also Through the Looking Glass by Louisis Carroll. If you've seen the Disney adaptation or the Tim Burton adaptation, the book adds something that the movies don't have and that is well written language. This book is full of language jokes, puns. Louisis Carol loves to play around with the English language and that is what made this book so much fun to me. Of course, we have Alice who is bit of a rebellious girl.

[00:01:16]Well, she's very used to every morning looking at things that are getting curiouser and curiouser. All the little quests she goes on and the quirky character she meets to me is peak whimsicality.

[00:01:27]And if you're afraid it's not going to give you that super whimsical vibe because you already know the characters, I specifically recommend Through the Looking Glass cuz Through the Looking Glass has a lot of characters that you may not be familiar with yet because you're so used to Ellis in Wonderland.

[00:01:49]I could spend hours just listening to the sounds of the forest. I love this. I would say that the most whimsical of whimsical fairy fantasy forest books out there are of course the Emily Wild trilogy. It's not only whimsical because it is about Fay and about a researcher that researches fay and throughout the series goes on multiple trips to fairy forest to Iceland fairy kingdoms to research this fay. It's also whimsical because the characters are just so quirky and a little strange. We have, you know, your typical awkward researcher and then her rival researcher who is often described as pretty similar to Howl from House Moving Castle. Just a very dramatic funny man. I love a dramatic funny man. What I love about this trilogy is that it shows elves and fay in the classic folklore way, not in the now very common sexy elf fay kind of way. Here we have brownies, we have pixies, we have kelpies. The fay are actually scary and mean, but somehow Heather Faucet writes it in such a way that it never is scary, but it always feels cozy and just a little strange.

[00:03:06]Now, of course, I cannot talk about Howl from House Moving Castle without recommending House Moving Castle. The book completely different from the Gibli movie. You have to be aware of that. but it has that same whimsical feel. Our main character, Sophie, gets cursed to become an old lady. And as an old lady, she starts to work for this wizard, Howell, who lives in a castle that moves and walks around. This book has all the makings of a classic whimsical fairy tale. There is a witch that needs to be beaten. There are spells again, dramatic wizard man, stars that need to be caught, wishes that need to be made.

[00:03:48]It's one of those cozy fantasies that feels like a warm hug without ever becoming boring because a lot is happening in this book. And especially if you love the movie, it's really fun to read this and see where it goes completely different. Look, I won't lie, I am a sweaty girl. No matter how whimsical you are, you're going to sweat. And I've been looking for a little sustainable swap for my deodorant. So, I tried out Wild deodorant after they reached out to me, and I've never looked back. Basically, I've been using Wild as my staple deodorant for over a year now. So, I'm so happy to be partnered with Wild for this video. They are reusable, they smell so nice, and they are 24-hour odor protection. Wild has a reusable aluminum deodorant applicator, so you can refill your cases again and again, reducing 30 g of plastic waste per refill. This is their limited edition ladybug case designed with Emma Bridgewater and they have many other gorgeous designs to choose from as well. You only need one and you can keep refilling it. I have gifted so many Wild cases to my friends.

[00:04:57]So, they all now also have cute reusable deodorants. My favorite thing about Wild is their scents. Their plastic free refills come in a variety of scents and they all smell beautiful.

[00:05:11]It's like I'm putting on perfume.

[00:05:13]They're Leaping Buddy certified and vegan. There are no harsh chemicals, no parabens. I would highly recommend them.

[00:05:21]And I have a link and a discount code for you all, but it's only valid for a short period of time. So, click the link in description and use my code, the Buclio 20, for 20% off your first wild product, or you can just scan the QR code on the screen. Welcome in our little viby atmospheric den. If you like your whimsical books to be very atmospheric fantasies, I highly recommend The Starless Sea. You may of course know her most well-known novel, which is The Night Circus. I think The Starless Sea has just slightly more whimsical qualities to it in a sense that the entire book feels like a little puzzle or even a scavenger hunt. Like the author takes you along flying keys, hidden doors, hidden chambers. It's a story within a story within a story.

[00:06:12]This is basically a 500page love letter to stories. The Times calls it mind-boggling, and I think mind-boggling is like the superlative of whimsical.

[00:06:22]This book will take you from secret clubs to the underside of like a pirate ship. And it's whimsical in the sense that it feels like one big labyrinth of a story. You know what's the most whimsical thing to do when you're in a forest? Hunt for mushrooms. And that's why I would actually really recommend this non-fiction book called The Little Book of Mushrooms. It is a beautiful little non-fiction book about all the most common or the most well-known mushrooms with a little bit of information on where they grow, what they are known for, and beautiful illustrations. The way that this book has been designed is just beautiful. I wouldn't say that it functions as a field guide, especially because the illustrations are very artistically beautiful, but not necessarily like biologically accurate or like easy to find it in the wild. And a lot of the mushrooms in here are very, very cool, but they're also quite rare. But I do think this book is a wonderful addition to a field guide and a really wonderful way to see all the possibilities and the beauty of this organism kingdom. And if this book can convince you to get into mushroom hunting and look for mushrooms in the forest, then my duty is done. I'm noticing that a lot of the books that I want to recommend here are just kind of weird fairy tales. And I couldn't be recommending weird fairy tales without recommending a book by T. Kingfisher.

[00:07:43]And I think the best one for this recommendation video is Thornhedge. This is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, but it's not about Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping Beauty is just up in a tower somewhere.

[00:07:55]where we follow Toadling, who is a girl that can turn into a toad. Yes, our main character is a girl that can turn into a toad. And it is her task to kind of guard and watch Sleeping Beauty as she is sleeping in the tower. She strikes up a friendship with the most wholesome knight you will ever meet. Like, this is a knight who feels really bad about the fact that he has to kill people and he's not really a violent man. He doesn't really want to do it, but he's a knight, so he has to. Again, you will get fairies and folklore in the traditional sense, the ones that strike bargains, the ones that are not to be trusted.

[00:08:34]This book is thorny with some dark sides, but ultimately will always be heartwarming. I am always just amazed with Teing Fisher's imagination. Every time I read one of her books, I'm reading things I've never read anywhere else before.

[00:08:53]In our next steps a bit deeper into the forest, we are slowly starting to lose touch with reality, the whimsical is starting to get a little weird. I personally think that whimsicality is not just a quirky style. It's a little bit outside of what is normal, a little bit outside of what is expected. And therefore, I love the overlap between the whimsical and the weird. I made myself a London fog. I love a London fog. I consider putting sprinkles on it, which is, you know, the little whimsical trend that is going on right now. But I'm here to deinfluence you about sprinkles on your foam milk because they get like weird and soggy and sag to the bottom of your drink, giving a really weird texture to your drink. I'm loving this current trend of like whimsicality and becoming whimsical. I think I've been making like whimsical content for years now. So, I love seeing that it is kind of gaining traction now that it's gaining popularity. I just hope it doesn't devolve too much into just a trend with like a set list of things that you need to try. Like I said, being whimsical is a little bit about being weird and being a little strange. And just by default, that doesn't really go together with just following a set of trends in order to become whimsical.

[00:10:14]Like I said, the whimsical sprinkles on your milk foam, they look really cute, but in practice, they're actually not that great.

[00:10:25]That's good. Now, a book that I think perfectly exemplifies this feeling of slowly losing touch with reality is The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman's. This is about a woman who is feeling what we would nowadays call depressed. And she is given a cure that they gave people back in the day called the rescue, which basically means that she has to sit in a room by herself. She is not allowed to do anything. She's not allowed to read. She's not allowed to think cuz you know, as a woman, if you're thinking too much, that's going to make you sick. But we see her as she is struggling with dealing with this rescue, being alone in this room for such a long time and just having her thoughts take over to the point that she starts seeing things move in the yellow wallpaper on the walls of this room. And she's slowly starting to lose touch with her own sanity. In only 50 pages, this book is just a perfect account of what happens when as a woman you are not allowed access to your own intelligence.

[00:11:26]You're not allowed access to being a part of the world. It technically counts as horror, but it is horror in the way that people in the 19th century thought things were horror. So that's why I'm not putting it super low on the list yet because although it gets a little creepy, a little eerie, I wouldn't say it's super scary. The next book is just beautifully quirkily written and also full of existential dread. I'm talking about the opposite of a person. This is a Dutch novel, but there is an English translation available. The first sentence of this book is, "When I was a child, I enjoyed fantasizing about being a cucumber." If you hear that, you probably didn't expect that this book is written by a philosopher and also the national poet of the Netherlands. And she blends poetry with pros and story with actual philosophical ideas about love, about entanglement, but also about the impending doom of climate change.

[00:12:26]It's technically a novel, but it feels more like a little mosaic of little vignettes and poems, and it's all written in a very frank manner that shows a lot of clarity of thought. I know this all sounds really heavy, but just the way it is written remains very playful, and that's why I think it still belongs in the whimsical section. My next recommendation is the I think the only one in this video that isn't like fantasy or genre adjacent, but I would recommend it to the girls who are looking for a bit of mischief, you know, that type of whimsicality. That is Discontent by Beatric Serrano. This is originally a Spanish novel, but there is an English translation. And it is about a woman who is, I guess you could say, like the archetype of a girl boss on the outside. You know, she wears high heels.

[00:13:14]She has her own big office. She has a cushy job at a marketing firm, but she totally sees through all the Like, she's basically not doing anything. She's perfect at convincing the people around her that she's working. While she's very aware of the fact that even if she is working, she's not really contributing anything to society. And it is this disconnect that she feels with the world that is beautifully satarized in this book, which is also very funny. It's a very funny take on the absurdity of corporate culture, but also how we use the internet, internet trends, beauty trends, capitalism, just anything that would make a modern corporate woman discontent. It's a very absurd novel and therefore I do feel like it fits into that whimsical category. If you wish that you could just scream and just like if you ever feel that urge to just like clatter everything off the table and break everything and scream, I think you would relate to this main character. I think the next book is about like the ultimate experience of strangeness. Do you ever just sit in a park or just see like a fly somewhere or like a duck or a blade of grass? you're suddenly struck with the awareness of just being a random little person in a tiny world. If you are someone who is interested in existentialist philosophy, you're interested in the question of basically what to do with my life, you are really going to enjoy this French novel, Nausea by Jean Bosart. I read the English translation. Jean Bosart, you may know as the existentialist philosopher. He's known for his philosophy about how we have a kind of a radical freedom. So much freedom that we don't really know what to do with it.

[00:15:09]And this is the fictionalized version of that philosophy. We follow a man who realizes that he is radically free, but the world has absolutely no meaning. And it is completely up to him to choose what he wants to do with his life. There is no one that can tell him what to do.

[00:15:27]There is no god that can tell him what to do. And so he's kind of overwhelmed with this feeling of, oh god, what do I do now? I have to find my own purpose.

[00:15:38]Oh my gosh, it's just one of those feelings that I think is relevant and relatable at any age and at any time. A book that is incredibly foresty, makes you feel like you are bathing in nature, but also at the same time makes you feel very uncomfortable and unsure what the hell's going on. Is bear. This is a contemporary fiction novel about two sisters that live in this very small town on this small island, kind of trapped there, kind of trapped in their lives. And one day their lives get shaken up because a bear enters their facility. It walks by their house. And our main character is of course incredibly scared. Tries to take this seriously. Tries to tell people, "Oh my god, there's a bear here." She tries to warn people about it. tries to get people to help her, but no one is taking her seriously. Classic. But her sister, she's kind of taking a fascination with this bear. She almost feels like she could somehow form a friendship with it.

[00:16:38]And it's just these two different girls having this completely opposite approach to this bear on their land. If I'm describing it right now, this sounds like a really weird book. This book's not really about a bear. I know it's called bear, but it's not really about a bear. This is a book about obsession, about sister relationships. I think this is one of those books that everyone interprets differently. I interpreted it as a book about like male violence, but maybe that's a far stretch. It's one of those books where you are constantly thinking, "What is going to happen next?

[00:17:14]And where is this book going to take me?" one of those books where the author does the fantastic job of making it tense the whole way through even though not much is happening. And those are my favorite type of contemporary books. And of course, the best way to read any of these books is just putting your jacket down in a forest on a forest floor on the grass and reading it in the sun while the birds are tweeting around you.

[00:17:41]The next book is for people who are not afraid of being a little bit confused at the beginning of the story. Actually, that goes for a lot of the books that I'm about to recommend in this video, but oh my gosh, you just have to try.

[00:17:56]This is how you lose the time war. This is a beautiful love story, but I'm calling it whimsical because it plays with the concept of time travel in a way that doesn't feel like you're watching a Christopher Nolan movie that you don't really understand, but in a way that it feels almost poetic. A feeling that is made even stronger by the beautiful lyrical to some maybe a little bit over-the-top writing style. This story will take you through the braid of time from way back into the past to far off into the future. There are these two agents of two waring countries that are both time travelers and are hunting each other through time, writing each other letters through time and slowly falling in love in that way. It wow. It's reading the love letters between two starcross lovers with a healthy dose of sci-fi used to bend reality, to bend your perception. If you ever feel this need to just escape time as a whole, you're going to love this novel. It is a little hard to get into at the beginning. A lot of people put this book down at the beginning because they are intimidated by just how confusing it is at the beginning with all the time travel. would please push through it and also understand that you don't have to understand everything and it's actually okay to feel a little bit lost. I think that is actually the purpose of this novel.

[00:19:35]Now we've reached the darkest parts of the forest where we will find the weird, the bizarre books. The books that I still deem whimsical because they're for the odd girls. the people that like their books a little strange because you yourself maybe are also a little strange. Complimentary. Complimentary.

[00:19:55]First, I want to recommend a book that I just finished and that is The Vegetarian by Han Khan. This cover looks way too cute for what this book is actually about. This is a Korean novel. I read the English translation and it's a novel about a woman who has the gall the nerve to instead of just you know being a normal everyday just slightly attractive slightly unattractive woman who doesn't attract notice who never nags her husband who's never annoying who's okay with everything decides to make the horrendous decision of becoming a vegetarian. How dare she make a choice for herself? How dare she? The rest of the book is about how multiple people surrounding this woman deal with her making this choice for herself and her slowly, I'm going to say it again, losing touch with reality, losing touch with humanity even, and wanting to completely turn into something else. Let's just call it that. This book gets very graphic at certain moments. So, I do want to warn about that. It's one of those books that constantly almost becomes surreal, but never completely and therefore it lives on this edge of tension all the time. I would recommend Feast While You Can if you are in the mood for basically just straight up horror, lesbian horror. It is one of those books that perfectly blends the tension of the scary with the tension of the erotic. It is about a small conservative town and our main character has a monster living inside of her that is obviously causing problems and also causing problems because she has to deal with this annoying woman, this gorgeous, really hot woman who seems to be the only person that can repel the monster inside of Angelina. It is a book about hunger, a book about feeling monstrous, breaking free from social rules, breaking free from your own small town. If you love the trope of a main character with a monster living inside of them, you got to read this. If you like your whimsical books to be very atmospheric, you know, like Aaron Morgan Stern, The Starless Sea, but you also like them with a little tinge of horror, you know, a little tinge of weirdness, I highly recommend you pick up some Angela Carter. And a great way to start with that is actually The Bloody Chamber, not just the short story, but the entire short story collection, because this is all of her retellings of fairy tales.

[00:22:38]And fairy tales are very whimsical.

[00:22:40]They're very silly. But under Angela Carter's pen, they become monstrous.

[00:22:46]They become scary. They become bloody and tinged with darkness. Exactly how I like my fairy tales. Honestly, her take on all the fairy tales in this are full of female rage. It is definitely horror.

[00:23:00]It can she can get a little graphic at certain times, so just be aware of that.

[00:23:04]This next one is for the people who love weird stories about mushrooms. I have to recommend to you Paradise Rot by Jenny V. This is a Norwegian novel. I read the English translation. This is another novel about obsession and obsessive love. Well, it's not really love.

[00:23:26]Basically, we follow a young student who starts to live together with this kind of weird girl in this pretty weird house. The house is like an old factory.

[00:23:36]There is basically no privacy. is kind of falling apart at the seams and the girl that she lives with, they're not really speaking, but also they are kind of sleeping next to each other in bed most of the time. It's one of those books that is about obsession, something that takes over the body, so to say. I love books that have a lot of imagery of rots and mushrooms and uh decay, and this book is full of that. Just like Feast While You Can, it has a strong theme of shame and it blurs the edges between human and other organisms. This is horror the way that I tend to prefer it. And that is not necessarily scary, but mostly just making you feel really uncomfortable. I don't know why I like that. I don't know why I enjoy reading books that purposely make me feel like I want to tear my skin off out of discomfort, but um I keep reading it and I will continue to recommend it to you.

[00:24:40]And if you know, you know, you know, I know some of you guys like that. I know some of you guys also want that. Well, I have the books for you. The next book that I want to recommend is very dark.

[00:24:51]It's not really fitting this this bright sunlight that is hitting me right now.

[00:24:55]And that book is Sloohoot by Braum. This book is a good example of horror in the sense that it is quite scary and monstrous. It's my favorite kind of horror, which is I would call dark forest witchy horror. We follow a woman in a historical town in Connecticut who gets accused of being a witch and everything that follows after the revenge that she tries to take, the injustice that she is faced, but also the demon that is trying to strike a deal with her and the demonic spirits that she starts to form bonds with. Oh, that's a beautiful butterfly.

[00:25:31]Hello.

[00:25:33]Slooh Foot is for the fans of the darker Gibli movies, dark woods, spirits, witches, and vengeance. If that sounds good to you and you're okay with reading some horror, Slooh Foot is there. And it has gorgeous illustrations. By the way, this book is illustrated also by the author. Beautiful. And they perfectly also represent the vibe that this book has. Oh, truly one of the weirdest sci-fi books and horror books I've ever read has got to be Annihilation by Jeff Endermir. This is a horror book. I wouldn't say it's particularly scary.

[00:26:05]This book has just such a wonderful take of what it means to be scary and that according to this book, the scariest thing out there is actually the unknown.

[00:26:15]You know, the monster in a horror movie is the scariest the moment that you haven't seen it yet. And that's what this book is about. is about a bunch of scientists that go into area X, which is this contaminated area in the world where everyone who goes in doesn't go out and the scientists are on an expedition, one of many expeditions to figure out what is going on in Area X. You constantly know that there is something going on, that there is some kind of monster or alien or being or human somewhere, but you never fully understand it. And it just keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire book, but also really confronts you with your own fear of the unknown.

[00:26:59]Especially, you know, because the main character is a biologist, a scientist whose job it is to know things. What happens when you just don't understand something? You just cannot know something. This book is weird in the sense that it plays on everything that is strange to us that feels unfamiliar that we don't know about. We don't know what to feel about it. This is the epitome of horror in my opinion. Another book that has definitely made me deeply uncomfortable in all the best ways is Hunger. This is a Korean novel and I read the English translation. This is a book about a boy and a girl who get into a very codependent relationship and it starts with our main girl finding the boy dead on the street. And this is not one of those novels where the girl then wants to die to be with him, but instead she thinks, I want the love that we have to live on for as long as possible. I want him to live on within me forever so that the love that we have for each other can live on forever. So she eats him.

[00:28:11]It's kind of nasty. Um but really this book isn't about that at all. Actually, in its essence, this is a book about the awful working conditions and workers rights in Korea and the guilt and the debt that this male character gets himself in because of poverty. So, on the one hand, it is a novel about literal cannibalism, but it is also a novel about how capitalism eats you up from the inside. Now, next I want to recommend two books by, in my opinion, the queen of weird novels, of novels that will make you scratch your head, that will make you think, what is going on? I do not understand. And I personally really love that feeling. I love when I'm reading a book and I'm just like, I don't understand what's going on, but I'm going to try to figure it out. And then once you finish it, you go to Reddit and just search like ending explained to see what other people have interpreted the book as. And everyone always interprets it in a different way.

[00:29:16]And I love that. Every time I meet someone who has read one of these two books, I immediately love having a conversation on like what do you think it was about? You know, I am of course talking about Mona Watt. First, we have Rouge, which is a retelling of Snow White. Uh, which means that this is mostly a story about beauty and a main character who is absolutely obsessed with skin care and beauty routines and becoming the most beautiful version of herself. And she ends up in this spaike cult that that, you know, promises her eternal ethereal beauty. And it's about how far we are willing to go for that beauty. But also, it's so it's I cannot emphasize enough how weird this book is.

[00:30:05]What I'm describing now, it could just be, you know, like an interesting literary fiction. There's like a Tom Cruz in a mirror. There's jellyfish floating around. It gets weird, guys. It gets real weird. I love absurd books like this that give a societal critique of something because it shows how absurd our own daily lives are or how absurd in this case the beauty industry is. Oh, Monow also writes horror. So, it I personally don't think that her books are particularly scary, but yeah, there may be some violence in here and some blood. And then, of course, I cannot make a video about weird books without recommending Bunny by Mona. One of my favorite books of all time. Yes, it is dark academia because it takes place at this prestigious writing school where you follow Heather who is not like other girls and she wears turtlenecks. I don't know if I'm making that up right now, but I feel like she wore a turtleneck.

[00:31:01]And the other girls in her writing group are these like giggling girly rich girls that she does not want to be a part of.

[00:31:10]But then, you know, they invite her to be part of their group with an envelope and an invitation to a movie night and she is actually very fascinated and I guess you can see where this is going thematically. You know, it is about the absurdity of friendship between girls and the link between jealousy and obsession. How women are played up against each other. These are all my interpretation of the story, but I'm sure many different people have many different interpretations of this book because it gets again it gets so weird.

[00:31:43]It gets so weird. H this book is a fever dream. It is a tumble down a rabbit hole. It's Mean Girls and Clueless on LSD. And then I think one of my favorite weird little books about a weird little guy is Perfume by Patrick Suskin. This is a German novel. I read the Dutch translation, but there is an English translation as well. This is a historical novel set in 18th century Paris, and you follow a man from the moment he is born to his adulthood. And the interesting thing about him is that he was born without a smell, which is really unsettling to people. People think that he must be some kind of devil. There must be something wrong with him. He is cast out and he becomes obsessed with the idea of smells. And so he goes to school to learn to become a perfumeier.

[00:32:37]A per a perfumeier. A perfumeier.

[00:32:40]Perfumemer. A perfumemerrist. A perfumemerrist. Perfumeier.

[00:32:46]I don't know. A perfume maker. So not only we get beautiful descriptions of him learning to make perfume and how that process goes, he also eventually becomes really obsessed with the idea of creating the perfect female smell. Um, I told you he was a weird little guy. I really feel like if this was not set in the 18th century, but instead now he would be an incel. He would be watching weird manosphere videos all day on his phone instead of, you know, doing something with his life. Men don't become perfumes anymore, okay? They're just on their phone watching menosphere videos. This is for everyone who loves to read about obsession and how it always leads to someone's downfall. And that is all of my whimsical and weird books that I have to recommend to you. I think I have found out that I love weird literary fiction and I can't wait to read even more and more and more and more. So, if you have any recommendations, leave them down in the comments and also let us know in which area, which level of whimsicality and weirdness they fit into. I had so much fun making this video, especially the little animations in this video.

[00:34:01]I'm also like I'm like a little insecure about them because this is like this paper animation is completely new to me.

[00:34:07]So, I'm sure I'm making a lot of beginner mistakes, but I just had so much fun creating a craft that is physical and in real life. I have been like a digital creator from the moment I learned how to draw and paint MS. But with like the rise of AI and technology taking over so many parts of the process, I really wanted to challenge myself to do like paper crafts and and physical artwork. Not that I believe digital artwork is somehow lesser than physical artwork, but it's just something that I wanted to challenge myself to do and it was so much fun to work on that. So yeah, I hope you liked it. I hope this video gave you some wonderful whimsical book recommendations and inspired you to embrace a little bit of your own whimsical and weird side. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and I will see you soon with another video very soon. Goodbye.