Hey all long time fine and you?
That is what I mean by a rare book. And reading it started me off on my hobby: looking for similar rare books. They may be the one rare book of an author with a long list of what I call ordinary books to his credit: or they may be the one rare book of the very few an author produced; but they all have this in common; their authors never before or afterwards did anything like them; nor any other author either.
This is part of a passage quoted on China Miéville's excellent blog, Rejectmentalist Manifesto (I find his style there far above anything he puts in his novels or short stories, which frustrates me), from the novel Life Comes to Seathorpe. The character in that book has found 21 such books, listed at the site.
Miéville, a man who loves weirdness and rarity, suggests we should read all of the books on the list(I've only read parts of Bram Stoker's Dracula and The First and Last Men by Olaf Stapledon, and know of The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells and of course Moby Dick.), and also to compile a personal list of 21 such books that are "in a way unique".
I've been searching for unique books ever since I read and was seduced by Danielewski's House of Leaves, but the concept of rare books aren't limited to postmodern experiment, and should not be confused for a list of books you like, you could even detest some of them. The ones I'm considering are:
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski - a defining experience for me, a labyrinth in book form.
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand - "Shrill without reprieve", a psychotic romance of egotism set in an science fictional world , paradoxically outdated even for its time. Rand's sheer force of conviction seduced me emotionally if not intelectually. I remember reading Galt's infamous 70-page long speech in the bathtub, stoned and listening to Tool's Lateralus, a transcendentally weird experience.
Cyclonopedia, complicity with anonymous materials, Reza Negarestani - described as "like being converted to Islam by Salvador Dali." Unreadable, but unique.
Seraphita, Honoré de Balzac - a paranormal love triangle between a man, a woman, and an androgynous superbeing, set in a Norway independent of normal laws of geography or physics, it's also an exploration of the philosophy of the swedish theologist Emanuel Swedenborg.
Dictionary of the Khazars, Milorad Pavić
Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien and son
The Book of All Hours, Hal Duncan
The Illuminatus! trilogy, Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson - Wilson would write simillar works using many of the same characters, but Shea's absence from the text is notable.
Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe - unique in my opinion, even among Wolfe's works, due to the setting and Wolfe's heretical Kabbahlistic Catholisism.
Bestialitetens Historie (The History of Bestiality), Jens Bjørneboe - a trilogy exploring (at times with a disturbing sense of delight) the history of man's cruelty to man, it took 25 agonizing years to write, and is one of the great works of Norwegian litterature.
Lanark, Alasdair Gray
Ingenting (Nothing), Janne Teller - a Danish children's book detailing a group of children's increasingly horrific fight against nihilism, with not a single easy answer given.
Dune, Frank Herbert - the sequels got increasingly mired in their own mythology, never approaching the purity of the original
Blindsight, Peter Watts - Lovecraft convincingly translated to modern Hard Science Fiction.
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
Pragma - Simen Svale Skogsrud - a financial consultant and market strategist guru breaks down while attempting to write a raport on how to commodify modern values. Before reading this, I hadn't realized how all the symbols of the anti-establishment have been efficiently absorbed and subverted by conservatism. I'm still amusedby the existence of Christian Death Metal.
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delaney
The Gunslinger, Stephen King
Borrowed Black: A Labrador Fantasy, Ellen Bryan Obed - a fantastic children's fable that's probably responsible for a lifetime of obsessions with everything dark and weird.
Ancient Evenings, Norman Mailer
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Those are my 21, though I could easily drop several of them as I discover rarer specimens. What are your books?
That is what I mean by a rare book. And reading it started me off on my hobby: looking for similar rare books. They may be the one rare book of an author with a long list of what I call ordinary books to his credit: or they may be the one rare book of the very few an author produced; but they all have this in common; their authors never before or afterwards did anything like them; nor any other author either.
This is part of a passage quoted on China Miéville's excellent blog, Rejectmentalist Manifesto (I find his style there far above anything he puts in his novels or short stories, which frustrates me), from the novel Life Comes to Seathorpe. The character in that book has found 21 such books, listed at the site.
Miéville, a man who loves weirdness and rarity, suggests we should read all of the books on the list(I've only read parts of Bram Stoker's Dracula and The First and Last Men by Olaf Stapledon, and know of The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells and of course Moby Dick.), and also to compile a personal list of 21 such books that are "in a way unique".
I've been searching for unique books ever since I read and was seduced by Danielewski's House of Leaves, but the concept of rare books aren't limited to postmodern experiment, and should not be confused for a list of books you like, you could even detest some of them. The ones I'm considering are:
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski - a defining experience for me, a labyrinth in book form.
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand - "Shrill without reprieve", a psychotic romance of egotism set in an science fictional world , paradoxically outdated even for its time. Rand's sheer force of conviction seduced me emotionally if not intelectually. I remember reading Galt's infamous 70-page long speech in the bathtub, stoned and listening to Tool's Lateralus, a transcendentally weird experience.
Cyclonopedia, complicity with anonymous materials, Reza Negarestani - described as "like being converted to Islam by Salvador Dali." Unreadable, but unique.
Seraphita, Honoré de Balzac - a paranormal love triangle between a man, a woman, and an androgynous superbeing, set in a Norway independent of normal laws of geography or physics, it's also an exploration of the philosophy of the swedish theologist Emanuel Swedenborg.
Dictionary of the Khazars, Milorad Pavić
Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien and son
The Book of All Hours, Hal Duncan
The Illuminatus! trilogy, Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson - Wilson would write simillar works using many of the same characters, but Shea's absence from the text is notable.
Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe - unique in my opinion, even among Wolfe's works, due to the setting and Wolfe's heretical Kabbahlistic Catholisism.
Bestialitetens Historie (The History of Bestiality), Jens Bjørneboe - a trilogy exploring (at times with a disturbing sense of delight) the history of man's cruelty to man, it took 25 agonizing years to write, and is one of the great works of Norwegian litterature.
Lanark, Alasdair Gray
Ingenting (Nothing), Janne Teller - a Danish children's book detailing a group of children's increasingly horrific fight against nihilism, with not a single easy answer given.
Dune, Frank Herbert - the sequels got increasingly mired in their own mythology, never approaching the purity of the original
Blindsight, Peter Watts - Lovecraft convincingly translated to modern Hard Science Fiction.
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
Pragma - Simen Svale Skogsrud - a financial consultant and market strategist guru breaks down while attempting to write a raport on how to commodify modern values. Before reading this, I hadn't realized how all the symbols of the anti-establishment have been efficiently absorbed and subverted by conservatism. I'm still amusedby the existence of Christian Death Metal.
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delaney
The Gunslinger, Stephen King
Borrowed Black: A Labrador Fantasy, Ellen Bryan Obed - a fantastic children's fable that's probably responsible for a lifetime of obsessions with everything dark and weird.
Ancient Evenings, Norman Mailer
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Those are my 21, though I could easily drop several of them as I discover rarer specimens. What are your books?
*MySmiley*
Indeed, I marry them in their unlawful bed, with an open heart I affirm the true right of any man and woman to their dark slobbering nights which are rare enough, and against which too many laws conspire.
Indeed, I marry them in their unlawful bed, with an open heart I affirm the true right of any man and woman to their dark slobbering nights which are rare enough, and against which too many laws conspire.
Rare and unique books
- 21/04/2012 07:12:20 PM
1594 Views
I would have to think for more but...
- 21/04/2012 09:56:03 PM
739 Views
I bought that Jarry book a week ago off of your mention of it here.
- 02/05/2012 03:51:46 AM
666 Views
Re: I bought that Jarry book a week ago off of your mention of it here.
- 02/05/2012 03:36:34 PM
932 Views
A few more (only my own opinion)
- 29/04/2012 07:27:18 PM
1459 Views
Re: A few more (only my own opinion)
- 30/04/2012 10:44:09 PM
811 Views
Re: A few more (only my own opinion)
- 01/05/2012 01:35:11 PM
932 Views
Murakami as New Weird? *NM*
- 02/05/2012 04:08:31 PM
321 Views
Eh, it's the kind of spec fic that's hard to place but I think it kind of fits on the continuum *NM*
- 02/05/2012 08:53:45 PM
301 Views
Finch is quite good, but it's really the third book in a sequence
- 02/05/2012 09:23:01 PM
567 Views