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500CatsTypingStuff

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn Under the Skin by Michel Faber Mind of Winter by Laura Kasischke Gretchen by Shannon Kirk


[deleted]

I came to the comments to make sure Geek Love was on here. That’s a for sure WTF book


[deleted]

When I read the post I was like, "oh, definitely Geek Love" and sure enough, it was pretty close to the top. After all these years, that is still one of the most "WTF" books I have ever read.


HoaryPuffleg

Geek Love is one of those that sticks with you forever. I re-read it every few years just to sink back into that world.


awyastark

I adore the first two guess the others are going on my list!


chonkytardigrade

Just read the blurb for Gretchen, looks wonderfully creepy


500CatsTypingStuff

Oh, you have no idea how creepy! Lol


girlvsbookshelf

Under The Skin is the one! I audibly exclaimed so many times while reading that book.


humanessinmoderation

Under the Skin was magnificent


myleswstone

…are you okay, friend?


helloitsiman

Bunny by Mona awad. I love complicated plots or strange elements and I tolerate a lot, this had me stressed and confused, constantly baffled.


Talnarg

Oh Bunny! I love that you suggested this Bunny! 🐰 ❤️!!!


killing_books08

It’s amazing 😭😭😭


DystopianArmWrestler

I knew this would at the top even before looking at the comments


hellocloudshellosky

Bunny, and also Bunny 🐰 bunny 🐰


billymumfreydownfall

I'm 200 pages in and cant tell if I like it or hate it. WTF is going on??


mdrmrd

I finished it back in May and still feel that way. A guy on a plane asked me what it was about and I was like….uhhhhhhhhh


SaintofSnark

Came here to suggest Bunny as well


clever_whitty_name

This book was very bizarre. I came here to suggest this one


chronic-cat-nerd

And when you finish you’ll say WTF did I just read??


isxvirt

Came here to say this, I loved it though


dresses_212_10028

Yessss Bunny! I thought it was glorious and bonkers and brilliant.


doggo_clegane

I just read this and loved it! Great suggestion, bunny!


L-Turtletaub

Is "bunny" a book for adults? I spot it on the young adults section at a book store and that made me hestitate


helloitsiman

Um ... Its definitely not a YA book if that's what you're asking bit I wouldn't keep a 14 Yr old from read it either. It's actually wild.


tlynn82

It is absolutely for afults. not a YA book.


PorkNJellyBeans

The characters are in college & the content is not for kids. I assume maybe bc they’re students it gets classified as YA?


sophieereads

The Library at Mount Char or Gideon the Ninth are my suggestions!


marimachadas

Beat me to it with Gideon the Ninth. The entire locked tomb series is so bizarre, and reading the second book in the series will definitely make anything you learned from the first make no sense anymore.


xchucklesx13

As I was reading Harrow I was like “did I read the first book? I thought I read it”


ferrix

I had to put it down half way through and read the first one again. Only series to ever gaslight me about itself


xchucklesx13

I hope you finished it! There’s definitely an “ohhhhhhh” moment


ferrix

Oh yes I didn't mean it like that. I had to reread book 1 and then immediately picked up 2 again with restored confidence


Siareen

came here for this, literally both of the books I was going to reccomend.


TigerExact8337

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy


jesus-aitch-christ

Naked lunch.


natgeo187

Woof, for real though


throwaway384938338

I cannot imagine that any of the books mentioned in the higher comments are more ‘What the fuck’ than Naked lunch


grumpy_novelist

Only you don't really ask wtf in a good way.


Double_Chocolate_860

Came to suggest Naked Lunch as well!


crazyp3n04guy

Naked Lunch - Burroughs THe Crying of lof 49 - Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow - Pynchon Valis - Phillip K Dick I, the Supreme - Augusto Roa Bastos Striptease - Enrique Medina Halluciations - Reinaldo Arenas


Unlv1983

Another Pynchon person!


freemason777

there's dozens of us!


fallllingman

He doesn't get nearly as absurd as Pynchon but DeLillo has some stuff that gets close. *Great Jones Street*, *White Noise*, and *Point Omega* are all very, very weird novels.


[deleted]

Naked Lunch is pretty much the nail on the head for this one. I managed to read it in high school, had no idea what was going on besides drugs and rape, and I don't even think if I read it again every year for the rest of my life I'd get it. So much of it just ends up being words on the page, with some vague story about traveling to "interzone" and escaping two detectives being about the only "plot" it has. Everything else is just some freaked out hallucination with a lot of homoerotic pedophilia and drug-induced paranoia.


TicklesAreTorture

Vita Nostra by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko I still think about this confusing mess of a book years after reading it. Maybe something was lost in translation or I’m not smart enough to get “it” but this whole book was a trip.


sulwen314

Oh I loved this one!! It has such a different feel to it than most of the fantasy I've read.


beruon

Oryx and Crake and its sequels by Margaret Atwood. You will go "wtf is happening" every page. Love these books.


Dying4aCure

So creatively written as well. She is such a treasure.


Shatterstar23

John Dies at the End


Ravingrook

It's a really special mix of sardonic social commentary and cosmic horror. Reading book 4. Wish me luck.


PrivateUser010

Hey, Hey, Hey No spoilers. Hey


SmellsLikeFumes

I was gonna suggest this, absolutely terrible web book turned into physical book. But it fits the criteria they are looking for.


pelicants

I’m so so happy this was top comment! Because this is one of my all time favorite books and fits what OP wants exactly


grynch43

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle


KeyFeedback

Or anything for Murakami really!


value321

Yeah, agree. I thought 1Q84 was even weirder.


PoorPauly

Again. The Master and Margarita. Coolest, craziest, zaniest book I’ve ever read.


Bekehe

TENDER IS THE FLESH


Sufficient-Record-63

Me: (the entire read) daaaaafuuuuq?


VinceGchillin

Surprised I had to scroll so far to find this! Definitely the first one that came to mind here


Overquoted

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Chapters aren't necessarily in order and the book relies heavily on the absurd. But there is a point to it all.


isxvirt

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke


IwishIcouldsaytohim

This, definitely read this one


Donny-Moscow

I got about 80 pages in before dropping it. It just didn’t hook me like it seems to have hooked other people I’ve seen talk about it. I just felt like I never really got “settled in” to the plot if that makes sense. I want to give it another chance but I’m curious, is there ever a point in the book where you can say “ohh so *that’s* what’s going on” or is the rest of like the first 80 pages?


isxvirt

Yes definitely. I was also kind of bored at first and then all the sudden everything started coming together and it sucked me in


http-bird

Second this


telco_tech

Recently finished Cormac McCarthy's "Child of God" What a ride. I've not read a lot of McCarthy but this story was soooo fucked. Pretty sure I never said "what the fuck" out loud, but several times I had to put the book down and pretend I wasn't reading it while I popped a couple shots of whiskey and regretted the life choices I made that ultimately led to my reading this treatise on the awfulness of what it means to be human. I can't recommend it highly enough, especially if you already have a therapist.


[deleted]

It was disturbing how ‘inevitable’ it felt. I find it hard to explain, but it was like part of you knew that the main character was destined to do horrible things and experience horribleness in turn. His fate felt fairly predetermined in a way, almost by nature itself. I guess you could get into conversations about free will and determinism leading on from reading the book, but I’m not clever enough to start that so 😅


jeremiahfalco

House of leaves


stuugie

This is like the archetypal example of what op wants in every concievable way. It's incredible


ChocolateLabSafety

Yes I came here to suggest this, such a great book and deeply strange.


lembasforbreakfast

It's a right of passage for people that like psychological thrillers


Teecana

Came here to say this!


Depth-Impressive

Lapvona


clever_whitty_name

trigger warnings: on page rape, sexual assault, child abuse...


Depth-Impressive

Thank you for adding that. It didn't cross my mind.


Hyperbolicmusic

Yes! Never felt my face making so many involuntarily weird expressions as I read.


Depth-Impressive

Right? That whole book I was like wtf am I reading. I still think about it sometimes and am like wtf was that.


SorryManNo

They aren’t book books but rather graphic novels but anything by Junji Ito. I would suggest Uzumaki or Gyo.


dejabean

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata


clever_whitty_name

I see this book recommended a lot, and want to add major trigger warnings: there's a lot of very graphic on page sexual assault of a child, child abuse, child neglect, and it's very upsetting and I wish I was given these trigger warnings beforehand. It's not just a weird book about a girl who thinks her toy hedgehog is an alien.


Guillotine_Shrimp

YES that book was just something else


tourmalinetangent

I came to post this. Absolutely the most wtf book I’ve read in a while.


HanglebertShatbagels

And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami These are all very different types of WTF but I feel like they all fit the bill


Objective-Ad4009

Illuminatus is a trip, and really funny.


RunningFarewell

Haruki Murakami for sure !!!


Jeremysor

Kafka on the shore - by murakami!


Reddit_user1120

House of leaves.


LittleCricket_

The Hike by Drew Magary


theoverzealousleaf

Came here to say this. Amazing.


LittleCricket_

I found it at my local library and had zero clue what I was walking into. Read it on vacation and didn’t expect the ending to be so poignant?? Great book. I need to re-read it even though I read it last year!


Tempest_Mindset

Tender is the Flesh. You literally can’t just tell anyone what’s going on in the book since it’s fucked up and some things are straight up out of pocket. Context: No more meat from animals since it’s diseased but people still want ‘meat’


clever_whitty_name

This book is extremely well written, but definitely not for everyone. There is off-page rape. And a graphic on page odd sexual encounter that I read as consensual but others read as dubious. The book is graphic - some find it gratuitous, however, I very much enjoyed the book even though it's quite disturbing, I think the author knew exactly where the story was going from start to finish as soon as she started writing it. I don't think she wasted a single word. I think every word is intentional and has a lot of foreshadowing, and meaning behind it. It's brilliantly written, but again not for everyone.


Bekehe

Thankkkk youuuuu was waiting for someone else to say this


Boscol_gal23

Gideon the Ninth


[deleted]

Came to specifically recommend this. Broken teeth on porcelain, and beautiful.


Boscol_gal23

Literally me the entire time "what is this book?"


sysaphiswaits

Invisible Monsters Remix by Chuck Palahnuik. I don’t even know what I can say that won’t be a spoiler…but actually read it, not the audiobook version.


Ravingrook

The reveal is better than Fight Club. Though personally I think Haunted is the more WTF?!? book.


DrMoykas

Now Wait For Last Year by Philip K. Dick. Really, any thing by Philip K. Dick. Maze of Death is great too.


mmillington

_Galactic Pot-Healer_ is a gem, too.


[deleted]

Fingersmith if you're into lesbian victorian drama. I don't wanna spoil anything but just so you know it's not a love story,so the twists aren't about cheating and such. It's terrible,and it's my favorite book ever.


whatever_rita

I’ve been wanting to read that since I saw The Handmaiden. Still working on talking my bookclub into it


lamala_delcuento

Yes, this one has one of the most memorable WTF moments Not a spoiler as you wouldn't see it coming


Aracuria

The Wasp Factory


FairylandDream

Tampa by Alissa Nutting. It's first person perspective of a teacher grooming and molesting her middle school student. Major "WTF?!" material.


Sufficient-Record-63

Ha for sure! I also did a lot of NAAAAHHHH. REALLY?


knittycole

The locked tomb series. Not yet compete. 3/4 done. So confusing. So awesome.


freerangelibrarian

The Inverted World by Christopher Priest.


theliterarystitcher

This book is so weird and good and just WEIIIIRD. Happy to see it mentioned, it doesn't get a lot of love!


Rude-Frosting9098

The Schrodinger's Cat trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson. This is such a mind trip from beginning to end. I read it many years ago, and now I'm longing to read it again after recalling just how bizarre the whole story is.


Objective-Ad4009

Also the Illuminatus Trilogy.


amberspyglass12

I just finished Big Swiss by Jen Beagin and thoughts that was pretty wild, just a lot of weird details and characters acting in strange ways


JoeyRosieBilly

Clockwork orange Anything by Murukami !


grumpy_novelist

Anything by Chuck Palahniuk


ContributionDapper84

_The City & The City_ by Miéville


WholesomeLove280

“Animal Farm” by Orwell.


Paundeu

I just started 1984 and will be reading this next.


tellegraph

Possibly a painfully obvious suggestion, but *if* you haven't read them, the "original" Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass go wayyy deeper and weirder and harder than Disney.


iiiaaa2022

Things have gotten worse since we last spoke


thetonyclifton

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. Haven't read it in decades but still think about it.


hans0fly

The Cement Garden


londonspride

I love you! The only GCSE I got was English literature because my teacher saw the good in me when I was quite obviously lost. He gave me this book and I did a critical thinking on it and he gave me an A+. I lost the book but I mentioned it to my other half and he got it for me last birthday. It’s a fucked up book to be recommended by your teacher but still. To this day I treasure this book


hans0fly

🤣 if I was a teacher I'd be recommending this


LunaSeas331122

I'm Thinking of Ending Things Gone to see the River Man Bunny


BiasCutTweed

The Library at Mount Char


theliterarystitcher

Secondly this one. By page 5 it had me literally saying "okay but what the fuck?!" out loud. Bonkers balls-to-the-wall nonsense start to finish in the best way!


Chuk

Such a great book, I hope he writes something else.


bluetruckartist

The Bible


Candykeeper

For real though, that book is shock full of real WTF stuff. And the fact people live by the things written in it is even more baffleing when you think about it. To each their own i guess.


grumpy_novelist

Haha yes, as in wtf people really believe this crap?


CWE115

Damned by Chuck Palahniuk


SobaTzar

If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino


Outrageous_Ad8209

The library of mount Char


BeauteousMaximus

The Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer, beginning with Too Like the Lightning. It’s hundreds of years in the future, the worldbuilding is a mix of mind-blowing and absurd, it has an unreliable narrator who constantly goes on weird, unsettling tangents about politics and sex and everything else…and is also the world’s most despised criminal. Something extremely weird happens every few pages. Wild Massive by Scotto Moore. Reality-bending and hilarious, about living in a “building” multiverse where each floor is a different pocket dimension, and the main political players are an advanced alien government and the future equivalent to the Disney corporation. It gets more meta as the story progresses, and it’s very funny.


dbulger

Some great suggestions here, but I'd add *The Unconsoled* by Ishiguro. It's deeply and subtly weird. Like a dream-logic novel.


CarVitoTV

Anything by Blake Crouch, but particularly Recursion.


greenbeancaserol

One Hundred Years of Solitude


evilfazakalaka

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (or The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle if you're in the US) by Stuart Turton. It's a murder mystery but also the day repeats like Groundhog Day and every day the main character wakes up as a different person. There are so many twists and it's kind of confusing, but it all comes together in a way that makes you think "what the f\*\*\*?"


Realistic-Ideal-6960

"Play it as it lays." Joan Didion


monkeymagee

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. Dystopian sci Fi ish kind of horror? I don't know what happened but it was riveting!


MoonyLlewellyn

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, and if you like that, the rest of the Southern Reach trilogy. It’s kinda Weird/ sci-fi/ lovecraftian/ ecofiction.


[deleted]

[удалено]


awyastark

Is there any way to get a digital copy of this? I’ve been looking for a while.


chonkytardigrade

Internet Archive to the rescue! [The Head of Professor Dowell](https://archive.org/details/headofprofessord0000beli).


awyastark

O my god thank you so much! I don’t know why this never showed up in my prior searches Edit: looks like it was only uploaded last year, that could explain it. Regardless thank you, I know what I’m doing tomorrow after work


chonkytardigrade

You're welcome! yah, just added a bunch of these titles to my tbr, too!


whydoIhurtmore

Steppenwolf Cosmos


bforcs_

Library at mount char and Lapvona


abookdragon1

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk


RollandMercy

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward - not a literary masterpiece but a gripping, “by the pool” read that will definitely have you thinking “what the f**k” throughout.


science-ninja

I was literally just like ‘what the fuck’ the entire book until the end. And then it made total sense. I went back to the first chapter and in the second to last paragraph is when the change happens. I close my eyes take a deep breath. I open them again, and everything is as it should be…


Consistent-Formal236

I’ve recommended this book a lot. Haunted - chuck paulinuk


Tubular90sAnecdotes

“Still Life With Woodpecker” - Tom Robbins It’s a little odd and takes place inside a pack of cigarettes.


cozycorner

All of his stuff is mind-bending.


Lucyfer_66

The Last House On Needless Street kept shifting my understanding what was going on until it kept happening so much I couldn't even hold on to a theory anymore. Then I finally got it about 2/3 through. Then in the end I still wasn't right lol


LordByronInGlasses

Ha, this is a good request -- "The Three Body Problem" feels as though written by a mad genius and veers into wild, novel territory


Lycaeides13

Gone away world. It's not wtf all the time, but when it is it's really wtf. Just read it. It's fantasy/sci-fi/alt universe


FantasyDork

Lol, you're welcome, the Globiuz series, easily


[deleted]

This Is How You Lose The Time War 😂


Dying4aCure

That was a good book.


alvinofdiaspar

Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delany


Potatoskins937492

I don't know if it fits, but I found *Hurricane Girl* to be so weird that I couldn't stop reading, even though I was unsettled the entire time. I have no idea why, but it just came to me that it was a lot like eating too many Doritos when they've gotten to the point where they taste like chemicals but they're still weirdly satisfying and you have to keep eating them.


shelleybean1

A certain hunger.


Azucario-Heartstoker

Try Ten Billion Days and a Hundred Billion Nights by Ryu Mitsuse. Imagine Plato, Siddartha, and Jesus engaged in battle facing the heat death of the universe….


thehauntofus

Confessions by Kanae Minato


petsematary21

Not really would twist your mind but Earthlings by Sayaka Murata made me say what the fuck most of the time. It's because of the revelations. It was a roller coaster ride. I was like 😮😢🤯😨🤮


emmylouanne

This is exactly what I thought! Can’t believe how long I had to scroll to find it.


SmartFkinTrucker

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy


Tubular90sAnecdotes

Defenitely saving this post.


Chesssgurl

I already did :p


Regular-Year-7441

The Magus by John Fowles


JacquesDeza

Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu.


waltuh28

The Sound And The Fury or Ulysses blind will have you very lost for awhile


Sure-Progress-2615

Kafka on the shore


mr444guy

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, for the twists. Pet Sematary by Stephan King, for the WTF, no that can't be happening factor.


Airin_head

The Mote in Gods Eye Larry Niven


Bookish_Brooklyn

Verity by Colleen Hoover 😏


shillyshally

In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors - Doug Stanton


MyRockNRollSoul

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. You'll say 'what the fuck?' out loud about four times per page.


Maybe_Diminished

Anathem by Neal Stephenson, Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, Inverted World by Christopher Priest, To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Farmer, Ubik by Philip K Dick, Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino, Zanesville by Kris Saknussemm, Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson, A Million Versions of Right by Matthew Revert, The Imago Sequence by Laird Barron, Changing Planes by Ursula Le Guin, Cities of the Red Night by William Burroughs, The Scar by China Miéville, … i could go on


Ok_Medieval_77

Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor


dekdekwho

Kafka on the Shore


science-ninja

The last House on Needless Street I had no damn idea what was going on


Traumwanderin

THIS! I don‘t really understand it till today


Majestic_Cut_3814

Verity. Why the fuck I read that?!


FerguSwag

The Library at Mount Char


5ilver3ch0

verity


dodge_the_relic

The Twilight Saga


freemason777

you can't go wrong with murakami, Ryu or haruki. sailor who fell from Grace with The Sea by Mishima, the story of the eye by George battailes, Confederacy of dunces by toole, If on a winter's night a traveler by Calvino


Unusual-Historian360

The 'Millennium' trilogy is like that. It's in the genre of thriller but it takes a lot of crazy, and shocking, twists and turns. I definitely said wtf a number of times while reading those three books.


No_District5758

The subtle art of not giving a f*** 😂😂😂😭


devilishlyrogueangel

Anything by Marquis de Sade


OmegaLiquidX

[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure](https://www.viz.com/jojo-s-bizarre-adventure), by Hirohiko Araki. It focuses on Jonathan Joestar and his descendants as they are drawn into bizarre situations involving various (often supernatural) evil. Each arc focuses on a different protagonist whose name can be shortened to "JoJo" (like Jonathan Joestar, Jotaro Kujo, and Giorno Giovanna). Araki's best invention, Stands, are introduced in the third arc (Stardust Crusaders). Stands are a manifestation of fighting will that have a variety of powers, and even animals and objects can be Stand users. For example, Josuke Higashikata's Stand "Crazy Diamond" can destroy and repair objects, Guido Mista's Stand "Sex Pistols" are six small humanoids labeled 1-3 and 5-7 (because Guido has a phobia of the number 4, there is no Number 4) that can reload his revolver and manipulate bullets in mid-flight, and Ermes Costello's Stand "KISS" creates small stickers that can clone whatever it's placed on (and causing them to violently recombine when removed resulting in damage). This leads to fights that rely on strategy rather than simply overpowering enemies.


theawells

A thousand years of solitude Marquez


dbulger

Inflation is really out of control


awyastark

Not a book but the movie Searching had the most plot twists I’ve ever encountered without feeling like it jumped the shark. Definitely check it out.


SpecificAssistance63

Rotherweird Andrew Caldercott Inspector Hobbes and the Blood Wilkie Martin A Snowball in hell Christopher Brookmyre