These Are the Books I Recommend to Everyone Looking for New Reads
As a writer who's had some 30+ stories published over the last 5 years, people have a tendency to ask me what books they should read. Since I normally write pretty bizarre/surrealist stuff, they come to me when they want something "different" than the normal books and I'm always more than happy to oblige. A large chunk of my personal library falls into what many would consider "weird" or "experimental." I like books that are more like puzzles to be solved than fictions to be simply enjoyed.
Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities"
Calvino is an absolute master. It's obvious from his writing that he simply loves writing. This story in particular is especially beautiful as it's a conversation between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo where Polo describes all the cities he visits until the final description when Polo reveals his true reasoning. A seriously gorgeous read.
Dexter Palmer's "The Dream of Perpetual Motion"
This book wowed the hell out of me. Palmer has taken Shakespeare's "The Tempest," the entire steampunk culture, and blended it all together with a little sci-fi flourish. Yet another book that was so gorgeously written, it moved immediately into my "top ten" list of all time. Flowing prose, phenomenal narrative, and stunning imagery...not to be missed by any serious reader.
Blake Butler's "Scorch Atlas"
I came across Butler's work during my time in grad school. I think I found it on the bookshelves randomly at City Lights in SF's North Beach neighborhood and really loved the description of it. What Butler does with language fundamentally changed how I viewed my own writing. Verbing nouns, nouning verbs, swirling language into something both unrecognizable and yet completely intuitive while reading. "Scorch Atlas" is a surrealist look at the dreamscapes of people in the throes of terror.
Amber Sparks' "May We Shed These Human Bodies"
Amber Sparks is a relatively newish author, having released several story collections over the last couple years. I LOVE her imagination and her prose tickles my brain in all the right ways as well. It's been awhile since I've read this particular collection (since I've read everything she's released since), but I remember loving this set of stories a great deal. Quirky prose, dark subject matter, solid narratives...you really can't ask for much more out of a story collection.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon's "The Shadow of the Wind"
This is the first book in a loose trilogy based around a single family. Each book takes on a different era/generation of the same family, but in very different ways. Part of Zafon's appeal is the ease with which his prose moves across the page. He's one of those writers you read and you immediately hate because every sentence is perfect; he makes it look easy when you know it's certainly not.
There's an air of the supernatural in much of Zafon's work, but which is explained in beautiful ways that make sense later on. Zafon conjures up a magical Barcelona set during the early part of the 20th century and it's incredibly hard to put his books down because of that. Fat novels, quick reads. Zafon is very much worth digging into whether it's a rainy night or a sunny day on the beach.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of what I recommend to people, but these are some of the more 'accessible' reads for those looking to buck their normal genres or the authors they normally read in favor of something very, very different. I'm sure I'll post up another article of more recommendations at some point.