* The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
* Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. There are two other books in the series, but they explain things a lot more. They do not *fully* explain what is going on, though.
* Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I did not understand a word of this.
Good choice. Gravity's Rainbow is a walk in the park compared to Finnegan's Wake, at least in my personal opinion. As much as I appreciated the lyrical language of Finnegan's Wake, I understood very little of this book.
I won’t say Gravity’s Rainbow gets a ‘super hard book’ rep without merit, but it’s definitely not as hard as people on reddit make it out to be.
I believe Joyce’s work is the very definition of mind bending which is exactly what OP is asking for.
Agreed. Gravity's Rainbow has a plot with clear character motivations and includes adventurous, preposterous, and hilariously obscene stories -- it's captivating. Finnegan's Wake, on the other hand, is a fever dream full of wit and humor, but made of fractured and chaotic story lines. That being said, Joyce's other novels are more focused and plot-driven. Ulysses, for example, is incredible from a literary perspective and it's far more focused than the former two novels. In any case, I agree with you that Finnegan's Wake fits OP's request flawlessly.
Yeah Finnegans Wake is utterly garbaldygook. I had an annotated version with some explanations and I STILL did not understand a word of what I was reading.
*Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy* --David Chalmers
*The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality* --Andy Clark
*The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes* --Donald Hoffman
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Incredible, bizarre, funny, sadistic, poignant, rewarding, and brutally challenging, it's one of my all-time favorites. If you understand 10% of it on your first read, you're doing great. Gets better with every re-read, too.
Awesome - good luck! It's famously challenging, but totally worth it if you're the right audience for it. Just don't overthink it - go with the flow and see where it takes you. If you need help along the way, the r/ThomasPynchon subreddit has an archive of a section-by-section group read and analysis that's an excellent resource.
I first picked up GR (the classic Bantam paperback edition) just after my girlfriend dumped me in '74. I spent the next week on my mother's couch inching through the book utterly spellbound. I have never been the same. My amazement at the book only grows with each reading. Maybe one of these days, I will even understand the significant of the Khirgiz Light.
I loved The Gone World. The book was absorbing and exasperating, thoughtful, lyrical, suspenseful and totally wtf is going on here. The ending was...wow
In grad school, one of the department profs lead a seminar on Ulysses, and on the first day, he asked if anyone had read it before. One guy said he’d read it during undergrad and then once more post-bachelors. The prof said, “oh good! You might actually get something out of it this time around!”
haha yep! I believe it! I started it twice before but very passively, but since I head to Dublin in late July I know it's time. I ordered the Ulysses Guide by Patrick Hastings that gets a lot of good cred that arrives tomorrow. :)
I was an English major but the only other Joyce I read was The Dead from Dubliners in Lit Theory which we bludgeoned to death. I'm finishing the whole of Dubliners now.
It's the only English book that I've considered reading in my native language since my English is good enough to read full-length novels. I've tried three or foue times, and I'm fully lost, confused and hurt before I reach page 100.
"The Magus - A Revised Version" by John Fowles
Even after reading it, I'm still not completely sure about what was going on. Kept me turning pages to find out all through the book, though.
Fowles is one of those authors that's huge in certain circles (mostly in the UK), but relatively unknown to the world at large. Kind of like Russel Hoban.
Infinite Jest should be in the mix, I think. It's not the most difficult to read, but definitely the most mind-bending if you consider both the prose and the book length together. He also uses a lot of footnotes and some of them are huge, so you are constantly going from the main text to the notes.
I don't think there is an English translation, but Salvador Elizondo's *El hipogeo secreto* fits the bill.
A group of men are aware of their existence as characters of a novel called *El hipogeo secreto*, written by Salvador Elizondo, because they read a novel called *El Hipogeo Secreto*, which may or may not have been written by Salvador Elizondo, or by one of them, or by someone else. So they dream a city into existence, where they will look for a place called el Hipogeo secreto, where they hope to find Salvador Elizondo, to ask him why they exist as characters of a novel.
For years it was my favourite Mexican novel.
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This series has everything...world-building, humor, perfect noir-esque internal dialogue from the lead character, and side characters with whom you can feel invested.
Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstetter. Not a damn word. It's in English. I don't think I'll ever be able to read and comprehend.
Codex Seraphinianus - Luigi Serafini. It's an encyclopedia of a different universe written in an alien script. Fascinating.
*Fire Caste* by Peter Fehervari. Ignore the fact that it's a Warhammer book and just dive in. You don't need to know anything about the setting to read it.
Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris. It's a kind of rewriting of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, but way weirder. I read it years ago and it still messes with my head.
Came here to say Ulysses and Gravity’s Rainbow, which have already mentioned multiple times, for good reason. I admit I couldn’t finish GR— got 200 pages in and just couldn’t anymore, but I think that this was because it was the same year I also read Infinite Jest (DFW) and Underworld by Don Delilo. Would also suggest the latter, it’s really something.
Sometimes I get this feeling that these “encyclopedic novels” were some kind of pissing contest between three dudes trying to one-up each other with who could write the longest most unreadable novel… (doesn’t mean they’re not worth reading, but seriously)
Edit: grammar
That's literally my terrain!
Please tell me you're open towards Visual Novels, because if you are I got you *really* good here.
1.)
As far as mind bending goes, I'd really recommend you to read **Remember11**. It's a sort of mind swap murder mystery, that keeps on confusing the reader since the main character has to continuously figure out what happened to the body he took over while "he wasn't there".
You can read up on the concept in detail here, as I already asked for similar concepts myself:
https://www.reddit.com/r/whattoreadwhen/comments/1d5ynv0/a_mind_swap_murder_mystery/
There's more screwy stuff with pronouns going on where there are several different versions of 'I', ({SELF}, *I*, {I}, etc.) that keep on appearing throughout the plot, and causing you to never know who's actually the narrator right now.
Similar to the following:
"Amidst a snowstorm, {SELF} has been on the tower, as {I} jumped. Everything went dark as {I} hit the ground. When I woke up, I was in a small room with a single light bulb. {I} however still felt like being outside on the snowy ground, slowly bleeding to death..."
You probably realize there are several different implications as to what may have happened just from reading it... But anything beyond that would spoil too much.
There's also much, much more going on with regards to archetypes, fourth wall breaking and unreliable narrator kind of story-telling that keeps on confusing you with increasing inconsistencies between both mind swapping persons' perceptions that just 'don't match up' (like the same boy being there at both of their locations, even though they're several hundred kilometres apart, and people start remembering things differently (like years or events), which brings up the question whether or not time travel may be involved too, etc.)
2.)
I/O - Revision II
Ever watched Memento? Like the forward and backwards going narrative?
If you want that taken to the literal extreme, you cannot go wrong with I/O.
It features *five* plotlines, two going forward, two going backwards and another one following 'imaginary order'.
To further complicate matters, all of these are told by different persons, living vastly different lives. And once you finish the first four routes, the novel will unlock two different versions to *each* of the plotlines you read before.
Your final reading order would then be the following (with A and B going forwards, C and D going backwards and E going in 'imaginary order'):
- Route A: Ver. 0.1 - END/Clover
- Route B: Ver. 0.1 - END/Ishtar
- Route C: Ver. 0.1 - END/"He"
- Route D: Ver. 0.1 - END/Conclusion
- Route E: - Bad End 2/Solitude
- Route A: Ver. 1.0 - End/Sunset
- Route B: Ver. 1.0 - End/Nether world
- Route E: - Bad End 3/"Marduk"
- Route C: Ver. 1.0 - End/Overlap
- Route D: Ver. 1.0 - End/"Enigma"
- Route E: - End/Lead Out
- Route D': - End/Dilmun
- Route C': - End/Beginning of legend
- Route B': - End/True End: O
- Route A': - End/True End: I
- Route E': - End/True End: I/O
It's sort of the goal of I/O to take the two chronological plots (A and B) as reference to 'puzzle together' the right order of the achronologically told plotlines. Which is all but easy... You'll even have to take notes while reading, otherwise it's going to be a pain.
3.)
I could recommend some more (Ever17, Never7, ...) but the two I mentioned are pretty much unchallenged even by many classical books I read in the meantime. If you can endure the anime / manga vibes from these Visual Novels (there aren't a lot) giving them a chance would be very much worth it.
The quantum world in general is fascinating. I was just thinking the other day that much like the observer effect in quantum mechanics, there is a noticeable observer effect on the macro scale. When I'm being watched I absolutely am affected by it. Particularly with computers. I work IT and am very smooth with my work flow, until someone is watching me or my screens.
You won’t find anything more mind bending than: The Red Book by Carl Jung. Jung himself wrote in the epilogue that to the superficial reader it would seem madness. Give it a try if you dare.
Hitchhickers guide to the galaxy. I constantly had to turn pages back and fort to be sure i hadn't missed anything. author did in fact jump from A to G in his story 😂 I've never been more entertained though.
Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. There’s one chapter that’s written backwards so you have to read it in a mirror (or take a picture of it & flip it). This book is… weird. & I’m still not sure what exactly happened.
The Martian Chronicles - When trying to colonize Mars, the Martians are able to shape change / insert images into Earthling minds. It felt impossible to know what was real.
The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway
It does resolve many details at the very end, so not a perfect recommendation, but you'll probably be surprised and confused a lot of the time. It's surprisingly funny too, the kind of book I finished with an "oooo, that's what was going on the whole time" and wanted to immediately start again from the beginning.
Anything by Mona Awad tbh, but Bunny in particular.
Also Plastic by Scott Guild (disclaimer i dnf bc i was having a hard time understanding what tf was going on lmao)
Critique of Pure Reason. if you do want to get through it i recommend buying it with Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, which was somewhat ironically published after the Critique
*Too Like the Lightning* and its sequels (the *Terra Ignota* series) by Ada Palmer. I'm on the fourth and final book now and still tying pieces together that I didn't understand from the first!
When I was 12/13 my teacher recommended Sophie's World. Maybe it's the age I was at the time, but I struggled through it (it's a crash course on philosophy loosely held together by a little bit of plot).
I have just read the man who saw seconds, its only 300 pages but I felt I had to read it is it only took 4 days, a man gets to see slightly into the future, it goes into the existence of free will and changing fate, it made me really think about the existence of free will and changing fate.
For a truly mind-bending experience, I highly recommend **"Orlando" by Virginia Woolf**. This novel defies traditional narrative structures and timelines, following the life of its protagonist over several centuries and through a mysterious gender transformation. Woolf's experimental style and rich, poetic language will keep you questioning and rethinking everything you read.
Right now, you can stream and download it for free on Opus Audiobooks on the App Store.
The Convoluted Universe (there are 4 books in total, that go from easy to difficult to understand) although, this 4 books are already into the heavy metaphysics. Written by Dolores Cannon. It is usually recommended that you read several of her previous books such as Keepers of the Gardens, Between Life and Dead, The New Earth and the Three waves of volunteers, etc; before you tackled the 4 book-series I mentioned. I read them all. Changed my life forever. I was SO obssessed with these books (they are quite lenghty) that I would spend the entirety of my free time reading. My bf almost broke up with me because he said I had gone mad! I didn\`t even shower because it was a waste of time, instead of being reading!
* The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro * Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. There are two other books in the series, but they explain things a lot more. They do not *fully* explain what is going on, though. * Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I did not understand a word of this.
Annihilation was an “I have to finish this in one day” book.
I did finish it less than one day lol Edit: Less than
One more Southern reach book (annihilation series) on the way too. Can't wait!
Man I read a few hundred pages of gravity's rainbow. I probably understood a handful of them
Very ominous… I like it
I enjoyed The Unconsoled so much, but I'm so glad I went in not knowing what to expect.
Finnegans Wake
lol I was going to say Joyce’s Ullysses
Good choice. Gravity's Rainbow is a walk in the park compared to Finnegan's Wake, at least in my personal opinion. As much as I appreciated the lyrical language of Finnegan's Wake, I understood very little of this book.
I won’t say Gravity’s Rainbow gets a ‘super hard book’ rep without merit, but it’s definitely not as hard as people on reddit make it out to be. I believe Joyce’s work is the very definition of mind bending which is exactly what OP is asking for.
Agreed. Gravity's Rainbow has a plot with clear character motivations and includes adventurous, preposterous, and hilariously obscene stories -- it's captivating. Finnegan's Wake, on the other hand, is a fever dream full of wit and humor, but made of fractured and chaotic story lines. That being said, Joyce's other novels are more focused and plot-driven. Ulysses, for example, is incredible from a literary perspective and it's far more focused than the former two novels. In any case, I agree with you that Finnegan's Wake fits OP's request flawlessly.
Yeah Finnegans Wake is utterly garbaldygook. I had an annotated version with some explanations and I STILL did not understand a word of what I was reading.
Came here to say the same thing. (Don't get me wrong, I love it, but it's a lot of work to unpack.)
*Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy* --David Chalmers *The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality* --Andy Clark *The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes* --Donald Hoffman
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Incredible, bizarre, funny, sadistic, poignant, rewarding, and brutally challenging, it's one of my all-time favorites. If you understand 10% of it on your first read, you're doing great. Gets better with every re-read, too.
Came to say this. What a wild book.
Amazing, I’ll start soon!
Awesome - good luck! It's famously challenging, but totally worth it if you're the right audience for it. Just don't overthink it - go with the flow and see where it takes you. If you need help along the way, the r/ThomasPynchon subreddit has an archive of a section-by-section group read and analysis that's an excellent resource.
One of my favorites!
I first picked up GR (the classic Bantam paperback edition) just after my girlfriend dumped me in '74. I spent the next week on my mother's couch inching through the book utterly spellbound. I have never been the same. My amazement at the book only grows with each reading. Maybe one of these days, I will even understand the significant of the Khirgiz Light.
On my list. Maybe next
The Gone World - Tom Swederlitch
Seconded. I flew through this book and had my wife read it so we could talk about it
I loved The Gone World. The book was absorbing and exasperating, thoughtful, lyrical, suspenseful and totally wtf is going on here. The ending was...wow
House of leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Honestly this is the one
It's taken me over a year to make my way through HALF of this book. It's a journey for sure.
Came here to say this!
Ulysses by James Joyce which I'm just starting myself!
In grad school, one of the department profs lead a seminar on Ulysses, and on the first day, he asked if anyone had read it before. One guy said he’d read it during undergrad and then once more post-bachelors. The prof said, “oh good! You might actually get something out of it this time around!”
haha yep! I believe it! I started it twice before but very passively, but since I head to Dublin in late July I know it's time. I ordered the Ulysses Guide by Patrick Hastings that gets a lot of good cred that arrives tomorrow. :) I was an English major but the only other Joyce I read was The Dead from Dubliners in Lit Theory which we bludgeoned to death. I'm finishing the whole of Dubliners now.
It's the only English book that I've considered reading in my native language since my English is good enough to read full-length novels. I've tried three or foue times, and I'm fully lost, confused and hurt before I reach page 100.
That's likely the case for most humans, I think! I've heard it's best with a guide, so that's how I'm going to do it.
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thanks! I'm going to Ireland in about 2 months so I'm making the leap finally!
Flow my tears the policeman said, by Phillip K Dick.
Came here to say “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch” by Philip K Dick, which I believe is his most insane book
House of leaves
Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem.
Bunny by Mona Awad A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
I just read Bunny... Holy moly, it felt like I was on drugs.
Right? I loved it and had no idea wtf I was reading at the same time! I've read some of the author's other books and they're even weirder.
"The Magus - A Revised Version" by John Fowles Even after reading it, I'm still not completely sure about what was going on. Kept me turning pages to find out all through the book, though. Fowles is one of those authors that's huge in certain circles (mostly in the UK), but relatively unknown to the world at large. Kind of like Russel Hoban.
One of the best books I've read, and couldn't really tell you what it's about
Infinite Jest should be in the mix, I think. It's not the most difficult to read, but definitely the most mind-bending if you consider both the prose and the book length together. He also uses a lot of footnotes and some of them are huge, so you are constantly going from the main text to the notes.
Foucaults Pendulum : Umberto Eco.
Neuromancer by William Gibson
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
House of Leaves!!
Came for this. I'm pretty good at keeping up, but wow....
Can't believe I had to scroll this far to find it. It is *the* mind bending book
A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
Peter Watts -Blindsight. I’d also throw in Blake Crouch - Recursion because it fucks with your notions of memory and time.
I don't think there is an English translation, but Salvador Elizondo's *El hipogeo secreto* fits the bill. A group of men are aware of their existence as characters of a novel called *El hipogeo secreto*, written by Salvador Elizondo, because they read a novel called *El Hipogeo Secreto*, which may or may not have been written by Salvador Elizondo, or by one of them, or by someone else. So they dream a city into existence, where they will look for a place called el Hipogeo secreto, where they hope to find Salvador Elizondo, to ask him why they exist as characters of a novel. For years it was my favourite Mexican novel.
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Is this it? https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Crypt-Mexican-Literature/dp/1628974389/
Oh shit, that's it. I didn't know it was available in English
I wonder how good the translation is. I'll probably check out it. Thanks.
The house at the end of Needless Street
Yes! 🤯🤯 “The Last House on Needless Street” - Catriona Ward
that was a creepy one
1Q84 by Murakami
You might like *10 billion days and 100 billion nights* by Mitsuse Ryu.
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town -Cory Doctorow
the end of cormac mccarthy's suttree
mind bending : thomas pynchon the crying of lot 49 is like a mild nice mind bend.
Try Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey about a half human half angel...and he's really pissed off. Totally outrageous
This series has everything...world-building, humor, perfect noir-esque internal dialogue from the lead character, and side characters with whom you can feel invested.
How High We Go in the Dark
Peace by Gene Wolfe. It's ghost story, maybe.
Gone away world, nick harkaway. Makes perfect sense once you get about half way, and is so worth it; but the first half is just.... What?
**Foucault's Pendulum** by Umberto Eco
House of Leaves
piranesi
Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstetter. Not a damn word. It's in English. I don't think I'll ever be able to read and comprehend. Codex Seraphinianus - Luigi Serafini. It's an encyclopedia of a different universe written in an alien script. Fascinating.
Dark Matter - Blake Crouch Recursion - Blake Crouch (even more than DM) Diary - Chuck Palahniuk The End of Mr. Y - Scarlett Thomas
Rant by Chuck Palahniuk
I'd argue Blake Crouch is not good at all and rather boring. I just about made myself cry trying to get through Dark Matter
I would argue you on that, and the beauty is we could both be right!
I'm am going to check out the apple TV+ show. I'm curious how they'll do certain scenes
I’d agree. Dark Matter is the dumbed down version of a Philip K Dick book. The
Blake Crouch is mid as hell. The Michael bay of “sci fi”.
I didn’t like The Pines that much but I LOVED these two.
I wouldn't give him that much credit. But I get where you're coming from
Schismatrix by Sterling
Nedjma, by Kateb Yacine. It's not only mind bending but also written in one the most beautiful prose/ blank verse you can imagine.
The Ticket That Exploded by WIlliam S Burroughs, I didn't understand a thing.
Burroughs and Phillip K Dick...Heroin is a helluva drug
Beloved
It's on my top 5.
Without context, fight club
*Fire Caste* by Peter Fehervari. Ignore the fact that it's a Warhammer book and just dive in. You don't need to know anything about the setting to read it.
Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris. It's a kind of rewriting of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, but way weirder. I read it years ago and it still messes with my head.
Came here to say Ulysses and Gravity’s Rainbow, which have already mentioned multiple times, for good reason. I admit I couldn’t finish GR— got 200 pages in and just couldn’t anymore, but I think that this was because it was the same year I also read Infinite Jest (DFW) and Underworld by Don Delilo. Would also suggest the latter, it’s really something. Sometimes I get this feeling that these “encyclopedic novels” were some kind of pissing contest between three dudes trying to one-up each other with who could write the longest most unreadable novel… (doesn’t mean they’re not worth reading, but seriously) Edit: grammar
The Bible and Word of God, Word of Man
Following
Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides.
That's literally my terrain! Please tell me you're open towards Visual Novels, because if you are I got you *really* good here. 1.) As far as mind bending goes, I'd really recommend you to read **Remember11**. It's a sort of mind swap murder mystery, that keeps on confusing the reader since the main character has to continuously figure out what happened to the body he took over while "he wasn't there". You can read up on the concept in detail here, as I already asked for similar concepts myself: https://www.reddit.com/r/whattoreadwhen/comments/1d5ynv0/a_mind_swap_murder_mystery/ There's more screwy stuff with pronouns going on where there are several different versions of 'I', ({SELF}, *I*, {I}, etc.) that keep on appearing throughout the plot, and causing you to never know who's actually the narrator right now. Similar to the following: "Amidst a snowstorm, {SELF} has been on the tower, as {I} jumped. Everything went dark as {I} hit the ground. When I woke up, I was in a small room with a single light bulb. {I} however still felt like being outside on the snowy ground, slowly bleeding to death..." You probably realize there are several different implications as to what may have happened just from reading it... But anything beyond that would spoil too much. There's also much, much more going on with regards to archetypes, fourth wall breaking and unreliable narrator kind of story-telling that keeps on confusing you with increasing inconsistencies between both mind swapping persons' perceptions that just 'don't match up' (like the same boy being there at both of their locations, even though they're several hundred kilometres apart, and people start remembering things differently (like years or events), which brings up the question whether or not time travel may be involved too, etc.) 2.) I/O - Revision II Ever watched Memento? Like the forward and backwards going narrative? If you want that taken to the literal extreme, you cannot go wrong with I/O. It features *five* plotlines, two going forward, two going backwards and another one following 'imaginary order'. To further complicate matters, all of these are told by different persons, living vastly different lives. And once you finish the first four routes, the novel will unlock two different versions to *each* of the plotlines you read before. Your final reading order would then be the following (with A and B going forwards, C and D going backwards and E going in 'imaginary order'): - Route A: Ver. 0.1 - END/Clover - Route B: Ver. 0.1 - END/Ishtar - Route C: Ver. 0.1 - END/"He" - Route D: Ver. 0.1 - END/Conclusion - Route E: - Bad End 2/Solitude - Route A: Ver. 1.0 - End/Sunset - Route B: Ver. 1.0 - End/Nether world - Route E: - Bad End 3/"Marduk" - Route C: Ver. 1.0 - End/Overlap - Route D: Ver. 1.0 - End/"Enigma" - Route E: - End/Lead Out - Route D': - End/Dilmun - Route C': - End/Beginning of legend - Route B': - End/True End: O - Route A': - End/True End: I - Route E': - End/True End: I/O It's sort of the goal of I/O to take the two chronological plots (A and B) as reference to 'puzzle together' the right order of the achronologically told plotlines. Which is all but easy... You'll even have to take notes while reading, otherwise it's going to be a pain. 3.) I could recommend some more (Ever17, Never7, ...) but the two I mentioned are pretty much unchallenged even by many classical books I read in the meantime. If you can endure the anime / manga vibes from these Visual Novels (there aren't a lot) giving them a chance would be very much worth it.
The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda.
100 years of solitude will have you like that at some points.
John dies at the end
Something Deeply Hidden is a pretty wild and harder to comprehend book about quantum mechanics.
see also Quantum Physics (1974) by Stephen Gasiorowicz AKA 'gas your brains out'.
The quantum world in general is fascinating. I was just thinking the other day that much like the observer effect in quantum mechanics, there is a noticeable observer effect on the macro scale. When I'm being watched I absolutely am affected by it. Particularly with computers. I work IT and am very smooth with my work flow, until someone is watching me or my screens.
Perdido Station by China Mieville. It’s been a long time since I read it but I remember thinking it was pretty wild.
Ubik – Philip K Dick Das Schloss - Franz Kafka
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Reality Transurfing
You won’t find anything more mind bending than: The Red Book by Carl Jung. Jung himself wrote in the epilogue that to the superficial reader it would seem madness. Give it a try if you dare.
House of leaves
The illuminatus! Trilogy All I can say is, fnord.
Hitchhickers guide to the galaxy. I constantly had to turn pages back and fort to be sure i hadn't missed anything. author did in fact jump from A to G in his story 😂 I've never been more entertained though.
Try "A Wrinkle In Time"
If I told you it wouldn't bend your mind. Hint : the Magus by John Fowles . Fuck. I said it ...
Library at Mount Char
Vurt
The Unmaking of June Farrow was my most recent mind bender. It starts as a small town sleepy novel to an insane puzzle of timelines to keep track of.
Back in the day, Metamorphasis by Kafka fit the bill for me.
The third policeman by Flann o’Brian.
The Childhood of Jesus by J M Coetzee A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
Satanic verses
Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. There’s one chapter that’s written backwards so you have to read it in a mirror (or take a picture of it & flip it). This book is… weird. & I’m still not sure what exactly happened.
The Martian Chronicles - When trying to colonize Mars, the Martians are able to shape change / insert images into Earthling minds. It felt impossible to know what was real.
Slaughterhouse Five
Riddley Walker
The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway It does resolve many details at the very end, so not a perfect recommendation, but you'll probably be surprised and confused a lot of the time. It's surprisingly funny too, the kind of book I finished with an "oooo, that's what was going on the whole time" and wanted to immediately start again from the beginning.
Part of Diaspora by Greg Egan
Anything by Mona Awad tbh, but Bunny in particular. Also Plastic by Scott Guild (disclaimer i dnf bc i was having a hard time understanding what tf was going on lmao)
The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner. If you go in cold, I guarantee you’ll have no idea what’s going on
3 Body Problem.
A brief history of time - Stephen Hawking (It's not that brief)
Wittgenstein's Mistress - David Marson If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
Sophie’s World
S.
The Castle by Franz Kafka. I read this, but did I understand it? Not at all.
Critique of Pure Reason. if you do want to get through it i recommend buying it with Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, which was somewhat ironically published after the Critique
Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
*Too Like the Lightning* and its sequels (the *Terra Ignota* series) by Ada Palmer. I'm on the fourth and final book now and still tying pieces together that I didn't understand from the first!
When I was 12/13 my teacher recommended Sophie's World. Maybe it's the age I was at the time, but I struggled through it (it's a crash course on philosophy loosely held together by a little bit of plot).
Chasm City by Alistair Reynolds
I have just read the man who saw seconds, its only 300 pages but I felt I had to read it is it only took 4 days, a man gets to see slightly into the future, it goes into the existence of free will and changing fate, it made me really think about the existence of free will and changing fate.
The Last House on Needless Street - Catriona Ward
My top two picks are John Dies at the End and House of Leaves. Next level mindfucks
>I don’t want to be able to understand what I’m reading for a single second Yo, why would you do this to yourself?
For a truly mind-bending experience, I highly recommend **"Orlando" by Virginia Woolf**. This novel defies traditional narrative structures and timelines, following the life of its protagonist over several centuries and through a mysterious gender transformation. Woolf's experimental style and rich, poetic language will keep you questioning and rethinking everything you read. Right now, you can stream and download it for free on Opus Audiobooks on the App Store.
The Convoluted Universe (there are 4 books in total, that go from easy to difficult to understand) although, this 4 books are already into the heavy metaphysics. Written by Dolores Cannon. It is usually recommended that you read several of her previous books such as Keepers of the Gardens, Between Life and Dead, The New Earth and the Three waves of volunteers, etc; before you tackled the 4 book-series I mentioned. I read them all. Changed my life forever. I was SO obssessed with these books (they are quite lenghty) that I would spend the entirety of my free time reading. My bf almost broke up with me because he said I had gone mad! I didn\`t even shower because it was a waste of time, instead of being reading!
The Bible