Slightly leftfield books that you accidentally discovered?

kuepper said:
Christopher (not Chris) Brookmyre, dark humour and he's a footie fan (St Mirren) to boot. I picked up one of his books left at at a hotel in Greece and almost gave up on it then the penny dropped and I've read all his stuff since including the 'pure' crime novels he writes as Chris Brookmyre
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I love Christopher Brookmyre’s books. Very readable novels.
 
Really enjoyed A gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. The plot is sparse and simple but the writing is so rich. Just finished his first The rules of civility (also recommend) and now moving on to the Lincoln highway
 
not sure if either are considered left field but read Hitch Hikers guide to Europe as someone had left it lying about a Kibbutz I was working at 40 years ago, after the leaving the Kibbutz I took the book with me to use to help Hitch Hike across Europe, few years later I found out there was another book inspired by it so I read Hitch Hikers guide to the galaxy, and to be honest I preferred Ken Welsh's book and it was certainly more useful :)
 
Jonny Ingbar said:
I've always been interested by books that seem to have, or more accurately once did, have a cult following, irrelevant of genre. Books that tend to stay with people, long after they read them.

I ended up buying a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit after a visit to the eatery in Great Ayton whose name was inspired by it. Keeping it to read to my grandkids, when that day comes, although ive obviously read it myself.

More recently I've been listening to the new Sampha album, which, apart from being fantastic, has a song called Jonathan L Seagull, which turns out to be a book from the 70's about, well, a Seagull. The theme of the book seems to be quite spiritual and about being a better person and was very popular in the 70's, which interested me.

So I did the obvious thing and ordered a copy - anyone read it?

Or any other books that you've discovered via a slightly odd route?
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Heard about Jonathan seagull but only scanned a copy of one of his books in a book store.
If you like that then you’ll probably love ‘The celestine prophecy’
Amazing book with fantastic follow up books too 👍
 
mercury_redstone7 said:
I didnt read a lot of fiction tbh, but did read some. I prefer more factual ,mechanical, scientific books.

Fiction wise, I re-read books in my late 30s that I read in my middle and late teens.
Of Mice and Men. To Kill a Mockingbird Brilliant both of them are, I`m not sure if they could be described as cult books?.

I bought The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at the Countries of the World America shop in Epcot Florida. They were leather bound and quite expensive tbh.
I was told they were the last two they would buy in that were unedited. I believe they are now sold without the profanities and racial slurs. I found both books at a young age absorbing and frightening as well as sad and funny, and those old feelings came when I re-read them.

I did go through a phase in my 20s when I read a lot of science fiction, which is my favourite film genre.
Arthur C Clark - 2001 Space Odyssey, Rendezvous With Rama.
Isaac Asimov - Foundation.
John Wyndham. DOT Triffids, Midwich Cuckoos, Kraken Wakes, Trouble with Litchen.
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I have just finished reading all of the Rama books. I was uncomfortable when they had to resort to incest, but then the peedo fillia cropped up and I almost gave up. First book, outstanding. The rest, creepy for the wrong reasons.
 
Ex Footy Legs said:
Heard about Jonathan seagull but only scanned a copy of one of his books in a book store.
If you like that then you’ll probably love ‘The celestine prophecy’
Amazing book with fantastic follow up books too 👍
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Noted 👍

Reading some of the posts on this thread makes me think that part of our love for some books is borne out of the context in where we are in life at the time.
 
Hap said:
I think The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists almost certainly hits that mark. I was directed to it, quite appropriately as it turned out, by a plasterer...

I was on gardening leave around 2002 and spent a long dark winter reading most of the Telegraph's list of must-read classic books. I liked a lot of them and really took to Hemmingway and Steinbeck.

I did not like The Iliad (unfinished), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (ruefully finished), and Catcher in The Rye (unfinished).

Sorry - thread drift, there...
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The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists made a big impression on me, and remains a basis to my political beliefs to this day. It is a book I have gifted to a number of younger friends who I felt would benefit from it.
 
Dont know if its "Left Field", but found a copy of "The Restaurant At The End of The Universe" by Douglas Adams, in a Norwich bookshop.
As soon as I read of the character Ford Prefect...I was hooked.
Sat on a seat in Wells harbour laughing my socks off, expecting to be dragged away any minute :love:
 
sparkins said:
When I lived in London I moved into a shared rental house and found 3 books in an airing cupboard

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole which was very eccentric
London Fields and Money by Martin Amis

All three became instant favourites
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A Confederacy of Dunces is absolute, laugh out loud, genius. If you don't read, but do audiobooks don't go near Reginald D. Hunter's reading of it. It's absolutely awful.
 
Two I always go back to are; Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, and A Day in a Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn.

I tried watching the movie and tv show of Catch 22 but I can see why it’s problematic to make, the language is so nuanced it’s difficult to capture.

Both books have roots in the realms of realism and the bizarre. Fantastic reads.
 
All the light we can not see, by Anthony Doerr. Recently serialised on Netflix, which has trivialised it a bit. Still compelling though.

Star of the sea by Joseph O'Connor.
 
SmoggyRambo said:
Two I always go back to are; Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, and A Day in a Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn.

I tried watching the movie and tv show of Catch 22 but I can see why it’s problematic to make, the language is so nuanced it’s difficult to capture.

Both books have roots in the realms of realism and the bizarre. Fantastic reads.
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Both great reads. There are some fabulous Russian books - A Gentleman in Moscow being another very accessible one. Catch 22 was super popular 30 or so years ago, very entertaining too. It puts me in mind of The Men Who Stare At Goats, which is as surreal but more current.
 
Jonny Ingbar said:
Heard of Zen, I think that one is pretty well known, but I don't know anyone who's read it.
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I've read it, and it changed the way I thought about the world., gave me respect for the scientific mode of enquiry. Also read JLS many years ago and remember being hugely inspired by it at the time - though I was 21. another was the Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, another of those 60s books sneered at these days but which contains an awful lot of wisdom if we weren't so cynical.

One leftfield book that inspired me a lot was The Function of the Orgasm by Willhelm Reich. Reich was a visionary who went a bit off the rails and whose reputation has never been redeemed as a result. I never knew until recently that Cloudbusting by Kate Bush was a depiction of the moment (from Reich's son's autobiography) when he was arrested by the CIA (never to be heard of again).

Other key (neglected) works for me would be L'homme Revolte (The Rebel) by Camus, the poetry of Robinson Jeffers, and Henry Miller's entire oeuvre
 
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