Book Recommendations
- Qiu Shi
- Mar 21, 2019
- 9 min read
Updated: Mar 27, 2019
So...the thing is, I have a specific taste in books. Mind you, I find them incredibly entertaining to read but they are definitely not what one would usually be recommended. Unless you have an eccentric attraction to 'weird' books, this list might not be for you.
1. Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep? By Bradley Voytek, Timothy Verstynen
This book is not what it looks like. No, it isn't yet another zombie apocalypse series where the main characters fall in love while being mauled by the undead. In fact, it is a neurological study on the zombie brain.
It includes:
- How to 'technically' make a zombie in real life
- Which parts of the brain are being affected by the 'zombie virus'
- Human behaviour vs Zombie behaviour
- Real-life diseases that make people act or look zombie-esque
- Snippets of neuroscience history
- Funny mad brain scientists
If I still have not convinced you, let me show you a small sample paragraph in the book which utterly amused me.
Can you imagine, being able to respond to danger but being unable to perceive it? I found that so difficult to wrap my head around yet some people out there are constantly dealing with this problem.
Or this other small snippet that I love...
There is this plant called devil's cucumber, from the village Haiti, which was used to convert humans to 'zombies'.
According to the Wikipedia, " Clairvius Narcisse (January 2, 1922 – 1964) was a Haitian man said to have been turned into a zombie by a Haitian vodou preparation, purportedly a combination of psychoactive substances (oftentimes the paralyzing pufferfish venom tetrodotoxin and the strong deliriant Datura). Based on the presumption that tetrodotoxin and related toxins are not always fatal, but at near-lethal doses can leave a person in a state of near-death for several days with the person remaining conscious, tetrodotoxin has been alleged to result in zombieism, and has been suggested as an ingredient in Haitian Vodou preparations. Narcisse would then have fallen into a comatose state, closely resembling death, which resulted in his live burial. His body would then have been recovered and he would have been given doses of Datura stramonium to create a compliant zombie-like state, and set to work on a plantation."
So technically, humans have found ways to 'zombify' other humans already. There are so much more to learn about past horrific study methods as well as the reason for a zombie's behaviour in this book. I strongly recommend you check this out!
2. The boy who drew monsters. By Keith Donohue.
This book is not for the faint-hearted. Especially if you are like me and would do most of your daily activities in bed because you are lazy, because waking up to this book cover is not a very pleasant experience. Though, if you live for the thrills, please do read this book.
Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier, ten-year-old Jack Peter Keenan has been deathly afraid to venture outdoors. Refusing to leave his home in a small coastal town in Maine, Jack Peter spends his time drawing monsters. When those drawings take on a life of their own, no one is safe from the terror they inspire. His mother, Holly, begins to hear strange sounds in the night coming from the ocean, and she seeks answers from the local Catholic priest and his Japanese housekeeper, who fill her head with stories of shipwrecks and ghosts. His father, Tim, wanders the beach, frantically searching for a strange apparition running wild in the dunes. And the boy’s only friend, Nick, becomes helplessly entangled in the eerie power of the drawings. While those around Jack Peter are haunted by what they think they see, only he knows the truth behind the frightful occurrences as the outside world encroaches upon them all. (Summary by Goodreads)
This is not quite like normal horror or psychological thriller books, because I hate those. This is a book that kind of shakes you but at the end you forget about why you were scared since the plot is so surreal that there is no way that can happen, until you think about it again as a passing thought because you were bored, and again when you walk by a nice beach and was reminded of the main character, and again when you pull out a piece of white printer paper for your last minute homework. Then you wonder why you won't stop thinking about it and think about it more. It doesn't haunt you, at least you don't think it does...but does it? Well, you can always read to find out.
3. The thief of always
If you have watched the show Coraline, this book will seem very familiar to you. It is possible that the element of fear is kind of diluted by the fact that it is a writing now instead of a movie but I think the same kind of terror can still be achieved if you are alone, cozy and snuggled in your bed at 2.16am in the morning when reading this book.
The Thief of Always starts out by introducing the main character, Harvey Swick. Harvey Swick is a 10-year-old boy who finds himself bored with school, uninteresting teachers, homework, and his day-to-day life. In response to a frustrated plea for change, a man named Rictus flies up to Harvey's window and tells him about a kid's paradise, the Holiday House. At the Holiday House, there are all the sweets a person could ask for, four seasons in a day, Halloween every evening, Christmas, with whatever gifts you could wish for, every night, and everything else you could dream of. Harvey reluctantly goes to the house after a week of thinking, and enters the house through a wall of mist. Harvey enjoys the wonders of the Holiday House, and stays there for thirty-one days, becoming friends with Wendell and Lulu, two other kids at the house. There is also a woman, Mrs. Griffin, who cooks all the meals for the children. She is very nice and sweet. However, he eventually starts to suspect that the house is not as perfect as it seems.
My favourite part is that this book starts out already creepy and end with the same level of pure disgusting unsettling feeling. I was tempted to burn my copy of this book after I reached the climax but as someone with no courage, I just shoved it in my bookshelf hoping I never see it again. I gives you the same unsatisfactory ending as Coraline when she tossed the hand down the well. (You'd think she would know better! What if the hand lands on the walls of the well and crawl back out?) Which is why I have sort of a love-hate relationship with this book. Hence, in order to make more people suffer with me, I always recommend this book to others.
4. A Monster Calls. By Partick Ness.
Ah...Patrick Ness, he is but the best author alive (well, that's my personal opinion so please lift your finger from your keyboard). I absolutely, ADORE, this book. It is so good. I have no other words other than the fact that it is so good.
Conor has the same dream every night, ever since his mother first fell ill, ever since she started the treatments that don't quite seem to be working. But tonight is different. Tonight, when he wakes, there's a visitor at his window. It's ancient, elemental, a force of nature. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth.
Patrick Ness takes the final idea of the late, award-winning writer Siobhan Dowd and weaves an extraordinary and heartbreaking tale of mischief, healing and above all, the courage it takes to survive. (Summary from Goodreads)
To clarify in case the pictures freaked you out, this is not a horror nor is it psychological thriller. This is actually a very sorrowful tale about mental illness, and recovery. It gets you thinking and feeling which is so important because stories can seem distant at times.
5. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. By Ransom Riggs.
If you have seen the movie and found the movie to be trash, same. Its one thing to change the plot a little to fit the story, it is another to change the characters entirely. I was utterly disappointed to see the film which is why I highly recommend this book. The way the movie portrayed the characters as some sort of super-beings that are on a quest to fight bad guys and ultimately win was such an insult to the story itself...but if I were to continue to rant about the movie, this post will become a full 3 paged essay so let me just skip to it.
A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow-impossible though it seems-they may still be alive. (Summary by Goodreads)
Despite the cover and the creepy photographs, this is not a horror story. This is a story about discrimination, the dark side of human nature and the way innocent children are wrongly punished for being different. I found this story tragic yet inspiring as these group of misfits fight for their own place in the world. It is interesting to see how differently the main character used to view the world and how he sees it now that he is at Miss Peregrine's Home. (Don't be fooled by the movie)
6. 51 Sleepless Nights. By Tobias Wade.
If by now you haven't notice my taste...Don't bother scrolling since you clearly have not been looking at all.
This book is a collection of many short stories, which is very easy to read if you get bored or get distracted easily. There are many of these and the reason I recommend this one in particular is because most if not all the stories are all of good quality.
7. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. By Oliver Sacks.
Let us take a break from all the scary books and read something less likely to cause you eternal trauma.
In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century" (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.
If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks's splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine's ultimate responsibility: "the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject." (Summary by Goodreads)
8. The Creeps. By John Connolly.
In this delightfully imaginative novel, once again, hell threatens to break loose as Samuel Johnson and his ragtag group of friends must defend their town from shadowy forces more threatening than ever before...
In this clever and quirky follow-up to The Gates and The Infernals, Samuel Johnson’s life seems to have finally settled down—after all, he’s still got the company of his faithful dachshund Boswell and his bumbling demon friend Nurd; he has foiled the dreaded forces of darkness not once but twice; and he’s now dating the lovely Lucy Highmore.
But things in the little English town of Biddlecombe rarely run smoothly for long. Shadows are gathering in the skies; a black heart of pure evil is bubbling with revenge; and it rather looks as if the Multiverse is about to come to an end, starting with Biddlecombe. When a new toy shop’s opening goes terrifyingly awry, Samuel must gather a ragtag band of dwarfs, policemen, and very polite monsters to face down the greatest threat the Multiverse has ever known, not to mention assorted vampires, a girl with an unnatural fondness for spiders, and highly flammable unfriendly elves.
The latest installment of John Connolly’s wholly original and creepily imaginative Samuel Johnson Tales, The Creeps is humorous horror for anyone who enjoys fiction at its best. (Summary by Amazon)
9. Unnatural Creatures. By Neil Gaiman.
Unnatural Creatures is a collection of short stories about the fantastical things that exist only in our minds—collected and introduced by beloved New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman.
The sixteen stories gathered by Gaiman, winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, range from the whimsical to the terrifying. The magical creatures range from werewolves to sunbirds to beings never before classified. E. Nesbit, Diana Wynne Jones, Gahan Wilson, and other literary luminaries contribute to the anthology.
It is hard to find summaries for short stories book so heres a sample...
10. The Night Gardener. By Jonathan Auxier.
The Night Gardener follows two abandoned Irish siblings who travel to work as servants at a creepy, crumbling English manor house. But the house and its family are not quite what they seem. Soon the children are confronted by a mysterious spectre and an ancient curse that threatens their very lives. With Auxier’s exquisite command of language, The Night Gardener is a mesmerizing read and a classic in the making.
More than just a spooky tale, it’s also a moral fable about human greed and the power of storytelling. (Summary by Goodreads)
Comments