Hello. My name is Mike Russell. I write books (novels, short story collections, and novellas) and make visual art (mostly paintings, occasionally sculptures). I love art and books that are surreal and magical because that is the way life seems to me, and I love art and books that are mind-expanding because we need to expand our minds to perceive just how surreal and magical life is. My books have been described as strange fiction, weird fiction, surrealism, magic realism, fantasy fiction… but I just like to call them Strange Books.
You, the reader, leave your body and enter the book you are reading, emerging in the village of Gladeville, where a library promptly explodes… so begins your out-of-body journey of observing and even interacting with an increasingly surreal and cosmic story about a book that may soon be the only book in existence.
After experiencing hypnotherapy, I had the idea of employing a similar technique in my novel; in other words of addressing the reader directly and including them in the narrative (e.g. ‘You fly up into the air…’). It reminded me of choose-your-own-adventure books I enjoyed as a kid. I then wondered whether other authors had used a similar technique, which is how I discovered Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller. It’s twisty, it’s turny, it’s mischievous, and unique.
"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel...Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." —from If On A Winter's Night a Traveler
Italo Calvino's stunning classic imagines a novel capable of endless possibilities in an intricately crafted, spellbinding story about writing and reading.
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a feat of striking ingenuity and intelligence, exploring how our reading choices can shape and transform our lives. Originally published in 1979, Italo Calvino's singular novel crafted a postmodern narrative like never seen before—offering not one novel but ten, each with a…
This is a book that had an air of danger about it when I was at school. Perhaps mostly because the excellent Kubrick adaptation had been banned (although, as I later discovered, it was ‘banned’ by the director himself because of copycat morons and threats towards his family.) The book contains an invented language. Invented words have been used by authors before, of course, from James Joyce to Lewis Carroll, and many sci-fi authors. Here, it is not only fun and poetic, but also builds a prison of alienation around the protagonists.
In Anthony Burgess's influential nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, a teen who talks in a fantastically inventive slang that evocatively renders his and his friends' intense reaction against their society. Dazzling and transgressive, A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil and the meaning of human freedom. This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition, and Burgess's introduction, "A Clockwork Orange Resucked."
The Waves is a beautifully written and constructed book. Subjective voices rise and fall interspersed by moments of dispassionate clarity. It had a big effect on me and I continue to dip into it to remind me of what words can do. It was the first book I read where the novel’s form was as essential a part of the book’s meaning as its story and where the form had been considered and created rather than simply copied from convention. Surely every book should be written in that way, no? To make every aspect of what you are creating a conscious choice rather than a compulsive reaction is the artistic goal, and one that can make art a true force for change.
“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.”
Innovative and deeply poetic, The Waves is often regarded as Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece. It begins with six children—three boys and three girls—playing in a garden by the sea, and follows their lives as they grow up, experience friendship and love, and grapple with the death of their beloved friend Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing their inner lives: their aspirations, their triumphs and regrets, their awareness of unity and isolation.
I was heartened when this book was published and became reasonably popular, showing that unconventional fiction was still alive. Like BS Johnson before him, Danielewski plays not only with the novel’s story structure but with formal elements such as fonts, paragraphs, footnotes, etc., creating a labyrinth of text with clues and blind alleyways for the reader to get lost in.
“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times
Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations,…
Blimey. Even by PKD’s standards, this is an unconventional read. VALIS is a story which seeps into the author’s real life, or vice versa. It includes autobiographical elements as well as science fiction and philosophy. Its bravery impresses me. This is art written with the utmost passion, honesty and perhaps even desperation, as it details the author’s mental illness and unexplained experiences and tries to make sense of them. And yet it also manages to be great fun. Really.
It began with a blinding light, a divine revelation from a mysterious intelligence that called itself VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System). And with that, the fabric of reality was torn apart and laid bare so that anything seemed possible, but nothing seemed quite right.
It was madness, pure and simple. But what if it were true?
Enter a captivating world where science fiction and thrilling suspense converge. After plummeting from the roof of Helix Unbound, Amanda awakens to a life devoid of memories. Desperately longing to fit in, yet sensing she harbors an extraordinary secret beneath her seemingly ordinary facade, she explores the unfamiliar world in an effort to find herself. But when a companion from her forgotten past becomes entangled in a serial killer’s deadly game, Amanda is thrust into a race against time to prevent a catastrophe of massive proportions.
Dive into this gripping techno-thriller series that explores the emotional turmoil of life, resilience in the face of tragedy, the ever-present specter of death, and the eternal struggle to find the inherent goodness within us all.
A genetically engineered child with no memory of her past. A killer with dreams of destruction. And the fate of a city hanging in the balance…
Enter a captivating world where science fiction and thrilling suspense converge. After plummeting from the roof of Helix Unbound, Amanda awakens to a life devoid of memories. Desperately longing to fit in, yet sensing she harbors an extraordinary secret beneath her seemingly ordinary facade, Amanda explores the unfamiliar world in an effort to find herself. And when a companion from her forgotten past becomes entangled in a serial killer’s deadly game, Amanda is thrust…
Interested in
good and evil,
schizophrenia,
and
friendships?
10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
good and evil,
schizophrenia,
and
friendships.
