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fattredd
Mar 4, 2015

Woops
Lets talk about books with interesting structure or layout.

I'll start things off with House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. This book is really cool. It has huge amounts of footnotes throughout the story, and as it progresses the layout goes all over the place. http://i.imgur.com/8G8bHJR.jpg I think it makes the whole thing feel like a puzzle, waiting to be put together. It's a really interesting read overall.

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Pound_Coin
Feb 5, 2004
£


The Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall


Edit for slightly better images:



In addition to typological fuckery, some really intresting ideas about, well, ideas It also has some chapters hidden both online and offline that are yet to be found

Pound_Coin fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Mar 6, 2015

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy. You could call it prepostmodern.

kanonvandekempen
Mar 14, 2009

fattredd posted:

Lets talk about books with interesting structure or layout.

I'll start things off with House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. This book is really cool. It has huge amounts of footnotes throughout the story, and as it progresses the layout goes all over the place. http://i.imgur.com/8G8bHJR.jpg I think it makes the whole thing feel like a puzzle, waiting to be put together. It's a really interesting read overall.

You've sold the book shot a little there I think, it's a really interesting read. The bulk of the text is written as a dissertation on a video that the writer of the dissertation has seen, which is framed in the story of a drug addict who has found the notes of the dissertation and becomes obsessed with trying to compile them. The typography/layout mirrors events in the story, e.g. there is a chapter in the 'dissertation' that analyses the idea of a labyrinth, and the chapter itself is written as if it is a labyrinth. Another chapter goes into a lot of details about the nature of sound and the occurrence of echos where he uses a similar approach. I believe there were some paragraphs that were written as morse code to spell SOS etc. It's a very intricate and interesting book* and I like it a lot.

It sort of feels like you're just reading through wikipedia, clicking on links that you think are interesting, constantly changing the subject.

*Or you could call it pretentious and you wouldn't be wrong.

Loeb CL
Nov 18, 2011

I've always liked the text-layout of the Babylonian Talmud:

Stik3
Jan 28, 2015

From President of the colonies to this.

fattredd posted:

I'll start things off with House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

I saw your title and I came here to recommend this book. Very neat read.

H.H
Oct 24, 2006

August is the Cruelest Month

Loeb CL posted:

I've always liked the text-layout of the Babylonian Talmud:



The thing to remember about the Talmud is that the surrounding commentary was written gradually over a period of centuries after the original text. Since there was a need for the commentary to correspond to the text, and there were different layers of it, so to speak, it all had to fit on the same page. This brought about the special layout, which is very distinctive.

This in turn influenced other Jewish texts, such as this:




Without going into too many details, the above page contains, other than the text, a translation into Aramaic, 6 blocks of commentary and a commentary of the translation.

Ezzum
Mar 13, 2014

For Now
There's a lot of poets who use interesting layouts for their work. The first one that comes to mind is Anatol Knotek, who is both a graphic designer and a poet, so his work gets decidedly pretty abstract. It's honestly better as graphic design than poetry in many ways, but he's interesting. A lot of poets affiliated with him also employ a similar style.

julesguise
Apr 22, 2015

I like books and book-related accessories.
Another book by Mark Z. Danielwelski, Only Revolutions. You'll read the story from both ends of the book and it is all over the place. Reading his books is like unlocking a riddle.

Synovexh001
Apr 25, 2015
I've got something I think you would like.
I've spent a couple of years writing a novel. It's lots of genres at once, but mostly murder-mystery fantasy horror. I have the prologue in .pdf, and I think it would be right up your alley.
Sadly, I am new and learning the system. Is there a way to post pages? Do I need a website I can upload to?

fattredd
Mar 4, 2015

Woops

Synovexh001 posted:

I've got something I think you would like.
I've spent a couple of years writing a novel. It's lots of genres at once, but mostly murder-mystery fantasy horror. I have the prologue in .pdf, and I think it would be right up your alley.
Sadly, I am new and learning the system. Is there a way to post pages? Do I need a website I can upload to?

You could share it as a Google Doc or through Dropbox or something

Kill Dozed
Feb 13, 2008
Anything by Mark Z. Danielewski will have a crazy layout. The aforementioned Only Revolutions and House of Leaves are both great. He has another one called The Fifty Year Sword that has images sown into the pages and another book called The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May coming out in May. From what I've seen of The Familiar, it is going to be pretty awesome. The whole thing is supposed to end up being 27 volumes. You can read more about it here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/11/mark-z-danielewski-serial-novel-the-familiar.html

Also, some pictures: http://io9.com/first-gorgeous-look-at-mark-z-danielewskis-new-series-1695999822

Another good one is Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes. For this book, Foer took another book and cut out most of the words. The remaining words form Foer's story. The book is actually full of holes: http://imgur.com/gallery/HqMxk

JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst collaborated on a really cool book called S.. This book looks like a really old book from a high school library. It is by a fictional author named Straka. The book is actually full of notes in the margins, postcards, letters, and other things that look like real documents. All these things come together to form a quasi-noir conspiracy thriller. A really cool book. Here is a New Yorker article about it http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-story-of-s-talking-with-j-j-abrams-and-doug-dorst And another article from the Guardian with more pictures http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/27/jj-abrams-ship-of-theseus

I have a thing for visually interesting books, so I can post some more at some point

Synovexh001
Apr 25, 2015

fattredd posted:

You could share it as a Google Doc or through Dropbox or something

Thanks! I'll try and set one up.
Also, somebody needs to give props to the Codex Seraphinianus. The formatting itself might not count as unusual, but the book itself is wonderfully whimsical. I lucked into finding a copy at my library- it's hardcover and thicker than most college textbooks. There's no story- just hundreds of pages of nonsensical cryptolect script and bizarre, otherworldly sketches- like if Dr. Seuss and Henry Darger spent a month doing peyote until they agreed on a final product. It's like a comprehensive, incomprehensible one-book encyclopedia of an alien landscape that has never existed.
According to the decodex in the back of the book, it was written by an Italian architect in Rome in the 60s, who credits its creation to a white adopted stray cat who would lie on the back of his neck as he worked and send him signals through his amygdalae. 10/10 I would recommend this book to anyone.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

Stravinsky
May 31, 2011

Has anyone said house of leaves yet?

Stravinsky
May 31, 2011

Op how about House of Leaves?

Stravinsky
May 31, 2011

Danielewski is the modern day joyce and has made many books with dumb retard designs so how about trying the House of Leaves?

Kill Dozed
Feb 13, 2008

Stravinsky posted:

Danielewski is the modern day joyce and has made many books with dumb retard designs so how about trying the House of Leaves?

House of Leaves is pretty good. But have you tried Kapow! by Adam Thirlwell? It is uses a weird book layout to tell a story about the Arab Spring. http://www.visual-editions.com/our-books/kapow
The publishers of this book, Visual Editions, specialize in, as the name suggests, visual books, so they are worth checking out.

The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia is another book with an awesome design. It focuses on a group of characters fighting a battle against omniscient narration. Each character has their own column of text, and as they get better at hiding their thoughts from the narrator, parts of their sections will be blacked out. http://blog.valdosta.edu/studiesinnarrative/people-of-paper/

These guys are no "modern day Joyce" (like Danielewski), but they are still worth reading!

Kazzah
Jul 15, 2011

Formerly known as
Krazyface
Hair Elf

Kill Dozed posted:

JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst collaborated on a really cool book called S.. This book looks like a really old book from a high school library. It is by a fictional author named Straka. The book is actually full of notes in the margins, postcards, letters, and other things that look like real documents. All these things come together to form a quasi-noir conspiracy thriller. A really cool book. Here is a New Yorker article about it http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-story-of-s-talking-with-j-j-abrams-and-doug-dorst And another article from the Guardian with more pictures http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/27/jj-abrams-ship-of-theseus


There's a kindle version of this--is it any good, or does it ruin the effect?

Kill Dozed
Feb 13, 2008

Krazyface posted:

There's a kindle version of this--is it any good, or does it ruin the effect?

I've never seen the Kindle edition, but I imagine it would ruin the effect. Part of the fun is being able to pull all the different things out of the book. Also, it sometimes helps to be able to flip back and forth between different sections, and I imagine this would get kind of annoying on a Kindle. All the postcards, letters, newspaper clippings, and other stuff in the book look real, so having a Kindle takes that aspect out of the book. Part of the fun is feeling like you stumbled on this old book full of history and personality. I can't imagine it is the same on a Kindle. If you can, get a physical copy of the book. You won't regret it.

elentar
Aug 26, 2002

Every single year the Ivy League takes a break from fucking up the world through its various alumni to fuck up everyone's bracket instead.
Marc Saporta's Composition No. 1 consists of 150 opening paragraphs, each printed on a separate page, all of them packed unbound in a box to be assembled by the reader. It's also available now as an iPad app, of course.

Tom Phillips's A Humument is an art book made by the artist cutting away and altering an 1892 Victorian book called "A Human Monument" over the course of almost 50 years. It's staggering.

Maybe worth, in that context, mentioning the work of Brian Dettmer, as well, though his books are more art and less text.

anilEhilated posted:

The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy. You could call it prepostmodern.

One of my favorite grad courses was titled exactly that, and TS was the centerpiece novel. Although, typography aside, Cervantes pioneered a lot of the tricks Sterne pulls in that book. (Still prefer Shandy because Sterne's humor is far less cruel.)

a kitten
Aug 5, 2006

Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence is a cool little trilogy that is presented as a correspondence between the two people in its title. Each page is a letter or postcard from one to the other and well...





...it's presented in a fun way with actual envelopes and handwritten letters and stuff.

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.
Oh dip, I forgot something that should be mentioned.

Building Stories by Chris Ware

syphon
Jan 1, 2001
There's the obligatory Cloud Atlas answer. One of the book's main themes is reincarnation. Each chapter covers a different part of history moving forward in time (to an eventual sci-fi futuristic setting) with different reincarnations of the same characters. The actual climax of the story is in the middle of the book, while the second half is just concluding each individual story. I thought the author did this really well and it was a very entertaining read.

Synovexh001
Apr 25, 2015
I did it! Took some formatting, but enjoy!
Chapter 1 is relevant with the quirky formatting, but I included the prologue and Chapter 2 in case it catches any interest.
I've never read House of Leaves, but I'll admit inspiration from Untitled Document, John Dies at the End, and HP Lovecraft.
Also, let's see if I can figure out how to format in BBcode!

:boom:

Captain Hotbutt
Aug 18, 2014
The People of Paper - Salvador Plascencia (Goodreads link HERE)

This book is one of my absolute favorites, hands down. I found it incredibly moving, the perfect example of accessible postmodernism, and a beautiful tale of love and loss. I recommend it to everyone.

The book is unique in that each page is divided into about two columns, with each column representing a character. It can be a continuation of the scene, told from a different perspective, or it can be a different look at the same situation, much like Rashomon. Things also flip on their side to fit more information in:



However, once the plot reveals itself, characters in the novel require their secrets to be kept - from each other as well as the reader. For this, entire columns and smaller sections are completely blacked out:





The columns and the blacked-out areas are just a small taste of the format changes in the book - it goes to more conventional places, it has another novel within it, etc. It's not necessarily a maze or super-duper dense or anything like that, but it offers some experimentation and choice with how to actually approach the whole thing.

Slanderer
May 6, 2007

kanonvandekempen posted:

You've sold the book shot a little there I think, it's a really interesting read. The bulk of the text is written as a dissertation on a video that the writer of the dissertation has seen, which is framed in the story of a drug addict who has found the notes of the dissertation and becomes obsessed with trying to compile them. The typography/layout mirrors events in the story, e.g. there is a chapter in the 'dissertation' that analyses the idea of a labyrinth, and the chapter itself is written as if it is a labyrinth. Another chapter goes into a lot of details about the nature of sound and the occurrence of echos where he uses a similar approach. I believe there were some paragraphs that were written as morse code to spell SOS etc. It's a very intricate and interesting book* and I like it a lot.

It sort of feels like you're just reading through wikipedia, clicking on links that you think are interesting, constantly changing the subject.

*Or you could call it pretentious and you wouldn't be wrong.

I met Danielewski at a book signing for Only Revolutions, and I mentioned that I couldn't tell if House of Leaves was meant to be a modern attempt at synthesizing a number of existing ideas (hypertextual narratives, deconstruction (from Derrida), etc...), or if it was mocking the pretension of these things? Or both, simultaneously?

He just shrugged and sorta laughed while giving agreeing that all these interpretations were valid.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Slanderer posted:

I met Danielewski at a book signing for Only Revolutions, and I mentioned that I couldn't tell if House of Leaves was meant to be a modern attempt at synthesizing a number of existing ideas (hypertextual narratives, deconstruction (from Derrida), etc...), or if it was mocking the pretension of these things? Or both, simultaneously?

He just shrugged and sorta laughed while giving agreeing that all these interpretations were valid.
Death of the author is a wonderful thing, it allows the author to play dead.

Toph Bei Fong
Feb 29, 2008



Mémoires by Asger Jorn and Guy Debord of Situationist International probably deserves a mention here.

It was bound in sandpaper, so it would destroy any books on the shelf next to it, as well as any coffee tables that it was placed on.





The interior is discussions about politics, memories about France and the political situation, and lots of illustrations (some original, some photographs, some stills from films, some newspaper clippings, etc.), covered over with layered ink to connect, censor, and re-contextualize the text.

Bottom Liner
Feb 15, 2006


a specific vein of lasagna
Just got my copy of The Familiar by Mark Z. Holy poo poo this is a gorgeous book. Can't wait to dig in.

theradiostillsucks
Feb 3, 2006

I am the undisputed king of an infinite amount of nothing, don't correct me when I'm wrong, I'm proud to wear the crown of fools

Toph Bei Fong posted:

Mémoires by Asger Jorn and Guy Debord of Situationist International probably deserves a mention here.

It was bound in sandpaper, so it would destroy any books on the shelf next to it, as well as any coffee tables that it was placed on.

The band The Durutti Column's first album had an LP sleeve with the same design, apparently. I'm guessing one inspired the other.

Toph Bei Fong
Feb 29, 2008



theradiostillsucks posted:

The band The Durutti Column's first album had an LP sleeve with the same design, apparently. I'm guessing one inspired the other.

The band were big fans, if Wikipedia is to be believed:

quote:

The first album, 1980's The Return of the Durutti Column (title inspired by a 1967 Situationist International poster that includes that phrase), was produced by Martin Hannett. Reilly: "...he more or less got sounds for me that no one else could understand that I wanted. And he understood that I wanted to play the electric guitar but I didn't want this horrible distorted, usual electric guitar sound and he managed to get that." The record featured a sandpaper sleeve (like the title of the record, inspired by a Situationist joke, a book – Guy Debord's Mémoires – with a sandpaper cover to destroy other books on the shelf). "I didn't even know it was going to be an album. It was just the case of jumping at the chance of being in the studio. I actually didn't get up in time, Martin had to physically get me out of bed to get me to the studio – that's how little I believed it would happen. I was still doing late night petrol station shifts. I was even more amazed when Tony presented me with a white label. I was completely baffled. 'What, this is really going to be an album? You must be insane! No-one's going to buy this!' And then Tony got the idea from the Situationists about the sandpaper book, and decided to do some with a sandpaper sleeve. It was Joy Division that stuck the sandpaper onto the card. I was mortified.

I'm going to have to check them out.

Jewmanji
Dec 28, 2003

Bottom Liner posted:

Just got my copy of The Familiar by Mark Z. Holy poo poo this is a gorgeous book. Can't wait to dig in.

I have to say, for someone with such a strong sense of design, I'm finding The Familiar to be not up to MZD's usual standards. The cover is kind of ghastly, and some of the stuff looks just plain weird (the youtube thing at the beginning, for instance). Still, I'm hooked. drat you, Danielewski.

Ubiquitous_
Nov 20, 2013

by Reene
I'm reading The Familiar myself. I was sold the moment I got to the "raindrops" pages where they're all cascading like a torrent. I love Danielewski. Even if I have absolutely no idea where this plot is heading so far.

cats on the beat
Jan 31, 2012

Synovexh001 posted:

Also, somebody needs to give props to the Codex Seraphinianus.


This. I got a chance to look at this at an art library once. It's so bonkers.



Also wanted to make mention of the very strange book Agrippa (The Book of the Dead) by William Gibson and Dennis Ashbaugh. It's more of art work than a book; it was designed to destroy itself after one reading. The digital file encrypted itself after being closed, and the paper materials used light-sensitive inks. Gibson seems like such a weirdo.

Here are some screenshots from the digital files.

fattredd
Mar 4, 2015

Woops

Synovexh001 posted:

I did it! Took some formatting, but enjoy!
Chapter 1 is relevant with the quirky formatting, but I included the prologue and Chapter 2 in case it catches any interest.
I've never read House of Leaves, but I'll admit inspiration from Untitled Document, John Dies at the End, and HP Lovecraft.
Also, let's see if I can figure out how to format in BBcode!

:boom:

Looks like the chapter 2 link is private. The formatting of chapter 1 certainly lends to the scatter-brained pain this guy is going through though. The lack of punctuation on the single line thoughts also help give a sense of urgency. Cool so far!

I'd love to give chapter 2 a look!

AnonymousNarcotics
Aug 6, 2012

we will go far into the sea
you will take me
onto your back
never look back
never look back
A Life In Books: The Rise and Fall of Bleu Mobley by Warren Lehrer is pretty cool.

quote:

In A LIFE IN BOOKS, Mobley’s autobiography/apologia is paired with a review of all 101 of his books. Each book is represented by its first edition cover design and catalogue copy, and more than a third of his books are excerpted. The resulting retrospective contrasts the published writings (which read like short stories) with the author’s confessional memoir, forming a most unusual portrait of a well-intentioned, obsessively inventive (if ethically challenged) visionary.



fattredd
Mar 4, 2015

Woops

Kill Dozed posted:

JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst collaborated on a really cool book called S.. This book looks like a really old book from a high school library. It is by a fictional author named Straka. The book is actually full of notes in the margins, postcards, letters, and other things that look like real documents. All these things come together to form a quasi-noir conspiracy thriller. A really cool book. Here is a New Yorker article about it http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-story-of-s-talking-with-j-j-abrams-and-doug-dorst And another article from the Guardian with more pictures http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/27/jj-abrams-ship-of-theseus

Just picked this one up last night. Pretty cool read so far, though I've only made it through the first two chapters. The documents inside add a lot to the meta-story's believability.

LibbyM
Dec 7, 2011

It's nothing as extreme as some of these but I just started reading Night Film, and a lot of the pages in the book are internet articles, or documents like police case reports, hospital patient records, stuff like that.

Kill Dozed
Feb 13, 2008

LibbyM posted:

It's nothing as extreme as some of these but I just started reading Night Film, and a lot of the pages in the book are internet articles, or documents like police case reports, hospital patient records, stuff like that.

You can also download an app that has more documents, video, sound files, etc.. You use the app to take a picture of something (I think it is a bird?) in the bottom corner of certain pages. The app then opens the thing that corresponds to that page.

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LibbyM
Dec 7, 2011

Kill Dozed posted:

You can also download an app that has more documents, video, sound files, etc.. You use the app to take a picture of something (I think it is a bird?) in the bottom corner of certain pages. The app then opens the thing that corresponds to that page.

Are there any websites that documented all that stuff so you could see it without having to use the app?

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