The Metamorphosis of a Prime Intellect.

Jitterbug perfume was out there.

Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted is the first thing which popped into my head.

It’s a ‘diegetic’ anthology, the context is reminiscent of Sartre’s No Exit in many ways, but taken to Palahniuk’s particular style of extreme.

There’s one short story in it which caused furor back in the day, but I honestly found the meta-context to be even more philosophically gruesome.

Edit: may be biased, I got the book as a gift from a girl I used to like a lot, but she… well, let’s just say she was living that book at the time.

Gary Jennings’ Aztec. Come for the historical accuracy of pre-columbian exchange Central America, stay for the depressing twisted sickening outlook.

Wildest as in…?

I finished reading Maldita Guerra, which is the current de facto book detailing the Paraguay War (1864-1870). Francisco Solano López, Paraguay’s dictator at the time, is possibly the worst thing to have happened to the country. The fucking psycho established a cult of personality (saint figures in churches were removed to put photos of him), the only newspaper allowed to print was always cheering on how great and perfect he was, plus a secret police to ensure nobody would dare rise up against him. Oh, and the population was incentivized to denounce anyone that didn’t show enough love for the president.

To make matters worse, there was no real justice system. If you were accused of treason or conspiracy, you were as good as dead, no recourse. Oh, and López’ head was deep inside his own ass, any war reports that showed difficulties or stated losses from the Paraguayan army were rebuked and the person could end up dead for giving the bad news. The fucking asshole willfully ignored facts while giving orders to his army. He could’ve wiped the Triple Alliance’s forces when they began the counterattack, but his “strategic genius” was composed of himself and nobody else.

Infinite Jest - just the part about video conferencing is wild and is even mire wild when you realize it was written in the 90’s before video conferencing really existed:

“Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her. A traditional aural-only conversation […] let you enter a kind of highway-hypnotic semi-attentive fugue: while conversing, you could look around the room, doodle, fine-groom, peel tiny bits of dead skin away from your cuticles, compose phone-pad haiku, stir things on the stove; you could even carry on a whole separate additional sign-language-and-exaggerated-facial-expression type of conversation with people right there in the room with you, all while seeming to be right there attending closely to the voice on the phone. And yet — and this was the retrospectively marvelous part — even as you were dividing your attention between the phone call and all sorts of other idle little fuguelike activities, you were somehow never haunted by the suspicion that the person on the other end’s attention might be similarly divided.”

Kafkas famous book, I think the title is the transformation.

Also Orson Wells about the civil war in Spain. This was not fiction, but it points out so much real life non sense and lies that had my head spinning for most of the book.

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. I into it blind.

Pearl by Josh Malerman (Bird Box).

It’s about a pig on a small farm that can seep into your mind and make you do and see terrible things. I picked it up after reading Bird Box and a few other books of his, which I enjoyed. I expected to give up on it based on the silly 80s horror movie premise, but the book is truly demented and creepy and I felt existentially weird after reading it

China Miéville - The City & the City is one that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. Wild because as far out as it feels, it’s also a pretty accurate portrayal of how we’ve trained ourselves to intentionally not see. I find myself thinking of the book often.

Definitely House of Leaves. A story inside of a story, inside of a story, with all narrators being just a bit crazy. Text of different fonts, going all over the place and even upside down based on the story. Just make sure to get the physical copy.

Assisted Living (aka Äldreomsorgen i Övre Kågedalen) by Nikanor Teratologen. It’s a very bleak and horrible story about a boy who is in an incestuous relationship with his nazi philosopher grandfather. Together the go around committing murder, rape, and other crimes, while relating everything to obscure authors and texts. The original is written entirely in a swedish dialect which is hard to understand, and it didn’t translate that well into other languages I think. Despite all this, it is very well written and has won prizes and been made into a play and radio reading etc.

anarcho-syndicalism theory and practice by rudolf rocker, it was let’s say enligthening, I was already an anarchist before reading it, but now I’m an anarcho-syndicalist

currently reading networking in the rust programming language btw

Not a book, but a webcomic: https://elan.school/

Be careful what you wish for OP, this is THE WILDEST shit you will ever read (at least top 5, guaranteed) and the worst/best part is that it’s all true.

Also, its VERY addictive so clear your schedule.

You’ve been warned.

You’ve ALL been warned.

I went into Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? blind. Hadn’t seen the movie, hadn’t read any other Dick, hadn’t even had it hyped to me by a friend. What a series of mindfucks.