After reading almost nothing in 2025 due to stress and lack of time, I thought I‘d try something different and started Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino.
To be honest, the very weird and unusual style and ideas are exactly what I needed to get back into reading.
I‘m planning on reading some of Borges‘ works next, starting with „The Aleph and Other Stories“.
Do you guys have any other recommendations for me that have the same vibe?
by TheMostOstrich
5 Comments
Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser is the closest I’ve come to recapturing the wonder I felt reading Borges and Calvino
Julio Cortazar. I really liked “The Night Face Up.” It’s stayed with me in the decades since college.
Franz Kafka has some of the same surreal vibe.
*The Natural Histories/Flaw of Form/The Sixth Day and Other T*ales by Primo Levi. Overlapping collections of weird and fantastical short stories that stick with you, by a writer best known for his Holocaust survival memoirs.
Ursula Le Guin is a big fan of Italo Calvino. You might like her short story collection Changing Planes. The premise is that airports are so boring, it becomes possible to travel to other planes of existence and meet exotic beings. It’s weird and wonderful!
The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien. Very dream logic, things just slightly off and never explained.
Ice by Anna Kavan. Feels like a world running on rules you don’t understand.
There’s also A Fair System, Probably. It’s the end of the world but everything is handled through a front desk. Starts normal and gets kind of weird.