Booking Through Thursday

What was the most unusual (for you) book you ever read? Either because the book itself was completely from out in left field somewhere, or was a genre you never read, or was the only book available on a long flight… whatever? What (not counting school textbooks, though literature read for classes counts) was furthest outside your usual comfort zone/familiar territory?

And, did you like it? Did it stretch your boundaries? Did you shut it with a shudder the instant you were done? Did it make you think? Have nightmares? Kick off a new obsession?

Hmmm. I don’t think that I’ve read anything too out of the ordinary lately. (Maybe that’s a bad sign. I should probably read more out of my usual genres.) The book that really opened my eyes to a wider reading world was Roger Zelazny’s Great book of Amber. At the time I was a teenager getting a bit bored by epic fantasy and I had no idea that fantasy could be something else. So, Amber was like a bomb that rekindled my love for the genre. Ever since that I’ve gone to the way of different fantasy and haven’t regretted it. Oh, I read the occasional epic when they catch my eye.

I’ve also had to read some “Finnish classics” at school and it was pretty clear that they really aren’t for me.