Slightly leftfield books that you accidentally discovered?

Jonny Ingbar

Jonny Ingbar

Well-known member
I've always been interested by books that seem to have, or more accurately once did, have a cult following, irrelevant of genre. Books that tend to stay with people, long after they read them.

I ended up buying a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit after a visit to the eatery in Great Ayton whose name was inspired by it. Keeping it to read to my grandkids, when that day comes, although ive obviously read it myself.

More recently I've been listening to the new Sampha album, which, apart from being fantastic, has a song called Jonathan L Seagull, which turns out to be a book from the 70's about, well, a Seagull. The theme of the book seems to be quite spiritual and about being a better person and was very popular in the 70's, which interested me.

So I did the obvious thing and ordered a copy - anyone read it?

Or any other books that you've discovered via a slightly odd route?
 
The Meg, picked up a copy in Manchester airport around 1998 not long after it was released when I was about 15. Wanted some light reading for the plane and enjoyed it. Never ever thought anyone would turn it into a cheesy movie 20 years later though 🤣
 
I didnt read a lot of fiction tbh, but did read some. I prefer more factual ,mechanical, scientific books.

Fiction wise, I re-read books in my late 30s that I read in my middle and late teens.
Of Mice and Men. To Kill a Mockingbird Brilliant both of them are, I`m not sure if they could be described as cult books?.

I bought The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at the Countries of the World America shop in Epcot Florida. They were leather bound and quite expensive tbh.
I was told they were the last two they would buy in that were unedited. I believe they are now sold without the profanities and racial slurs. I found both books at a young age absorbing and frightening as well as sad and funny, and those old feelings came when I re-read them.

I did go through a phase in my 20s when I read a lot of science fiction, which is my favourite film genre.
Arthur C Clark - 2001 Space Odyssey, Rendezvous With Rama.
Isaac Asimov - Foundation.
John Wyndham. DOT Triffids, Midwich Cuckoos, Kraken Wakes, Trouble with Litchen.
 
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Christopher (not Chris) Brookmyre, dark humour and he's a footie fan (St Mirren) to boot. I picked up one of his books left at at a hotel in Greece and almost gave up on it then the penny dropped and I've read all his stuff since including the 'pure' crime novels he writes as Chris Brookmyre
 
I think The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists almost certainly hits that mark. I was directed to it, quite appropriately as it turned out, by a plasterer...

I was on gardening leave around 2002 and spent a long dark winter reading most of the Telegraph's list of must-read classic books. I liked a lot of them and really took to Hemmingway and Steinbeck.

I did not like The Iliad (unfinished), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (ruefully finished), and Catcher in The Rye (unfinished).

Sorry - thread drift, there...
 
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I have liked time travel books ever since I read H G Wells The time Macine

These are a couple I really like

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Wall of Years By Andrew M. Stephenson | Used | 9780708880432 | World of Books

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Gerard Reve - The Evenings. Young man living with his parents in Amsterdam just after WW2. Goes out a lot. Odd from cover to cover.

Jonathan Littell - The Kindly Ones. The Holocaust told from the perspective of an SS officer in the Nazi Einsatzgruppen. Absolutely unsparing.

Mikhail Bulgakov - The Heart of a Dog. Doctor transplants various human parts into a pooch, which starts to walk upright and demand stuff, and generally acts the ar5e. Written in post revolutionary Russia, it is of course an allegorical satire, which earned its author a good old Stalinist prohibition.
 
Oooo said:
I remember Jonathan L Seagull , another culty following one was Zen and the art of motobike maintenance :)
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Heard of Zen, I think that one is pretty well known, but I don't know anyone who's read it. I suppose the question is whether that's because it's deserving read or people regard it as being a bit tongue in cheek.
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Read both those. Jls I thought was rubbish but I was quite young at the time so maybe didn't appreciate the symbolism. However his mother was right you can't eat a glide.
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Looking forward to reading it now 🤣
 
Hap said:
I think The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists almost certainly hits that mark. I was directed to it, quite appropriately as it turned out, by a plasterer...

I was on gardening leave around 2002 and spent a long dark winter reading most of the Telegraph's list of must-read classic books. I liked a lot of them and really took to Hemmingway and Steinbeck.

I did not like The Iliad (unfinished), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (ruefully finished), and Catcher in The Rye (unfinished).

Sorry - thread drift, there...
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Nobody likes catcher in the rye.
 
Jonny Ingbar said:
Heard of Zen, I think that one is pretty well known, but I don't know anyone who's read it. I suppose the question is whether that's because it's deserving read or people regard it as being a bit tongue in cheek.
Looking forward to reading it now 🤣
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The good thing is JLS will take you 30 minutes to read. It's kind of poetic and a statement about life in general.

The art of motorcycle maintenance is rubbish, give it a miss. I read it when I was in my teens as I was reading a lot of "religious" texts at the time.

I also read the I-Ching and it's place in chinese thought, the tanakh and book of the dead.
 
Jonny Ingbar said:
Heard of Zen, I think that one is pretty well known, but I don't know anyone who's read it. I suppose the question is whether that's because it's deserving read or people regard it as being a bit tongue in cheek.
Looking forward to reading it now 🤣
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Read Zen when I was younger out of curiosity only remember two things something about a dripping tap and other which I think was the whole point of the book so won't spoil it and tbh I could of been totally wrong lol
 
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