Weird Books to Read When You Hate Everyone
Some days you do not want a book that restores your faith in people. You want one that agrees with you.
These are books for that mood. Strange, misanthropic, funny in a way that does not require you to like anybody. Nobody in them is going to learn a valuable lesson about community.
Weird books for when you have had enough of everyone
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
A woman is perfectly happy working in a convenience store and everyone around her treats this as a crisis to be solved. Short, deadpan, and quietly furious about the pressure to want normal things.
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
The same author going considerably further. Be warned, this one gets genuinely disturbing, and it is aimed squarely at people who suspect society is a costume everyone else agreed to wear.
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The original. A spiteful, self-loathing man explains at length why he is right about everything and everyone. Written in 1864 and still the most accurate portrait of being extremely online.
Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville
A clerk responds to every request with “I would prefer not to” and simply keeps doing so. The patron saint of quiet refusal, and it is very funny before it turns sad.
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
A man performs being a person because he cannot work out how to actually be one. Bleak, beautiful, and enormously popular with people who have felt like that at least once.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Not misanthropy exactly, but a total refusal to participate in anything sincerely. A useful book for a bad mood, provided the bad mood has energy behind it.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Earth is demolished in the first few pages for a bypass and the book treats this as a mild inconvenience. Marvin the Paranoid Android alone qualifies it for this list.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
A road trip, a farmhouse, and a growing sense that something is badly wrong. Weird in the structural sense rather than the comic one, and it stays with you.
And then there is my stuff
Mine, obviously, since this is my website. These are the ones from my catalogue that fit the mood best, which is to say the ones where the protagonist is surrounded by people and none of them are helping.
My Girlfriend’s Alien Ex Won’t Stop Abducting Me
Abduction is not a healthy coping mechanism, and neither is anything else happening here. Read the summary.
I Got Cucked by a Cryptid: Mothman
The end times are coming and the cryptid situation is not helping. Read the summary.
Ghost of Dicks Past
Her exes come back. Literally. A haunting where the ghosts are all people she already regretted once. Read the summary.
She Stole My Lottery Tickets, Exposed My Search History, and Knifed My Blow-Up Doll
A completely unhinged Southern breakup comedy narrated by a man with no remaining dignity. Read the summary.
Redneck Willie Visits Watts
A fish-out-of-water comedy in which nobody involved is equipped for the situation. Read the summary.
Why this mood deserves its own shelf
Most book lists assume you want to feel better. Sometimes the useful thing is a book that says yes, people are exhausting, here is a character who finds them exhausting too, and here is a joke about it.
That is not cynicism. It is company.
More lists: Books With Crazy Titles, Dark Humor Books, and Books Like Quan Millz.
