Books that make you say, “What the shit?”

Your jaw drops, you close the book, flip it over and look at the front cover. Still the same book? Yes. So, what the hell did you just miss? Something huge has changed in the book and you don’t know how it happened. Maybe some pages are missing? Nope. You reread the last twenty pages, you didn’t miss anything. So you read on.

This moment is what I like to call a Whattheshit moment. It is the moment where you are so perplexed by a development in a story that you perhaps say to yourself, as I often do, “What the shit?” Something new and exciting has happened and everything you thought you knew about the story you were reading has just changed.

Now, at this point either the book keeps running with that change and makes you wild with awe or it slowly and painfully reaches the end with no resolve or explanation for the sudden curve ball that it has thrown you.

Here are three books that not only make you say, “What the shit?” but they do it with style. Talkin’ Grade A flash, my friends. The writing is top-notch, the story is flawless and by the time you are done reading, that Whattheshit moment has turned into a ThisbookissoamazingIcan’tstandit moment.

All three books come with a Whattheshit guarantee and promise to make you wish you were brilliant/insane enough to have written the story yourself.

Adam Bede – George Eliot

This book is sweet and slow. I mean that. George Eliot’s writing is amazing, but she wasn’t known for her brevity. If you can persevere to the end of this meaty novel, it pays off.

Read this book if you want:

-Amazing prose.

-Victorian Romance.

-Spoiled-ass bitches getting knocked up by rich-ass white dudes.

-Baby out of wedlock scandal and intrigue.

-People getting what they deserve for being shitty.

Sound appealing to you? Of course it does.

A Sicilian Romance – Ann Radcliffe

This book is classic Gothic. That means it’s kind of like a porno in a castle but without sex.

Stay with me.

It’s dramatic. There is lightning and much fainting. There is wooing of hot chicks and then more fainting. Then more lightning and some funerals. We’ve got bosoms. And? You guessed it, people living in secret passages in old Italian castles. Oh, and murder.

What?

Yeah. That’s right. Deal with it. Read the book and find out what I am talking about because that’s all you get.

Angels and Insects: Two Novellas –  A.S. Byatt (specifically the Morpho Eugenia novella. You will know what this refers to when you buy the book, because you will buy this book).

You should pace yourself and read one of the aforementioned books before you get in a relationship with this one. This book offers up the biggest shocker since you don’t see it coming at all. It requires not one, but two or more readings to understand just how it all comes together, and in the end you are still left wondering how, how, the author of this outstanding story thought of it all.

There is not a bit of this book I can tell you about without taking away from the wonder of it all. Read it. Enjoy. Then say to yourself, “What the shit?” and do it all over again.