Books Like HOUSE OF LEAVES: An Intro To Ergodic Fiction

B.S. Johnson’s “book in a box” tells the story of a sports writer sent out on an assignment that gets derailed by the past, as memories of a friend who died tragically haunt him. The book is comprised of 27 unbound sections that only label a first and last chapter—all the other chapters have no particular order, so you can read the story in whichever order you’d like. Each reader’s experience of the novel, then, is totally unique to them, since there are many paths to go down depending on what you choose.

Hoang weaves the real and the fantastical together in an autobiographical coming-of-age story intersected with myth…and math. The chapters follow the curve of a parabola, and diagrams throughout explain the Pythagorean meaning behind the numbers; 10 being the most perfect number, which appears as the top two chapters mirroring one another in the parabola, and 1, which symbolizes unity and joins the middle of the parabola’s center with 0. It dares you to either read through the paired numbered chapters or to read this reality-myth-math hopping tale in a linear fashion.

I’ve mentioned S. before in a previous post about books with unusual and unconventional formats, and it bears repeating here. A novel makes its way into the hands of two college students who try to study it and uncover its mysteries, which is presented in S. in its entirety, and the students, Jen and Eric, are also present — in the margins, that is. You’ll bounce back and forth between their scribbled notes, Straka’s actual novel, postcards, newspaper clippings, and letters to piece together the full story.

This is another exceptional example of ergodic fiction that bears repeating. Kady wishes she could go back to the days when her biggest problem was breaking up with Ezra, but then her planet gets invaded, and now she has to team up with him to get on the evacuating craft, with an enemy warship and a deadly plague on their heels. This novel is chock full of military files, medical reports, hacked documents, interviews, and more to build a robust picture of the world Kady and Ezra live in.

The core plot has to do with a writer trying to pen his second novel, seeking a form for it that could do this modern world of ours justice, and about a man who wakes up one day having no idea who he is, and no clues except for a blank document on his computer that reads: theMystery.doc. This entire novel is a game of connect-the-dots, challenging you to make sense of the bombardment of everything that distracts us in our daily lives: texts, pictures, IM chats, lines of codes, and all manners of odds and ends that create a truly unique reading experience.

It started with an innocent trip to the library. The boy knows the library well, but not so much the old man who throws him into a nightmarish maze and demands that he memorize the three books he wanted to borrow in order to be freed…otherwise he’ll eat the boy’s brains. This is a reading experience best enjoyed with the physical book in hand, as Murakami’s tale is a mixture of illustrations (both beautiful and downright unsettling) and text that uses the very pages themselves as a way to tell the story.

A high school goes up in flames, claiming the lives of three students. The fourth? No one can find her. Carly Johnson is still missing, but maybe they can find out why, because the diary of the suspect, Kaitlyn, was found in the ruins. Except Kaitlyn and Carly are the same person. Kurtagich’s debut novel fits ergodic fiction through its use of newspaper articles, diary entries, police reports, medical records, and witness testimonials that both increases the mystery and helps you feel immersed in solving it.

Six kindergarteners disappeared on their first day of school…and five came back 11 years later. They have no idea where they’ve been, and they don’t remember the sixth child. This novel uses unconventional formatting to get you right in the heads of the characters as they struggle to remember and understand what they’ve been through, ensuring that you are just as disoriented as they are when their thoughts scatter across the page.

Zambra’s delightful novel is presented entirely in the form of a multiple choice test, and if you had a knee-jerk panicked reaction to that like I did, I promise: You will not be graded on this test. It gives the reader many ways to experience this story, and may prompt you to grab some scratch paper and a pencil to keep track of your answers. What’s it about? That’s up to what answers you select.

They tell you to never meet your heroes. Four teens end up befriending their favorite novelist anyway, but what they didn’t expect was to find themselves in her next novel…and not in a good way, because some of their deepest secrets end up splashed across those pages. The scandal is laid out using pages from the novelist’s book, journal entries, interviews, video transcripts, and more.

In 1843, a naturalist from Chicago is charged with delivering a secret letter to a general on the frontlines during the turmoil in Texas. This same letter finds its way into the hands of a descendent of the naturalist’s some 300 years later, after society has collapsed, and might be the key to undoing all the wrong that has befallen the world. This tale is pieced together through maps, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, and diagrams, encouraging the reader to puzzle out the mystery as they go along.

Here’s an example of ergodic fiction in children’s lit. Amira had a peaceful life in her Sudanese village before the Janjaweed attackers arrived. She has to make the long, hard journey to the safety of the refugee camp on foot, which feels like an impossible task—until she’s given a red pencil. Amira’s story is told through gorgeous, lyrical verse that builds the story both through the words on the page and between each line, accompanied with illustrations to show Amira’s world.