Smolesworthy

I don't know if this is what you mean, but The Hand that Signed the Paper by Helen Demidenko was a controversial winner of Australia's most prestigious literary prize the Miles Franklin Award. It won best fiction even after Demidenko family memoir of WW2 Ukraine was revealed to have been written by Helen Dale, the daughter of UK immigrants.

Demidenko and Khouri both feature in the Wiki article List of fake memoirs and journals.

The Movie City of Joy took a minor character from the novel so it could be a vehicle for a Hollywood star, in this case Patrick Swayze. I think World War Z, mentioned elsewhere on this thread, was guilty of the same, but I can't remember if Brad Pitt's character is even in the novel.

u/thoughtfullycatholic has an accurate take on Stoicism, but I think chapter one is MC's roll call of every positive character trait he was exposed to growing up, and hopes influenced him. In this line it's a lack of self entitlement and resentment.

Not notes, but I bookmark any passage I like. Later I photocopy and cut out the excerpt to paste in a notebook. I scrapbook all my favourite passages.

Okay, this definitely warrants absolute craziest book status. Where to start? Flaming dogs? THE BABY SCENE?

I once posted a list titled Random Short Sentences That Will Cause You to Want to Read the Famished Road by Ben Okri, but Which Are Probably the Least Craziest Sentence on That Page.

The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles...when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones.

That has, hands down, the creepiest last sentence. I mean Japanese horror movie creepy. And it was written in 1892!

There is that romantic bonding scene in the sewers with all five of them.

I learnt the phrase Ergodic literature in relation to House of Leaves. To paraphrase Wikipedia - nontrivial effort is required by the reader. Worth it though.

I loved Lincoln in the Bardo for showing me an entirely new way to write a book. Like nothing I've ever read. Deserved it's Booker prize.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is constantly surprising, but if that's the absolute craziest book you've read I'm glad to announce you have many wild surprises in store in your reading journey.