What was the most unusual (for you) book you ever read? Either because the book itself was completely from out in left field somewhere, or was a genre you never read, or was the only book available on a long flight… whatever? What (not counting school textbooks, though literature read for classes counts) was furthest outside your usual comfort zone/familiar territory?

And, did you like it? Did it stretch your boundaries? Did you shut it with a shudder the instant you were done? Did it make you think? Have nightmares? Kick off a new obsession?

Without a doubt the most unusual book I have ever read is Jeff Noon’s 1995 Science Fiction novel, Pollen.

Can’t remember why I first picked it up, I think at the time I was doing the exact opposite of not judging a book by its cover, and generally selecting my reads, by the fact I liked the cover! So this one was a bit of a surprise..

The sweet death of Coyote, master taxi driver, was only the first. Soon people are sneezing and dying all over Manchester. Telekinetic cop Sybil Jones knows that, like Coyote, they died happy – but even a happy death can be a murder. As exotic blooms begin to flower all over the city, the pollen count is racing towards 2000 and Sybil is running out of time.

Perfectly summed up by this Times review:

‘As weird as it is wonderful …surprising in its subtlety and deftness of characterisation’.

I remember enjoying the book and the surreal world it depicted quite a bit at the time, but I never could get in to other similar books or authors (William Gibson for one) despite trying.

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