Today on Book Break we are talking about
books with cult
followings. And cult books is kind of a
difficult term
to define, but I think if you love a cult
book
you will find yourself part of this
tight-knit community
of other people who also love this book.
Like, a lot. So if you think that sounds
fun, here are a bunch of books with cult
followings for you to get obsessed with.
So I had to start with The Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
This is a 70s comedy sci-fi, that over
the years has pretty much moved from cult classic
to just massive pop culture phenomenon.
There have been enough adaptations to
move this one into the mainstream.
But you still have that core group of
cult
followers who can tell you what the
meaning of towel day is,
why the number 42 is so important, and
probably own at least one piece of
clothing with the slogan "don't panic" written on
it. And in order to get any of those
references,
you are pretty much going to have to
pick up this series, although we did
make a video with mega-fan Jean from
Jean BookishThoughts hosting,
who will give you a bit of an
introduction, and some clues to what some
of those references mean.
You will find that video linked below,
but for now let's move on to a
definitely much less mainstream one:
Oreo by Fran Ross. So this was a
rediscovered cult classic.
It was originally published in the 70s
and then went out of print,
and then was rediscovered and found a
whole new group of readers.
So this is the story of a young biracial
woman setting out on a journey to find
her missing father, and unlock the mystery of her birth, and
it's really fun, it's a tour through 70s pop culture,
it's really feminist, it's a satirical
exploration of racial identity,
and on top of all of that, it is a loose
retelling of the myth of Theseus and the
Minotaur. Now this next book, The Master and
Margarita, is a book I haven't read
but literally everyone I know who's read
it is obsessed with it, and keeps telling
me that I should read it as well.
So from what I know about this book, it
is about the devil
disguised as a magician, let loose on the
city of Moscow,
with a talking cat and an assassin as
his companions.
And nobody in this city even believes in
the devil, even when they're confronted
with him, but there are two main characters that
they meet: the master, who is this publicly denounced writer,
and Margarita, his beautiful ex-lover. That is
such an intriguing and over-the-top premise for a book, and I
honestly don't know anyone
who's read this book without completely
falling in love with it.
So it's definitely next on my to-read
list. But next for a much more divisive
novel,
The Secret History by Donna Tartt. This
book has a real
Marmite, you either love it or you hate it,
effect on people.
But people who are in team love-it, which
includes me,
are like devoted to it. So this story is
about a group of classics
university students who have this really
charismatic professor and form a very
tight-knit group of friends. And they are
pretentious, they are arrogant, they are
selfish, they are such
flawed, unlikable characters, but
throughout the book you get
so sucked in to their really dark world.
And right from the beginning, literally
on page one so it's not a spoiler,
you find out that one of their group is
going to die. And so the book is building
up
to what is going to go so terribly wrong.
Something that I noticed a lot of the
books on this list have in common
is that a lot of them are very long, and
I almost think that very long books
are just destined to become cult
classics, because it's such a mark of
pride
if you get through the whole book that
you feel quite attached to it! So The
Secret History was a long book,
but even longer is House of Leaves by
Mark Z Danielewsky.
Now this book is a book within a book
within a film within a book. There are so many
layers. So in our outer layer, we meet this man called Johnny who finds
a manuscript, which is this
academic study of a documentary film
called the Navidson record.
So then our second layer we actually get
to read this academic study, complete
with
footnotes and references and everything.
For our third layer,
we get transcripts of the documentary
itself,
which follows a family moving into this
creepy house, which is bigger
on the inside than the outside. All sorts
of weird things
start happening. However Johnny on this
outer layer
can't find any evidence that this film
or the people in it
ever existed. And that's not all that's
in here! We also get
letters from Johnny's mother, we get
interviews with people associated with
the film,
we get interjections from editors, there
are entire internet forums
dedicated to this book, discussing
everything from which order you're supposed to read
it in, to which sections we're supposed
to believe are true or not,
how you're supposed to interpret it, it
is a whole world.
And while we're on the subject of long
books, there are 720 pages in A Little
Life by Hanya Yanagihara.
So this tells the story of a man called
Jude who has had the most terrible
childhood, and continues to suffer just
the most awful abuse.
It's about him and his close group of
friends through the years. We follow
their ups and downs,
their hardships, but also these really
beautiful moments of connection between
the characters. But ultimately through it
all, Jude feels
haunted by this trauma he's experienced,
and unsure if he'll ever
be able to shake it off. And this book
has recently developed a whole cult
following on booktube,
where people are making these reading
vlogs of themselves reading it
and recording just how much they cry,
because it is a very
emotional book, but I also thought it
was a really beautiful,
thoughtful book. But next for something
much shorter, Pages For You by Sylvia
Brownrigg tells the story of
the beginning and the falling apart of a
relationship. So our main character
Flannery is only 17 when she meets the
older woman
Anne and becomes her student, both at her
college and also
in life, and this kind of love story is a
story we've heard
before, but I think the reason this book
captured so many hearts is because of
how brilliantly the emotion is rendered
on the page. The passion that Flannery
feels for the older, beautiful Anne,
the obsessive feeling of being in love
at that age,
and the heartbreak of a relationship
falling apart. And there was even a
sequel written
20 years later called Pages For Her,
which was very exciting for fans of this
book.
And now for one of our beautiful
Macmillan Collectors Library editions:
the book Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse had
a massive cult following in the 1960s,
particularly within the hippie movement.
So Siddhartha tells the story of a man
setting out on a journey of spiritual
enlightenment
and self-discovery, so you can see why
that was so popular with hippies.
The book is still considered one of
those books that everyone should read at
least once in their lifetime,
because we follow the main character
through so many different phases
of his self-discovery that every single
reader is bound to
get something slightly different from
the experience of reading it.
Now I of course had to include the
author Haruki Murakami who is just a
cult author. People who love him, love him.
So really any of his books would have
fit the bill but let's go with
Kafka on the Shore, which again,
disclosure, is a book I haven't read,
but I've heard so much about from people
who are obsessed with it. And still
haven't quite been able to figure out
what it's about. I think that's maybe
another trademark of a lot of cult
classics
is slightly weird books. If you can
figure out what a weird book like this
is about, you're going to be attached to
it for life.
But let's give it a go at explaining it.
So from what I've heard,
it's about a boy who runs away from home
to find his missing mother and sister,
it's got talking cats in it, it's got a
sort of
Oedipal prophecy, and there are lots of
different ways
to interpret it. I really should read it.
And then for another cult
author, I had to mention Octavia E. Butler.
She was one of the first
black women to publish science fiction
and this, Kindred, her most
famous, popular novel, is actually this
genre bending book that combines
sci-fi with historical fiction with
fantasy with
slave memoir. So in 1976 we meet our main character
Dana, a young woman who has just turned
26,
when she is yanked back in time to 1815
and has to save
a young white boy called Rufus from
drowning.
And it turns out that Rufus is going to
end up being related to her,
and so Dana keeps getting pulled back
and forth in time to keep him alive
long enough to have the children that
will end up being part of Dana's family
line.
But as Rufus grows up and becomes a
slave owner,
Dana realizes quite how complicated this
challenge is that she's been set.
And finally, I couldn't resist, let's end
with a cult book about a cult. Masters of Atlantis by
Charles Portis
which is about a young american man who
accidentally founds
a cult. And Charles Portis is such a
funny writer so this book is just
filled with hilarious and eccentric
characters, but presented in such
a deadpan way. But now we'd like to hear
from you!
Which books do you think will become
cult classics in the future?
Leave us a comment below and let us know
your thoughts. And if bookish debates
like that are your thing,
we actually have a whole playlist of
videos like that which I will link to, so
click through and have a browse.
See you next time!
