This Book Is a Cactus

The surreal puzzle that stumped the greatest minds of a generation. A virtual reality game you can hold onto. 162 "squares" of a game board. 24 different ways to die. 396 decisive turning points. 715,794 discrete narratives. A single winning strategy. At each step, you're given a situation (or logic puzzle, riddle, mathematical conundrum, or word enigma) and the challenge to find an answer or otherwise make a choice. For example, at Square One of the virtual game board, your decision takes you to one of five other squares. The choices and possible outcomes build upon one another. The story line will be as surreal as you make it, with hundreds of thousands of ways to wander into a losing scenario but only a single winning strategy."I'll never finish this book, I think. It is a succulent to carry through life. It is so playful and smart and rhizomatic. I love the virtual game structure: just enough structure to give it a "plot" but not enough structure to turn your cactus into a tree. This Book is a Cactus is really inspired and excellent." --Lawrence Hass, PH.D."What an intriguing, fun, lovely book with Oddfellow's usual quirky, oblique poetic, metaphysic dry humour and bibliophillic joie de livre. " --Gary Barwin, author of Yiddish for Pirates