If you’ve grown up on canonical realist fiction, it can take a while to get used to the taste of experimental literature.

But LitReactor’s Cath Murphy, after enduring slander against her adventurous side no less vicious than “Cath never likes anything experimental,” has compiled a list of books that take death-defying risks with form and content—and succeed.

From House of Leaves all the way back to Mrs. Dalloway, it’s a list on which even the staunchest adherents to tradition are bound to find something they like.