Add in a deluge of otherworldly creatures and actors seemingly hellbent on destroying the universe as we know it, and maybe you’d start keeping crystal meth in a jar shaped like an owl above your toilet. However, after saving the world kind of by accident, even twice, the unrelenting horrors of small town life would begin to cripple even the mentally strongest among us. Sure, yes - maybe David and John, along with David’s girlfriend, Amy, have saved the town and the world at large a couple of times. That’s a heady intro paragraph, isn’t it? The books written by Wong - the pseudonym for Cracked’s executive editor, Jason Pargin - are a strange mix of absurdist humor, Lovecraftian horrors, dick jokes, and insightful glimpses into the mind of how things can get when you’re locked into small town life. The first two novels address it somewhat circuitously, but What the Hell Did I Just Read explicitly tackles the subject, wondering if our protagonist (also named David Wong) and his buddy John are actually supernatural investigators and problem-solvers, or just, respectively, cripplingly depressed and drug-addled ne’er-do-wells.

His first novel, John Dies at the End, its sequel, This Book Is Full of Spiders, and the latest, What the Hell Did I Just Read, all deal with the fact that what we’re seeing with our eyes might not actually be what’s going on. At their heart, David Wong’s books set in the town of Undisclosed are about perception.

What the hell did i just read series