Here’s my faux answer. Cut out all the pages and combine both books as one. Then you can literally read them both at the same time.

📕
Page 1 - Page 1

Page 2 - Page 2

Page 3 - Page 3

Etc

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Great recs already in this thread, and while these are light on the creepiness they do satisfy the non-linearity part so you may be interested.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Take a look to make sure for yourself but it's a pretty short book written in an epistolary format and I hesitate to say more for spoiler reasons but it is non-linear. Great prose, quite poetic, interesting ideas as well.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is another non-linear story about a global virus bringing the world to a halt (sounds very familiar eh but it was written pre-covid). Def more creepy than the first reco but still non-linear narrative that I enjoyed.

That was my favourite part by far.

Check out The Story Grid. It was developed by a developmental editor. There is a lot of helpful articles on the website. There is also a book you can buy and there is a podcast. My sister is writing a book right now. She has her first 20,000 words written and the story grid has been the most helpful thing for her. Also the podcast You Should Write a Book by Camille Pagán is really helpful for mindset advice and publishing questions. Camille is a published author of several books and a book coach. Also Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast by Savannah Gilbo is also helpful. Savannah’s website is also full of advice. She is a book coach and developmental editor.

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"The Nazgul were they, the Ringwraiths, the Enemy’s more terrible servants, darkness went with them, and they cried with the voices of death."

Hawkes in general is one of my holy grails - I've been aware of him for years but for some reason his books are obscenely hard to get hold of in the UK.

The Invention of Morel is a fun short one. Also check out Jorge Louis Borges (Labyrinths).

The Body Artist by Don DeLillo is great, not strictly non-linear but deals heavily in non-linearity of time.

I love Virginia Woolf and I way preferred The Waves to The Lighthouse if you haven't read that one.

The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig is one of my favourites and has a cool backdrop of subjective impending doom, along with Beware of Pity (aka Impatience of the Heart) by the same author.

Brandon Sanderson has a series of lectures on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cf-qdZ7GbA&list=PLSH_xM-KC3Zv-79sVZTTj-YA6IAqh8qeQ) about creative writing that may be helpful.

I'd definitely put film of I'm Thinking of Ending Things in this general category - I haven't read the book though because from what I could tell there wouldn't be much suspense to it if you knew where it was going. Hadn't heard of the Kupersmith one before now, but the "mysterious disappearances X years apart" subgenre usually has the feel I'm describing so I'm very intrigued!

Do it! Can probably find it used for a good price on thriftbooks maybe?

I mean, it's not "objectively" tedious, it's tedious to you so that's subjective.

My advice is to start writing. Write small stories first, and learn how to put together a cohesive story. To have a good story, one needs to decide on how the story is to be structured... is it just a series of random events? Does the protagonist have an arc, where he or she begins with a flaw and learns how to overcome it? Does he or she grow in some way? become a better person?

Have a solid ending in mind when you start. Then, built towards that ending as you go. Try to avoid using "clever side stories" along the way that don't progress the story towards the ending.

Me, I like building an outline, as you would when writing a term paper or something. One of my favorite authors describes taking writing classes where he thought the professor was an idiot and the advice was not good advice. He wrote several things and submitted them to publishers, only to get shot down each time. To prove the professor wrong, he followed the advice exactly, and when that was submitted, it became his first published work.

He said that he uses a sentence that is essentially ,"the hero's goal is X, but cannot fulfill that goal because Y is standing in his way. He must do Z to defeat Y so that he can achieve X." Fill in the X Y and Z and you have your story.

When I write anything, I have the basic term paper format of Introduction, 3 sections of Main Body and Conclusion. That's five basic blocks of writing. In the 3 sections of Main Body, I break down each section the same way, with an introduction to the section, 3 areas of investigation or challenge, where questions or challenges are posed all relating to the same theme, and a conclusion to the section. Within each area of investigation, I have the challenge and research or data (or in fiction, actions taken) to resolve, refute or support the question or challenge.

This gives me a main story arc, with 3 main phases, and nine supporting challenges to overcome, with an introduction and conclusion at either end. Flesh out the first part with a good justification of why the hero needs to go on the story arc, with some character introduction and world building, and the last section is the "prep and execution of the resolution of the book." If you add in the idea of a Hero's Journey story arc and build around it, you can fill in the details as you go, and the story kind of writes itself.

You are right about the competitiveness reading seems to be acquiring for many people (somebody here today is asking if reread books should "COUNT", count for what).

But I do not recognize a lot of things. I use goodreads a lot, just do not join nor ever click like on any "challenge" (just do not compare yourself to others), and I find it incredibly useful to research books I want to read, or get recommendations from friends. My time is finite, I do not mind taking risks, but if my reading was totally random I might lose out on things for sure I would like.

Bird by Bird, Writing Down the Bones, The conflict Thesaurus a Writers guide to Obstacles, Big Magic Creative Living Beyond Fear, the Year you Write your novel, Marge Piercy So you want to Write.

I don’t understand the backlash the Silmarillion is an objectively tedious read

Three main things- 1. Set a writing time each day. Same time every day you write. It will shortly become habit. 2. Just write your first draft. Don’t edit as you go, just get all the words out as they come. Your 2nd draft will be when you fix and organize what you’ve gotten down. 3. Stories go where they want to go. Start a story and just go with it. Once begun, you can think on the story at other times during the day, getting to know the characters and working out plot points.

I felt like this during the first chapter of John Hawkes' The Lime Twig, felt very reminiscent of The Sound and the Fury with a darker tone. His book The Cannibal would also fit here. I have not read more by him but I want to.

I’m thinking of ending things by Iain Reid might fit the bill for you! so might « build your house around my body » by violet kuoersmith.

full disclosure, i wasn’t familiar with quite a few of your references so i might miss the mark.

My pleasure. Big Tolkien fan. Read LoTR at least once a year, since the eay 2000s.

I read the Silmarillion when I was a kid and started rereading it now that I'm older, I definitely understand a lot more, hah. Ungoliant is too cool, she's definitely my favorite villian in the Silmarillion still. I mean, she went toe-to-toe with the lord of evil and and would have won if he wasn't cheating with those balrogs, lol.

Just start writing sections. Get things on paper/screen. Its a lot easier to remove something than try to add it later.

Flesh out scene descriptions, and what happens in each chapter.

Then fill in dialogue points you want to hit, then flesh out the writing around those.

I often find myself in this situation too :( I try to get over it by purposefully buying books based on the synopsis, that I've never heard of, or which aren't discussed in mainstream circles - if only to preserve that sense of mystery, as you say. I'm not saying it's easy, especially with the whole need-to-check-off-the-mental-tbr thing, but it often works! I've found many books which I genuinely enjoy and love that way

I suggest listening to author interviews! I like Martha Wells, Naomi Novik, Becky Chambers, Ryka Aoki and others. Some of the needy advice I've heard is write fanfiction, that way you can get feedback from an audience that's passionate about the topic and practice character voice (naomi novik) or read your whole book aloud to hear if it sounds right (Becky chambers)