Found: Eccentric book about man forced to read

Plot (might not be exactly as such): A man visits a certain library, and the librarian tells him there's more books in the basement. Going there, he was put in a prison and forced to read books again and again. He slowly realizes that memorizing the books was easier and easier to him. There was a guy in a sheep mask (if not sheep, any other animal masks) who was in charge of making sure he is staying. The man tricks sheep mask guy and manages to escape (I think, but he did try to trick him!).

The book cover was red and either had Asian aesthetic or was translated from an Asian author. Some pages had colored drawings and the layout was unconventional!

Found it! It's "The Strange Library" by Haruki Murakami

The Strange Library

It does sound like something he'd write, now that I think about it.

>3 Cecrow: I know right! By any chance, do you have any books that are similar to this, with unconventional writing as the like of "House of Leaves" by Mark Z.D. as well?

I'm struggling to think what Murakami and Mark Z.D. have in common (I've read both). Murakami is something of a surrealist, while I think Mark was aiming for something creepy or horror-oriented. I was more impressed with Murakami.

I might suggest looking into the work of Italo Calvino, he also wrote some very unusual things. I also like the short fiction of Jorge Borges.

>4 frogbabygrill: If you mean the writing itself, as opposed to the book layout, then you might try more Murakami, perhaps the The Rat series (which also features a sheep man), or The Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Another novel by a Japanese author with a similar sense of the surreal is Secret Rendesvous by Kōbō Abe. And I would second Cecrow's suggestion of Italo Calvino; I particularly enjoyed If On a Winter's Night a Traveler.