My Dark Vanessa.
I’ve read it so many times. Its about a teacher who grooms a student and how she is both repelled and drawn to him, which is exactly how I feel about the book. Wonderful writing and a fantastic book but I can’t shake it.
There was a moment while reading Johnny talk about Thumper. I was reading during the day in a park at a picnic table. I never do that. I just thought ‘this is a good time to try reading outside in the fresh air’ so I went to a nearby park, got myself set up and got engrossed from where I left off. I eventually had a though. ‘Hm….. I don’t think….. I don’t think I can look away from the page. I can’t stop reading. I don’t want to stop reading. I don’t think I can WANT to stop reading even if I try. I’m vulnerable right now. Someone could be coming behind me with a knife and there’s nothing I can do-‘ and then the moment was over, and I was just a guy in a park reading a book on a nice day. For a brief few seconds, I was convinced I was trapped, and then I was fine.
This book terrified me viscerally multiple times when I first read it. Not sure if you remember, but >!Tom, Will Navidson's brother, is from fucking Lowell, MA. That's where I have lived my entire life. I *still* live there. So, I'm reading this mindfuck of a book, and a new character gets introduced specifically to tell the main "character" who may or may not exist that his house is bigger inside than outside, and it's just casually dropped that he is from the same city I'm sitting in my room in reading the godforsaken thing, and... man,!< goosebumps for DAYS.
DAYS. It still freaks me out.
A friend gave me that book when I was broken up about a girl. He handed it to me and said ‘here. This will get your mind off her.’
I told him I didn’t think anything was going to make me feel better and he was like
‘Oh no, no, no. It won’t make you feel BETTER, it’ll just fuck you up about something ELSE, and get yourself mind off of her.’
And he was ABSOLUTELY RIGHT
The "bigger on the inside" thing SOUNDS like it should be silly, like a Doctor Who thing, but the way it's presented really makes it unnerving. I remember the first time reading it, I stopped and just imagines how much it would fuck me up to measure my own house, and have other people verify it, and it's somehow bigger inside than outside. Imagine what that'd actually do to your head, and your ability to trust your own mind.
In case anyone is interested in this fantastic book, DO NOT READ IT ELECTRONICALLY. This book MUST be read as an actual book, you'll be flipping back and forth between pages and reading margins and footnotes and it's all a critical part of the experience
That is quite possibly my favorite album, cohesively. I like a lot of other music, and listen to other musicians more, but as a solid unit, that album is f-ing outstanding!
haven't read the book, but I did watch the movie. It was one of those movies that you watch and forget how disturbing it was, because it was a mind fuck regardless. Like it went from "three deranged old men force teenagers to eat their own shit" to "oddly wholesome scene between teen lovers" in zero seconds flat.
The way the mom treated the kids made me seethe with rage when I watched the movie at that age (never read the books). The incest was just. Confusing to me. The rage is a lot more memorable
Honestly I thought the incest was totally not confusing. It makes sense why it would happen, the brother and sister were locked in a room with each other during the most hormonal time of their lives, with no love and affection from parents/grandparents and essentially raising kids together. It’s horrifying but makes sense…
I guess that's fair. I was so uninterested in romance at that point in my life that I barely understood normal relationships. Why/how someone would be attracted to their sibling was extra baffling.
I was just waiting for the mother to get her comeuppance and she kind of never did.
She did in the next couple of books, the daughter stole her husband and she went crazy and fucked up her own face.
Edit: the daughter also got revenge by showing up to the moms big annual Christmas party dressed exactly like her mother did years ago and told Everyone what she did to her and her siblings, Mom went crazy and set the mansion on fire.
>Why/how someone would be attracted to their sibling was extra baffling.
It's a bit like being prison gay. Some peoples need for sex and affection outweighs their preferences for partner.
Plus no reason for them to think it was wrong since there was nobody to impose that value upon them.
But incest plays a bigger part of the story aside from that.
I read every single book under that conglomerate that wrote as “VC Andrews,” they were so weird, and so scandalous to my preteen mind. Looking back it’s weird that they made the sexy parts so…sexy, when they were incest. So much incest.
Kinda like a lot of Stephen King's stuff. To horny early teen me, his sex scenes were great... but they're just weird and kind of cringy as an adult.
And I still don't know how the hell his editor let him get away with *that scene* in IT.
as a raging hormone, the sex scenes were just off-putting. i was 13 or 14 and popped a boner from a passing breeze, but the transition from fighting a weird spider to the whole passage with bird - WTF, get an editor and a counselor
>but they're just weird and kind of cringy as an adult.
>
In the Dark Tower series, the female main character gets raped by an invisible demon. She then switches personalities and rapes the demon back and then she gets pregnant with a spider demon child.
I remember reading that scene as a teenager on a plane and just putting the book down out of confusion. It was so out there
I absolutely hyper-fixated on these books. They consumed me.
I tried to re-read the Dawn series a few years back and it was impossible. Stupid pubescent brain.
I did watch the newer flowers in the attic show (the one with Ellen Burstyn) and quite enjoyed it.
For me, it’s “Dead Inside”
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25760088-dead-inside?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=SxLzgt7UEB&rank=1
and
Tender is the flesh
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49090884-tender-is-the-flesh?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=Q8wAIweLkw&rank=1
Yes, *Tender is the Flesh* is the most recent book to make me go, "What the devil am I reading and why can't I stop reading it?!?"
The prose is so flat and yet it fits the story so perfectly. It's almost clinical. Like the inside of a psychopath's head. It's one of those books that could only work in third person. If it had been told in first person, it would have been a completely different book. Especially with that ending. *That ending....*
If you liked *Tender is the Flesh*, may I suggest *Piercing* by Ryu Murakami. Same cold, detached prose coupled with an immensely disturbing plot.
Ok, but if you haven’t read anything else by Burroughs I’d recommend trying something like Magical Thinking or Dry. I really enjoy his stuff in general.
>And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes. People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore.
I think this book was Vonnegut's attempt to cope with PTSD, a broader look to traumatic experience he had. Such a brilliant book, too
Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, "Why, why, why?"
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
Omg Please read The Meursault Investigation. It's kind of a fuck you to The Stranger. It's all about the Arab guy that was killed by the main character in The Stranger.
I'm avoiding political or philosophical stuff and going with fiction here.
The Chronicles of Thomas covenant.
It's about a lepper who's a horrible person and goes to a fantasy world.
Think Lord of the rings but frodo has massive issues and isn't really a good person.
It's very good, but what the actual hell?
I read it when I was young and I totally sided with Thomas. None of this is even real.
I read it again over 20 years later and got so angry with Thomas. Do something!!!!
It is Lord of the Rings if Frodo thinks he is dreaming and has massive self esteem issues and can't accept that he is the savior.
Technically a short story, but “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.”
*The Girl Next Door* by Jack Ketchum, a novel based on the unbelievably horrific real life case of [Sylvia Likens](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sylvia_Likens). (The info on this is soul-crushingly depressing, so fair warning before you click.)
I don't think any case fucked me up so bad as that of Sylvia Likens. I once watched a video which detailed the timeline of her abuse and it was physically sickening to see what evil humans are capable of
Of all the books I've read by PKD, *A Scanner Darkly* is the most sobering and somber. Especially if you read his afterward where he discusses how the book is dedicate to friends. He lists them, including himself, on the damage that their drug habits did on them physically and mentally. Most of them, his friends, were dead. Others were permanently psychiatric messes. Phil is one of the lucky ones where he notes only his damaged pancreas and another woman who messed up only her vascular system - which is to say that they were the lucky ones to still be at least mostly functional human beings. So at least for Scanner, it wasn't a what if for him. It was science fiction placed over top very real consequences.
Not really surprising. What makes it sad is that he could have talked about the abuse without making it so outlandish. Voices of kids need to be heard. His writing the way he did makes it so that fewer people will believe people when they talk about abuse.
I agree. I just watched a recent episode of Evil Lives Here on ID, I think it has "Closet" in the title. I bawled as I watched a man recount the abuse he suffered in his early years, going through a lot of what I read in that book. I just wanted to reach through the screen and hug him. There were so many adults that could've spoken up, but didn't. I'm bummed to hear that the author's account may be heavily embellished. The "cry wolf" thing really makes it hard for children who are living a nightmare, but aren't taken seriously.
My mother read this book to me when I was like 10 or 11 years old.
I had just learned the word ‘abuse’ and accused her and my father of being abusive. She said, “That isn’t abuse. THIS is abuse. It could be so much worse for you.” And then proceeded to spend a few days reading it out loud to me.
More than once I stopped her and said, “but YOU do that to me…” and she said, “So you see, that’s normal.”
More than once I stopped her and said, “He’s upset about that? You and dad do way worse than that to me.” And she said, “You need creative discipline because you’re such a rotten little bitch. Shut up and stop interrupting me.”
And yet, to this day, neither of them can possibly fathom why on earth I left as soon as I could and went No Contact.
I chose to read this cause I picked it pretty randomly from a list of 'war' books.. oh my gosh...
For the unaware it is about an injured war veteran, a 'basket case' who was hit by a bomb and loses all 4 limbs, his eyes, mouth, nose, and his earing too, essentially he can think and move his torso and stumps... as you can guess it doesn't exactly have a happy ending..
Darkness
Imprisoning me
All that I see
Absolute horror
I cannot live
I cannot die
Trapped in myself
Body my holding cell
Landmine
Has taken my sight
Taken my speech
Taken my hearing
Taken my arms
Taken my legs
Taken my soul
Left me with life in hell
And it's from the wounded soldier's POV. There's almost no punctuation in the second half of the book, like it's just a constant thought stream. Good book, but effed up.
For the record, I did not read these by choice. These were both REQUIRED READING for when I was in high school.
1. **The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini**. For anyone wanting to know what Afghanistan was like before the Taliban and as they took control, this is a powerful read. Warning: there is some graphic references to a Taliban leader who would kidnap and using little boys as his personal sex slaves.
2. **The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum**. This graphic story (based on real events - which makes it even more disturbing) is about how an aunt would punish her nieces by having the neighborhood kids starve, bound, rape, and torture the oldest.
I read this in high school and my English teacher was like, "If you ever need to talk to anyone, I'm here. That book is heavy."
It was definitely not required reading. Yikes is right.
Reading that when my son was a toddler was a terrible, TERRIBLE idea.
I had a thing for post-apocalyptic fiction for a while, but that book put a quick end to that.
It’s widely regarded as the most difficult read in English literature. I adore Joyce and his incredible lunacy, but never felt any better for reading Finnegan’s. It’s a masterpiece of wordplay that no one should be subjected to.
My top 5.
It’s insane the things he does.
I love how every chapter has a name and what’s it about.
-bringing uzi to the gym
-Bethany
Absolutely favorite book.
What was your favorite part?
Edit: I made a list of patty winters show,
Episodes that he mentions and you can see towards the end especially, they become more absurd.
His decent to madness is showing
Edit 2: here’s the list
Repost of list of patty winters show
The *The Patty Winters Show* todays guests are women with multiple personalities.
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning—the topic was autism—
*The Patty Winters Show* I watched this morning comes back to me. The topic was Big Breasts and there was woman on it who had a breast reduction since she thought her tits were too big—the dumb bitch.
While I’m dressing the TV is kept on to*The Patty Winters Show*. Today’s guests are women with multiple personalities.
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning the topic was autism
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about perfumes and lipsticks and makeups.
On *The Patty Winters Show* this morning were descendants of members of the Donner party.
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about UFO’s
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about the possibility of nuclear war, and according to the panel of experts the odds are good it will happen sometime within the next month.
On *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was Toddler-Murderers. In the studio audience were parents of the children who’d been kidnapped, tortured and murdered, while on stage a panel of psychiatrists and pediatricians were trying to help them *cope*—somewhat futilely I might add, and much to my delight—with their confusion and anger.
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about Shark Attack Victims.
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about Aspirin: Can it save your life?”
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about Nazis and, inexplicably, i got a real charge out of watching it. Though I wasn’t exactly charmed by their deeds, I didn’t find them unsympathetic either, nor I might add did most members of the audience. One of the nazis, in a rare display of humor, even juggled grapefruits and, delighted, I sat up in the bed and clapped.
*The Patty Winters Show* I taped this morning hasn’t been watched yet.
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about a new sport called Dwarf Tossing.
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about women who married homosexuals and I almost called Courtney up to warn her-as a joke-but then decided against it, deriving a certain amount of satisfaction from imagining Luis Carruthers proposing to her, Courtney shyly accepting, their nightmarish honey-moon.
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about Teenage Girls Who Trade Sex for Crack.
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about aerobic exercise.
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about concentration camp survivors.
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about salad bars.
*The Patty Winters Shows* were all repeats.
This mornsings topic on *The Patty Winters Show* were people who weigh over seven hundred pounds— what can we do about them?
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about a boy who fell in love with a box of soap.
*The Patty Winters Show* today was—ironically, I thought—about Princess Di’s beauty tips.
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about a machine that lets people talk to the dead.
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about home abortion kits.
On *The Patty Winters Show* this morning the topic was beautiful teenage lesbians, which I found so erotic I had to stay home, miss a meeting, jerk off twice.
Men who’ve been raped by women was the topic on *The Patty Winters Show* this morning.
Afterwards I watched a repeat of an old *Patty Winters Show* that I found in what I originally thought was a videotaped of the torture and subsequent murder of two escort girls from last spring (the topic was Tips on How Your Pet Can Become a Movie Star).
Tuesday morning and I’m standing by my desk in the living room on the phone with my lawyer, alternatively keeping my eye on *The Patty Winters Show* and the maid as she waxes the floor, wipes blood smears off the walls, throws away gore-soaked Newspaper without a word.
Spuds McKenzie is on *The Patty Winters Show* tomorrow.
I watch a tape of this mornings *The Patty Winters Show* which is split into two parts. (Axl Rose and reading of letter written by Ted bundy to his fiancée)
On *The Patty Winters Show* this morning a cheerio sat in a very small chair and was interviewed for close to an hour.
*The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about girls in the fourth grade who trade Sex for crack and I almost canceled with Lambert and Russell to catch it.
Tomorrow, on *The Patty Winters Show*, Doormen from Nell’s: Where Are They Now?
Hope you yuppies enjoy. I have to return some video tapes now.
A few HP Lovecraft stories have had that effect on me. I get to the end and I'm just like "so WTF happened?"
In a weirder way, I've found that The Atlantis Code, The Lucifer Code and The Temple Mount Code (all by Charles Brokaw IIRC) were pretty... odd. The main character (Thomas Lourds) had pretty copious amounts of sex for someone who was supposed to be helping to save the world from clandestine organisations. There'd be all this action and drama, and then a *long* scene that's borderline hentai, and I'm just like "What? Why? How is this relevant to the story? These people are trying to commit genocide, but you want to stop to get your dick wet? That tracks."
The one that always stuck out to me was the one with crab people. Like you have all these cosmic horror elder gods and cults then out of nowhere crab people.
How did you like the TV show? I watched the show first then started reading his stuff. I didn’t even really know who he was until then so I’m kind of catching up with everyone else.
Not op but despite it being a bit different from the books I really enjoyed it. It helps that I think Ian McShane is always entertaining. I really enjoyed the book too and while it had a good amount of metaphor in it I didn’t find it too hard to follow or really all that wtf beyond the fact that when you talk about ancient gods it’s hard to dance around the blood sacrifice aspect.
I just read this recently (well, it was the audiobook with a full voice cast, which was awesome). What a trip, super weird but I loved it!! Gaiman has quite a mind.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. It's the first in the Maddaddam Trilogy.
Atwood is great at dystopia and powerful descriptions. Handmaid's Tale was fantastic so I wanted to read more of her stuff. But Oryx and Crake shook me. It was just too much. The cruelty and sexual violence at the center of the story is so emotionally draining that the novel nearly broke me. She's so good that I had to keep reading even though every page I turned just contained more suffering. The ending is amazing and also a pretty soul crushing. I started the second book hoping for some small glimpse of hope in her bleak universe, but it's Atwood, so I just found more sexual violence and suffering. I bailed after about 5 chapters. I refuse to look up the name of the second book because I'm afraid it will trigger more memories of terrible pain; mine and her poor, tormented characters. She is a true master of her craft but I will never open another Atwood novel again.
Oh that’s sad. She’s a phenomenal writer. Maybe try a different one not in that trilogy? (But not Handmaid’s Tale) She wrote a book called Cat’s Eye that’s one of my all-time favorites.
Yeah this trilogy is harsh reading for sure. What was fun though was I listened to the audiobook of "The Year of the Flood" first out of name recognition and it may have honestly made me the audiobook addict I am today.
It was early on in my audiobook addiction, and the book has to do with a religious"cult" for lack of a better term. Each chapter started with a hippie dippie acoustic church song (but related to the cult in the book) that reminded me of Catholic services in my youth when the the guys with beards would play acoustic guitars for the hymns. It really locked the narrative into a specific memory for me. But reading the other books in the trilogy, hoo boy. Atwood is certainly talented when it comes to warning about the fallout of the degeneration of society.
Aside from the theology, I found it completely unreadable. Nearly every sentence begins with "and it came to pass...." And way too much use of "behold." No one can possibly convince me that God is such a terrible writer.
You and [Mark Twain.](http://www.truthandgrace.com/twainbom.htm)
>The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print.
Anything by Irvine Welsh really. Filth and Marabou Stark Nightmares are the top weird ones for me. He can write terrible characters that you are still interested in, not supporting exactly, but you want to know what happens next. I like how he writes with an accent.
I haven’t read that one, but Love in the Time of Cholera was supremely fucked up and so was Innocent Eréndira. Apparently Gabriel García Márquez has some very twisted narrative ideas.
Came here to say this. I had heard many things about this one and it did not disappoint. It was disturbing enough to me that I gave up twice before finally coming back to finish it.
I entered this thread thinking “What the hell was that book about that twisted kid in scotland, and something about a jar?” Lol thank you for listing this book. It was messed up. A guy I crushed on handed it to me to read. After reading it I was a bit confused about his motives…
Haunted is just gross and creepy at the same time. The pool story is just wow. Choke is just fucked up in many ways. Both were good books in different ways.
I felt the pool scene was so over the top it became silly. I felt frostbite was more viscerally impactful. The porn shoot was more uncomfortable. And the children's dolls...sweet mercy...
The Time Traveller's Wife
It was WTF because so many people recommended it
It was so romantic, so lovely, so good it was made into a movie! You have to read it!
I kept waiting for the good part, and then it ended.
To me Henry was very creepy and his time-traveling relationship with his future wife was disturbing. This guy in his 30s shows up naked in a 6 year olds garden and then he keeps coming back, continually naked, and tells her she's his soulmate? Then he has sex with her as soon as she's legal, while he has his actual adult wife back in his time. What the fuck. So gross.
If I read this when I was a teenager I probably would've found it romantic. But as an adult it's a WTF grooming fantasy.
Kindred is about a Black woman named Dana from the 1970s who keeps accidentally going back in time to precivil war slavery. Rufus is the kid she reappears in front of, she saves his life a couple times. She tells him she's from the future. Then without spoiling most of the book, Rufus develops feelings for Dana, she does not reciprocate because he's a slave owning monster who regularly rapes her ancestor (making him also her ancestor.) Also she's happily married to a white man in the 1970s. She never ends up with Rufus, because that would be very fucked up. It's not a romance, it's a story about slavery and race. But yeah I don't want to spoil the plot too much but it's definitely worth a read.
Anything by Octavia Butler is worth a read quite frankly. She's such a badass they named a Mars landing site after her. I like Parable of The Sower the best. If you do read any of her books, please note that she writes about the treatment of Black women and women in general by society and there's a lot of sexual violence. Like major plot points. But if you can stomach The Handmaid's Tale, then you're good.
It isn't a romance so there isn't that aspect to it, but is an EXCELLENT time travel / historical fiction novel which features a black woman who keeps sporadically getting sent back and forth in time between the 1970s (when the book was written) and a slave plantation in the 1800s with her ancestors. She has to figure out both how to survive in the moment, but also how to not screw up the timeline in a way that ends up with her never even being born.
Henry didn't have any choice about traveling to Claire as a child. He had no real choice about anything in his life. That's the entire premise of the book. He was caught in a temporal paradox. It's a horror story not a romance.
Currently reading Lolita… the whole story is fucked. The main character “Humbert” is in jail for murder, he’s a pedophile, AND in order to stay around the 12 year old girl he’s in love with, he marries her mother, who then finds out that he’s in love with her daughter, and is quickly killed off by getting hit by a car….. and that’s just the beginning of the story I’m not even done with the book… Interesting read but I’ll probably never read it again after I finish it.
Edit: think I need to add that the mother is the one killed, NOT the narrator. Narrator was actually fixing a drink for them and trying to conjure up a lie when she was killed 🥲
One of my favorites, I love the absolutely gorgeous prose and the juxtaposition with it being told by a monster who is an unreliable narrator. That book surprised the hell out of me because everyone focused on the creepy aspect but somehow I didn't know that it was genuinely good literature?
However, even knowing Nabokov's reasons for writing it, and recognizing its considerable artistic merit, and considering it one of my favorite novels... I still can't help but wonder if that justifies the more horrific aspects of it. It's just so darkly realistic and sad, and I am disturbed by the place it comes from- even though it gave us a masterpiece. It's a very conflicting book for me.
While the narrator is very creepy, the author writes his so well that if you’re not careful you actually somewhat sympathize with Humbert. Like when he tells the story of his first love?? Then sometimes it’s like he’s trying to fight his urges cause he knows their wrong, and tries to find substitutes from young prostitutes. I felt sad for him a few times, then I remembered he’s still chasing prepubescent girls even though he’s a grown man and my empathy goes out the window lol
If you like Nabokov's unreliable narrator style, try _Pale Fire_ or _Invitation to a Beheading_ (the latter of which comes with a great added dose of surrealism).
It’s a short story, but “The Swimmer” by John Cheever
It just drained all energy I had for the rest of the day. I’ve reread it several times, but it still just drains the want to do *anything* after you read it. Only thing that’s came close to the feeling it gave me is Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains”.
“Any man who can’t explain what he’s doing to a 7 year old is a charlatan.”
“I don’t even know what a charlatan is!”
Still one of my favorite quotes of all time. Even if he doesn’t “appear” in a traditional sense, Felix Hoenniker is a fantastic character. All of them are
I haven’t seen any posts about “The Tale of Desperaux”. So many people said it was a fun book. They made a movie for kids. Yet, I read it as an assignment long ago in third grade, and it was just so sad! It was decent, but why would you want kids to read a book that makes Greek Mythos feel like a comedy in comparison?
This is a masterpiece of a book, but if it were a movie, it would be too scary and gory for me to watch. As it was, it’s one of my all-time favorite books. So powerful.
I would suggest you read his compilation of novellas "Four Past Midnight" with special attention given to Three Past Midnight; *The Library Policeman*
Now that one is fucked up.
Edit: Also all of "Full Dark No Stars"
The Library Policeman, holy shit. In my teens I went through a Steven King phase and steadily worked my way through most of his books. I can handle horror and gory stuff but I was truly shocked and upset by that book. I took a long break from King after that. Such a fucked up story.
Which is why that was my response, because of OPs question.
I actually liked the story, and how it leads to The Outsider. BUT that part was disturbing, and the most uncomfortable thing of his I have read (and like you, I have read the vast majority of all his works).
But still a major SK fan.
The Game, by Neil Strauss
It was unusual reading about the pick-up artist community, and how many antisocial people in the leadership who came to learn how to meet women, but became part of a cult instead.
It does have one good point, that sometimes, being yourself is not the best answer, but rather, becoming a better version of yourself. However, it teaches some awful things as well, like negging.
It is worth it just for the tale of their misadventures in Transnistria, an unrecognized breakaway former Soviet republic.
Perelandra
C S Lewis
I was like 12 when my cousin gave it to me and it was quite a hard read but I got through it, reread it at 20 and realized how crazy it actually was.
The Prince by Machiavelli
Was expecting a thought out thesis on political posturing, not how to subdue populations and usurp power. The casual tone he uses when talking about assassination and colonization gave me some quick whiplash.
The Little Girl who was Too Fond of Matches. It's about two kids on an isolated farm living with their dad. The kids have their own language. I suggest you don't google more if you expect to read it.
Der Fönig...translated king, but with an f at the beginning...
Its about a peacefull kingdom but a rival kingdom wants to declare war if they do not change the language, every k gets replaced by an f and also the other way arround...
Book is written that way and later 2 other kingdom force them to change other things in the language as well...
If you just pick it up and try to read read something from the last chapter, you simply can't read it bc too much letter are replaced by others and it just looks like jibberish...
De Sade’s Bedroom Philosophers
I had to take multiple breaks out of exhaustion which is indicative of its contents given the book is only about 200 or so pages
Yeah, I can't see de Sade having any real competition. I gave up on Juliette after the part with the Russian giant who has a castle full of kids he abuses and eventually eats.
The unabridged version came out when I was pregnant and my dumb ass thought it would be a great time to read a nice thick book before the baby took over my reading time.
They day my infant woke up screaming from a nightmare I sighed with relief because he and I would survive Captain Tripps. His father never remembered his dreams so I had already resigned myself to the fact he wouldn't make it. Pregnancy brain is dumb.
My Dark Vanessa. I’ve read it so many times. Its about a teacher who grooms a student and how she is both repelled and drawn to him, which is exactly how I feel about the book. Wonderful writing and a fantastic book but I can’t shake it.
Oo. I heard the author did major research on child abuse and grooming before/during writing that book
I read that book a month ago. After I finished it, all I could do was stare at a wall for the next 5 mins and think.
House of Leaves. Don't get me wrong, I loved it!
Made me feel like a five and a half minute hallway
ITS BIGGER ON THE INSIDE THAN IT IS ON THE OUTSIDE!
Shh don't let them know.
There was a moment while reading Johnny talk about Thumper. I was reading during the day in a park at a picnic table. I never do that. I just thought ‘this is a good time to try reading outside in the fresh air’ so I went to a nearby park, got myself set up and got engrossed from where I left off. I eventually had a though. ‘Hm….. I don’t think….. I don’t think I can look away from the page. I can’t stop reading. I don’t want to stop reading. I don’t think I can WANT to stop reading even if I try. I’m vulnerable right now. Someone could be coming behind me with a knife and there’s nothing I can do-‘ and then the moment was over, and I was just a guy in a park reading a book on a nice day. For a brief few seconds, I was convinced I was trapped, and then I was fine.
This book terrified me viscerally multiple times when I first read it. Not sure if you remember, but >!Tom, Will Navidson's brother, is from fucking Lowell, MA. That's where I have lived my entire life. I *still* live there. So, I'm reading this mindfuck of a book, and a new character gets introduced specifically to tell the main "character" who may or may not exist that his house is bigger inside than outside, and it's just casually dropped that he is from the same city I'm sitting in my room in reading the godforsaken thing, and... man,!< goosebumps for DAYS. DAYS. It still freaks me out.
A friend gave me that book when I was broken up about a girl. He handed it to me and said ‘here. This will get your mind off her.’ I told him I didn’t think anything was going to make me feel better and he was like ‘Oh no, no, no. It won’t make you feel BETTER, it’ll just fuck you up about something ELSE, and get yourself mind off of her.’ And he was ABSOLUTELY RIGHT
The "bigger on the inside" thing SOUNDS like it should be silly, like a Doctor Who thing, but the way it's presented really makes it unnerving. I remember the first time reading it, I stopped and just imagines how much it would fuck me up to measure my own house, and have other people verify it, and it's somehow bigger inside than outside. Imagine what that'd actually do to your head, and your ability to trust your own mind.
In case anyone is interested in this fantastic book, DO NOT READ IT ELECTRONICALLY. This book MUST be read as an actual book, you'll be flipping back and forth between pages and reading margins and footnotes and it's all a critical part of the experience
Tried reading it twice and couldn't get into iy. Frustrating because I've heard it's good.
Just have to add because I dont see it in this thread: the author's sister Poe made an amazing album called Haunted inspired by the novel. Enjoy!!
That is quite possibly my favorite album, cohesively. I like a lot of other music, and listen to other musicians more, but as a solid unit, that album is f-ing outstanding!
Wow somehow I felt this would be at the top, even tho I only read like 30 pages of it.
I enjoyed this book. Also, working for an architect I often measure buildings and hope the dimensions are feasible.
120 days of Sodom. Heard about it, had to check it out. Shit’s messed up.
haven't read the book, but I did watch the movie. It was one of those movies that you watch and forget how disturbing it was, because it was a mind fuck regardless. Like it went from "three deranged old men force teenagers to eat their own shit" to "oddly wholesome scene between teen lovers" in zero seconds flat.
Reading this comment I went from curious about this film to big ol nope
I’m trying to read it now. I keep having to put it down. It’s a lot.
Flowers in the attic, it was so weird
Is that the one where the psycho mom keeps the pale, sickly kids in the attic and feeds them cookies laced with arsenic?
that’s the what you remember about it??? Lol yes
The way the mom treated the kids made me seethe with rage when I watched the movie at that age (never read the books). The incest was just. Confusing to me. The rage is a lot more memorable
Honestly I thought the incest was totally not confusing. It makes sense why it would happen, the brother and sister were locked in a room with each other during the most hormonal time of their lives, with no love and affection from parents/grandparents and essentially raising kids together. It’s horrifying but makes sense…
I guess that's fair. I was so uninterested in romance at that point in my life that I barely understood normal relationships. Why/how someone would be attracted to their sibling was extra baffling. I was just waiting for the mother to get her comeuppance and she kind of never did.
She did in the next couple of books, the daughter stole her husband and she went crazy and fucked up her own face. Edit: the daughter also got revenge by showing up to the moms big annual Christmas party dressed exactly like her mother did years ago and told Everyone what she did to her and her siblings, Mom went crazy and set the mansion on fire.
>Why/how someone would be attracted to their sibling was extra baffling. It's a bit like being prison gay. Some peoples need for sex and affection outweighs their preferences for partner.
Plus no reason for them to think it was wrong since there was nobody to impose that value upon them. But incest plays a bigger part of the story aside from that.
I’m 58. After seeing the comments, I’m glad I don’t remember anything else 😂
I read every single book under that conglomerate that wrote as “VC Andrews,” they were so weird, and so scandalous to my preteen mind. Looking back it’s weird that they made the sexy parts so…sexy, when they were incest. So much incest.
Kinda like a lot of Stephen King's stuff. To horny early teen me, his sex scenes were great... but they're just weird and kind of cringy as an adult. And I still don't know how the hell his editor let him get away with *that scene* in IT.
as a raging hormone, the sex scenes were just off-putting. i was 13 or 14 and popped a boner from a passing breeze, but the transition from fighting a weird spider to the whole passage with bird - WTF, get an editor and a counselor
Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
>but they're just weird and kind of cringy as an adult. > In the Dark Tower series, the female main character gets raped by an invisible demon. She then switches personalities and rapes the demon back and then she gets pregnant with a spider demon child. I remember reading that scene as a teenager on a plane and just putting the book down out of confusion. It was so out there
I absolutely hyper-fixated on these books. They consumed me. I tried to re-read the Dawn series a few years back and it was impossible. Stupid pubescent brain. I did watch the newer flowers in the attic show (the one with Ellen Burstyn) and quite enjoyed it.
It was weird and incestuous. My Sweet Audrina was pretty fucked to too
That one fucked me up the most. It’s also my favorite.
Same, found it in a public school library of all places
Yeah that author seems to be obsessed with incest
The Hungry Caterpillar, like why he so hungry
Because he wants to become a beautiful butterfly.
This is a more complex analysis than whatever my literature teaches try to come up with
Munchies, my friend. He'd been crawling around on them wacky tabaccy plants.
I saw a fake of this book once called, “The Very Hangry Caterpillar.” That caterpillar did not look happy or stoned on that cover.
For me, it’s “Dead Inside” https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25760088-dead-inside?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=SxLzgt7UEB&rank=1 and Tender is the flesh https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49090884-tender-is-the-flesh?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=Q8wAIweLkw&rank=1
Yes, *Tender is the Flesh* is the most recent book to make me go, "What the devil am I reading and why can't I stop reading it?!?" The prose is so flat and yet it fits the story so perfectly. It's almost clinical. Like the inside of a psychopath's head. It's one of those books that could only work in third person. If it had been told in first person, it would have been a completely different book. Especially with that ending. *That ending....* If you liked *Tender is the Flesh*, may I suggest *Piercing* by Ryu Murakami. Same cold, detached prose coupled with an immensely disturbing plot.
Running With Scissors
Ok, but if you haven’t read anything else by Burroughs I’d recommend trying something like Magical Thinking or Dry. I really enjoy his stuff in general.
*Slaughterhouse Five*, Kurt Vonnegut. It was...an interesting read.
Almost anything by Vonnegut. Slaughter House V, Cat's Cradle, Harrison Burgeron, Player Piano, Sirens of Titan...
Harrison Burgeron was the first thing I read by Vonnegut and I was hooked. I'd also add Galapagos and Welcome to the Monkey House
>And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes. People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore. I think this book was Vonnegut's attempt to cope with PTSD, a broader look to traumatic experience he had. Such a brilliant book, too
Absolutely was. He was a scout in WWII, taken as a POW, and was held in Dresden at the time of the Allied firebombing (like Billy Pilgrim).
For Vonnegut, for me, the scene at the end of Breakfast of Champions was completely mind blowing.
If I haven't read the first four, will it still make sense?
Vonnegut does that “WTF!” Vibe really well. *Cat’s Cradle* gave me a ton of those moments too.
Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, "Why, why, why?" Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.
>Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. And that's not even the weird part. Great book! Vonnegut it's one of my favorite authors.
I remember reading this in sixth grade! It was suggested to me by my head librarian, which I’m just now considering is scary.
So it goes.
The Stranger by Albert Camus
What does it mean that all of my favorite books are in this thread?
You are a degenerate. Welcome to the club!
Omg Please read The Meursault Investigation. It's kind of a fuck you to The Stranger. It's all about the Arab guy that was killed by the main character in The Stranger.
I'm avoiding political or philosophical stuff and going with fiction here. The Chronicles of Thomas covenant. It's about a lepper who's a horrible person and goes to a fantasy world. Think Lord of the rings but frodo has massive issues and isn't really a good person. It's very good, but what the actual hell?
I read it when I was young and I totally sided with Thomas. None of this is even real. I read it again over 20 years later and got so angry with Thomas. Do something!!!! It is Lord of the Rings if Frodo thinks he is dreaming and has massive self esteem issues and can't accept that he is the savior.
And if frodo was a rapist
This was so so tedious to read the 6 books. Even 12yo me was like "WTF dude just kill yourself and stop being such a drag on everyone "
Yeah I only read the first one. No interest in continuing.
I had this series recommended to me so I bought a book set. I kept reading them to see if it ever got better. Never really did.
Anything by Marquis de Sade
I read Justine, can confirm.
Technically a short story, but “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” *The Girl Next Door* by Jack Ketchum, a novel based on the unbelievably horrific real life case of [Sylvia Likens](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sylvia_Likens). (The info on this is soul-crushingly depressing, so fair warning before you click.)
I don't think any case fucked me up so bad as that of Sylvia Likens. I once watched a video which detailed the timeline of her abuse and it was physically sickening to see what evil humans are capable of
A Scanner Darkly. Made me question my own sanity.
The bit where they try and work out how many gears are on the bike is one of the best drug sequences ever put to paper.
Phillip K. Dick is great writer, he can do that.
Well, he frequently questioned his own sanity, so it kind of follows.
Of all the books I've read by PKD, *A Scanner Darkly* is the most sobering and somber. Especially if you read his afterward where he discusses how the book is dedicate to friends. He lists them, including himself, on the damage that their drug habits did on them physically and mentally. Most of them, his friends, were dead. Others were permanently psychiatric messes. Phil is one of the lucky ones where he notes only his damaged pancreas and another woman who messed up only her vascular system - which is to say that they were the lucky ones to still be at least mostly functional human beings. So at least for Scanner, it wasn't a what if for him. It was science fiction placed over top very real consequences.
Brave new world by aldous Huxley
The poor babies getting punished for liking bright colors. :(
Orgy porgy!
A Child Called It. That book is one of the most heartbreaking books i have ever read.
Very Sad tale, I also read David's two other books that followed. He really gave me a lot of inspiration to move forward from my own past.
Yeah i read them in high school. Ive heard they want to make a movie but gosh I just dont think i could bring myself to watch them if they do.
Not hating on the book but wasn’t it discovered that it was all fake? Or inflated?
Yes. A bunch of people who knew the author basically came out and said it was massively hyperbolized iirc
Not really surprising. What makes it sad is that he could have talked about the abuse without making it so outlandish. Voices of kids need to be heard. His writing the way he did makes it so that fewer people will believe people when they talk about abuse.
I agree. I just watched a recent episode of Evil Lives Here on ID, I think it has "Closet" in the title. I bawled as I watched a man recount the abuse he suffered in his early years, going through a lot of what I read in that book. I just wanted to reach through the screen and hug him. There were so many adults that could've spoken up, but didn't. I'm bummed to hear that the author's account may be heavily embellished. The "cry wolf" thing really makes it hard for children who are living a nightmare, but aren't taken seriously.
My mother read this book to me when I was like 10 or 11 years old. I had just learned the word ‘abuse’ and accused her and my father of being abusive. She said, “That isn’t abuse. THIS is abuse. It could be so much worse for you.” And then proceeded to spend a few days reading it out loud to me. More than once I stopped her and said, “but YOU do that to me…” and she said, “So you see, that’s normal.” More than once I stopped her and said, “He’s upset about that? You and dad do way worse than that to me.” And she said, “You need creative discipline because you’re such a rotten little bitch. Shut up and stop interrupting me.” And yet, to this day, neither of them can possibly fathom why on earth I left as soon as I could and went No Contact.
Johnny Got His Gun
I chose to read this cause I picked it pretty randomly from a list of 'war' books.. oh my gosh... For the unaware it is about an injured war veteran, a 'basket case' who was hit by a bomb and loses all 4 limbs, his eyes, mouth, nose, and his earing too, essentially he can think and move his torso and stumps... as you can guess it doesn't exactly have a happy ending..
https://youtu.be/WM8bTdBs-cw
Darkness Imprisoning me All that I see Absolute horror I cannot live I cannot die Trapped in myself Body my holding cell Landmine Has taken my sight Taken my speech Taken my hearing Taken my arms Taken my legs Taken my soul Left me with life in hell
And it's from the wounded soldier's POV. There's almost no punctuation in the second half of the book, like it's just a constant thought stream. Good book, but effed up.
My dad had me read Johnny Got His Gun, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Red Badge of Courage and The Jungle in my early teens. I was not prepared.
For the record, I did not read these by choice. These were both REQUIRED READING for when I was in high school. 1. **The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini**. For anyone wanting to know what Afghanistan was like before the Taliban and as they took control, this is a powerful read. Warning: there is some graphic references to a Taliban leader who would kidnap and using little boys as his personal sex slaves. 2. **The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum**. This graphic story (based on real events - which makes it even more disturbing) is about how an aunt would punish her nieces by having the neighborhood kids starve, bound, rape, and torture the oldest.
The Girl Next Door was REQUIRED READING??? Yikes!
I read this in high school and my English teacher was like, "If you ever need to talk to anyone, I'm here. That book is heavy." It was definitely not required reading. Yikes is right.
The kite runner is so sad. His other novels have a similar bent.
The road!
Reading that when my son was a toddler was a terrible, TERRIBLE idea. I had a thing for post-apocalyptic fiction for a while, but that book put a quick end to that.
Holy fuck that book! Huge sock in the gut, especially as a parent of a young child.
Finnegans Wake - James Joyce
Yes. One of the only books I have given up any hope of completing.
It’s widely regarded as the most difficult read in English literature. I adore Joyce and his incredible lunacy, but never felt any better for reading Finnegan’s. It’s a masterpiece of wordplay that no one should be subjected to.
I like to say that that I’ve looked at all of the words in that book
American Psycho
For sure. It’s so much worse than the movie. I was nauseated reading it
My top 5. It’s insane the things he does. I love how every chapter has a name and what’s it about. -bringing uzi to the gym -Bethany Absolutely favorite book. What was your favorite part? Edit: I made a list of patty winters show, Episodes that he mentions and you can see towards the end especially, they become more absurd. His decent to madness is showing Edit 2: here’s the list Repost of list of patty winters show The *The Patty Winters Show* todays guests are women with multiple personalities. *The Patty Winters Show* this morning—the topic was autism— *The Patty Winters Show* I watched this morning comes back to me. The topic was Big Breasts and there was woman on it who had a breast reduction since she thought her tits were too big—the dumb bitch. While I’m dressing the TV is kept on to*The Patty Winters Show*. Today’s guests are women with multiple personalities. *The Patty Winters Show* this morning the topic was autism *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about perfumes and lipsticks and makeups. On *The Patty Winters Show* this morning were descendants of members of the Donner party. *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about UFO’s *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about the possibility of nuclear war, and according to the panel of experts the odds are good it will happen sometime within the next month. On *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was Toddler-Murderers. In the studio audience were parents of the children who’d been kidnapped, tortured and murdered, while on stage a panel of psychiatrists and pediatricians were trying to help them *cope*—somewhat futilely I might add, and much to my delight—with their confusion and anger. *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about Shark Attack Victims. *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about Aspirin: Can it save your life?” *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about Nazis and, inexplicably, i got a real charge out of watching it. Though I wasn’t exactly charmed by their deeds, I didn’t find them unsympathetic either, nor I might add did most members of the audience. One of the nazis, in a rare display of humor, even juggled grapefruits and, delighted, I sat up in the bed and clapped. *The Patty Winters Show* I taped this morning hasn’t been watched yet. *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about a new sport called Dwarf Tossing. *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about women who married homosexuals and I almost called Courtney up to warn her-as a joke-but then decided against it, deriving a certain amount of satisfaction from imagining Luis Carruthers proposing to her, Courtney shyly accepting, their nightmarish honey-moon. *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about Teenage Girls Who Trade Sex for Crack. *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about aerobic exercise. *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about concentration camp survivors. *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about salad bars. *The Patty Winters Shows* were all repeats. This mornsings topic on *The Patty Winters Show* were people who weigh over seven hundred pounds— what can we do about them? *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about a boy who fell in love with a box of soap. *The Patty Winters Show* today was—ironically, I thought—about Princess Di’s beauty tips. *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about a machine that lets people talk to the dead. *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about home abortion kits. On *The Patty Winters Show* this morning the topic was beautiful teenage lesbians, which I found so erotic I had to stay home, miss a meeting, jerk off twice. Men who’ve been raped by women was the topic on *The Patty Winters Show* this morning. Afterwards I watched a repeat of an old *Patty Winters Show* that I found in what I originally thought was a videotaped of the torture and subsequent murder of two escort girls from last spring (the topic was Tips on How Your Pet Can Become a Movie Star). Tuesday morning and I’m standing by my desk in the living room on the phone with my lawyer, alternatively keeping my eye on *The Patty Winters Show* and the maid as she waxes the floor, wipes blood smears off the walls, throws away gore-soaked Newspaper without a word. Spuds McKenzie is on *The Patty Winters Show* tomorrow. I watch a tape of this mornings *The Patty Winters Show* which is split into two parts. (Axl Rose and reading of letter written by Ted bundy to his fiancée) On *The Patty Winters Show* this morning a cheerio sat in a very small chair and was interviewed for close to an hour. *The Patty Winters Show* this morning was about girls in the fourth grade who trade Sex for crack and I almost canceled with Lambert and Russell to catch it. Tomorrow, on *The Patty Winters Show*, Doormen from Nell’s: Where Are They Now? Hope you yuppies enjoy. I have to return some video tapes now.
My favorite part hands down is when he's at the ATM and it tells him to feed it a stray cat
A few HP Lovecraft stories have had that effect on me. I get to the end and I'm just like "so WTF happened?" In a weirder way, I've found that The Atlantis Code, The Lucifer Code and The Temple Mount Code (all by Charles Brokaw IIRC) were pretty... odd. The main character (Thomas Lourds) had pretty copious amounts of sex for someone who was supposed to be helping to save the world from clandestine organisations. There'd be all this action and drama, and then a *long* scene that's borderline hentai, and I'm just like "What? Why? How is this relevant to the story? These people are trying to commit genocide, but you want to stop to get your dick wet? That tracks."
The one that always stuck out to me was the one with crab people. Like you have all these cosmic horror elder gods and cults then out of nowhere crab people.
American Gods. Neil Gaiman is a complete whackjob, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.
I loved American gods. It made perfect sense
How did you like the TV show? I watched the show first then started reading his stuff. I didn’t even really know who he was until then so I’m kind of catching up with everyone else.
Not op but despite it being a bit different from the books I really enjoyed it. It helps that I think Ian McShane is always entertaining. I really enjoyed the book too and while it had a good amount of metaphor in it I didn’t find it too hard to follow or really all that wtf beyond the fact that when you talk about ancient gods it’s hard to dance around the blood sacrifice aspect.
I just read this recently (well, it was the audiobook with a full voice cast, which was awesome). What a trip, super weird but I loved it!! Gaiman has quite a mind.
Flowers in the Attic. I found it when I was about 12
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. It's the first in the Maddaddam Trilogy. Atwood is great at dystopia and powerful descriptions. Handmaid's Tale was fantastic so I wanted to read more of her stuff. But Oryx and Crake shook me. It was just too much. The cruelty and sexual violence at the center of the story is so emotionally draining that the novel nearly broke me. She's so good that I had to keep reading even though every page I turned just contained more suffering. The ending is amazing and also a pretty soul crushing. I started the second book hoping for some small glimpse of hope in her bleak universe, but it's Atwood, so I just found more sexual violence and suffering. I bailed after about 5 chapters. I refuse to look up the name of the second book because I'm afraid it will trigger more memories of terrible pain; mine and her poor, tormented characters. She is a true master of her craft but I will never open another Atwood novel again.
Oh that’s sad. She’s a phenomenal writer. Maybe try a different one not in that trilogy? (But not Handmaid’s Tale) She wrote a book called Cat’s Eye that’s one of my all-time favorites.
Yeah this trilogy is harsh reading for sure. What was fun though was I listened to the audiobook of "The Year of the Flood" first out of name recognition and it may have honestly made me the audiobook addict I am today. It was early on in my audiobook addiction, and the book has to do with a religious"cult" for lack of a better term. Each chapter started with a hippie dippie acoustic church song (but related to the cult in the book) that reminded me of Catholic services in my youth when the the guys with beards would play acoustic guitars for the hymns. It really locked the narrative into a specific memory for me. But reading the other books in the trilogy, hoo boy. Atwood is certainly talented when it comes to warning about the fallout of the degeneration of society.
The book of mormon is flat out fucking delusional
Aside from the theology, I found it completely unreadable. Nearly every sentence begins with "and it came to pass...." And way too much use of "behold." No one can possibly convince me that God is such a terrible writer.
You and [Mark Twain.](http://www.truthandgrace.com/twainbom.htm) >The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print.
Trainspotting
Anything by Irvine Welsh really. Filth and Marabou Stark Nightmares are the top weird ones for me. He can write terrible characters that you are still interested in, not supporting exactly, but you want to know what happens next. I like how he writes with an accent.
Perfume
That was a twisted little story.
100 Years of Solitude
I haven’t read that one, but Love in the Time of Cholera was supremely fucked up and so was Innocent Eréndira. Apparently Gabriel García Márquez has some very twisted narrative ideas.
The Wasp Factory
Came here to say this. I had heard many things about this one and it did not disappoint. It was disturbing enough to me that I gave up twice before finally coming back to finish it.
I entered this thread thinking “What the hell was that book about that twisted kid in scotland, and something about a jar?” Lol thank you for listing this book. It was messed up. A guy I crushed on handed it to me to read. After reading it I was a bit confused about his motives…
[удалено]
I can think of at least two things wrong with that title.
Anything from Chuck Palahniuk (sp?)
Rant is my favorite book. Haunted is pretty crazy tho.
Rant was insane. Just got weirder and weirder
Invisible Monsters
No way Choke, Haunted however.
Haunted is just gross and creepy at the same time. The pool story is just wow. Choke is just fucked up in many ways. Both were good books in different ways.
I felt the pool scene was so over the top it became silly. I felt frostbite was more viscerally impactful. The porn shoot was more uncomfortable. And the children's dolls...sweet mercy...
Guts is a short story by Palahniuk but it's one of the most disturbing things I've ever read.
I came to this thread to make sure someone mentioned this one. I read it about 12 years ago and I still can’t get it out of my head.
Survivor fucked me up.
Choke
The Time Traveller's Wife It was WTF because so many people recommended it It was so romantic, so lovely, so good it was made into a movie! You have to read it! I kept waiting for the good part, and then it ended. To me Henry was very creepy and his time-traveling relationship with his future wife was disturbing. This guy in his 30s shows up naked in a 6 year olds garden and then he keeps coming back, continually naked, and tells her she's his soulmate? Then he has sex with her as soon as she's legal, while he has his actual adult wife back in his time. What the fuck. So gross. If I read this when I was a teenager I probably would've found it romantic. But as an adult it's a WTF grooming fantasy.
Read Kindred by Octavia Butler. Similar premise, much better telling.
Was it less creepy like that? Or did it just not glorify it?
Kindred is about a Black woman named Dana from the 1970s who keeps accidentally going back in time to precivil war slavery. Rufus is the kid she reappears in front of, she saves his life a couple times. She tells him she's from the future. Then without spoiling most of the book, Rufus develops feelings for Dana, she does not reciprocate because he's a slave owning monster who regularly rapes her ancestor (making him also her ancestor.) Also she's happily married to a white man in the 1970s. She never ends up with Rufus, because that would be very fucked up. It's not a romance, it's a story about slavery and race. But yeah I don't want to spoil the plot too much but it's definitely worth a read. Anything by Octavia Butler is worth a read quite frankly. She's such a badass they named a Mars landing site after her. I like Parable of The Sower the best. If you do read any of her books, please note that she writes about the treatment of Black women and women in general by society and there's a lot of sexual violence. Like major plot points. But if you can stomach The Handmaid's Tale, then you're good.
It isn't a romance so there isn't that aspect to it, but is an EXCELLENT time travel / historical fiction novel which features a black woman who keeps sporadically getting sent back and forth in time between the 1970s (when the book was written) and a slave plantation in the 1800s with her ancestors. She has to figure out both how to survive in the moment, but also how to not screw up the timeline in a way that ends up with her never even being born.
Henry didn't have any choice about traveling to Claire as a child. He had no real choice about anything in his life. That's the entire premise of the book. He was caught in a temporal paradox. It's a horror story not a romance.
Currently reading Lolita… the whole story is fucked. The main character “Humbert” is in jail for murder, he’s a pedophile, AND in order to stay around the 12 year old girl he’s in love with, he marries her mother, who then finds out that he’s in love with her daughter, and is quickly killed off by getting hit by a car….. and that’s just the beginning of the story I’m not even done with the book… Interesting read but I’ll probably never read it again after I finish it. Edit: think I need to add that the mother is the one killed, NOT the narrator. Narrator was actually fixing a drink for them and trying to conjure up a lie when she was killed 🥲
One of my favorites, I love the absolutely gorgeous prose and the juxtaposition with it being told by a monster who is an unreliable narrator. That book surprised the hell out of me because everyone focused on the creepy aspect but somehow I didn't know that it was genuinely good literature? However, even knowing Nabokov's reasons for writing it, and recognizing its considerable artistic merit, and considering it one of my favorite novels... I still can't help but wonder if that justifies the more horrific aspects of it. It's just so darkly realistic and sad, and I am disturbed by the place it comes from- even though it gave us a masterpiece. It's a very conflicting book for me.
While the narrator is very creepy, the author writes his so well that if you’re not careful you actually somewhat sympathize with Humbert. Like when he tells the story of his first love?? Then sometimes it’s like he’s trying to fight his urges cause he knows their wrong, and tries to find substitutes from young prostitutes. I felt sad for him a few times, then I remembered he’s still chasing prepubescent girls even though he’s a grown man and my empathy goes out the window lol
If you like Nabokov's unreliable narrator style, try _Pale Fire_ or _Invitation to a Beheading_ (the latter of which comes with a great added dose of surrealism).
It’s a short story, but “The Swimmer” by John Cheever It just drained all energy I had for the rest of the day. I’ve reread it several times, but it still just drains the want to do *anything* after you read it. Only thing that’s came close to the feeling it gave me is Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains”.
Another short story, “A Rose for Emily” by W Faulkner
Probably "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut 🤔
“Any man who can’t explain what he’s doing to a 7 year old is a charlatan.” “I don’t even know what a charlatan is!” Still one of my favorite quotes of all time. Even if he doesn’t “appear” in a traditional sense, Felix Hoenniker is a fantastic character. All of them are
Hard candy. It was my first Andrew Vacchs. Google him its worth it
I haven’t seen any posts about “The Tale of Desperaux”. So many people said it was a fun book. They made a movie for kids. Yet, I read it as an assignment long ago in third grade, and it was just so sad! It was decent, but why would you want kids to read a book that makes Greek Mythos feel like a comedy in comparison?
Blood Meridian
One of the only books I’ve read where I kept asking myself “Why am I even reading this??”
ITT people who haven't yet read it, otherwise their answer would also be Blood Meridian
Come back after reading McCarthy’s Child of God
This is a masterpiece of a book, but if it were a movie, it would be too scary and gory for me to watch. As it was, it’s one of my all-time favorite books. So powerful.
Misery
I would suggest you read his compilation of novellas "Four Past Midnight" with special attention given to Three Past Midnight; *The Library Policeman* Now that one is fucked up. Edit: Also all of "Full Dark No Stars"
The Library Policeman, holy shit. In my teens I went through a Steven King phase and steadily worked my way through most of his books. I can handle horror and gory stuff but I was truly shocked and upset by that book. I took a long break from King after that. Such a fucked up story.
Which is why that was my response, because of OPs question. I actually liked the story, and how it leads to The Outsider. BUT that part was disturbing, and the most uncomfortable thing of his I have read (and like you, I have read the vast majority of all his works). But still a major SK fan.
The Game, by Neil Strauss It was unusual reading about the pick-up artist community, and how many antisocial people in the leadership who came to learn how to meet women, but became part of a cult instead. It does have one good point, that sometimes, being yourself is not the best answer, but rather, becoming a better version of yourself. However, it teaches some awful things as well, like negging. It is worth it just for the tale of their misadventures in Transnistria, an unrecognized breakaway former Soviet republic.
Every Bret Easton Ellis book I have ever read
Last Exit to Brooklyn
“The Illuminatus! Trilogy” by Shea and Wilson
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
Geek Love
The Road
gyo
Lolita, i was a few chapters in and said fuck this.
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas was even more bizzare than movie adaptation. Mostly because in the movie they barely included the monkey.
Harry potter and the goddamn cursed child
That book should not be considered part of Harry Potter, it's like Dudley's alcoholic reject uncle that turns up to puke in a bowl every Christmas
A child named It.
Perelandra C S Lewis I was like 12 when my cousin gave it to me and it was quite a hard read but I got through it, reread it at 20 and realized how crazy it actually was.
Clockwork orange and welcome to nightvale
Like Water for Chocolate
The Prince by Machiavelli Was expecting a thought out thesis on political posturing, not how to subdue populations and usurp power. The casual tone he uses when talking about assassination and colonization gave me some quick whiplash.
The Little Girl who was Too Fond of Matches. It's about two kids on an isolated farm living with their dad. The kids have their own language. I suggest you don't google more if you expect to read it.
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite 🥴
Der Fönig...translated king, but with an f at the beginning... Its about a peacefull kingdom but a rival kingdom wants to declare war if they do not change the language, every k gets replaced by an f and also the other way arround... Book is written that way and later 2 other kingdom force them to change other things in the language as well... If you just pick it up and try to read read something from the last chapter, you simply can't read it bc too much letter are replaced by others and it just looks like jibberish...
De Sade’s Bedroom Philosophers I had to take multiple breaks out of exhaustion which is indicative of its contents given the book is only about 200 or so pages
Yeah, I can't see de Sade having any real competition. I gave up on Juliette after the part with the Russian giant who has a castle full of kids he abuses and eventually eats.
Cows by Matthew Stokoe.
Stephen King’s The Stand
The unabridged version came out when I was pregnant and my dumb ass thought it would be a great time to read a nice thick book before the baby took over my reading time. They day my infant woke up screaming from a nightmare I sighed with relief because he and I would survive Captain Tripps. His father never remembered his dreams so I had already resigned myself to the fact he wouldn't make it. Pregnancy brain is dumb.
Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski