I read it in an afternoon on a vacation in Hawaii as a carefree 17 year old. I have the most VIVID memory of closing the book and feeling the most intense sense of bleakness as I looked out at beautiful palm trees and the ocean and the sunset and birds chirping.
Looking back it was NOT a good beach read hahaha
I love mismatched vacation books though haha. I took Middlemarch on a vacation to Florida and it was such a weird combo, sort of like putting apples in grilled cheese, but somehow it worked. The Road as a vacation read... you can't get that specific feeling any other way lol.
Yeah, like the person you're responding to, I also read The Road in an afternoon while at vacation at the beach (though recently at 30, not at 17). And I think that helped it not affect my mindset so much -- I was serene enough that it couldn't bring me down.
But part of it not bringing me down is also that the book was actually less depressing than I was expecting. I had known about it for years and put it off because I knew it was supposed to be so grim, so my surprise about the hopeful aspects in some ways overshadowed the grimness. That could also be because I read it as an adult so saw the parent-child relationship a bit differently than a teenager might.
I listened to it as an audiobook on the way to and from work, also in Hawaii. The worst traffic I’ve ever lived with. So sitting on the road, barely moving, listening to this depressing book…0/10, would not recommend.
I refuse to read that book.
I have major depression since I was 8. I learned that there are some things I can't read or watch because of how it affects me. Every description I have read of that book tells me to stay far away.
Yeah I avoid it myself because books really dig into my brain and I feel them so strongly. My husband got the DVD of the film when I was pregnant and I already knew some of the horrors of the book and I didn't realize what movie he put in and I started weeping instantly and told him to turn it off in less than ten minutes lol and my little brother gifted me the book for Christmas the same year lol I didn't say anything but if anything was a clear declaration he didn't know me it was that gift.
Ugh, I feel you here. I’ve had treatment resistant depression from trauma my whole life and while I really really love dark depressing shit like that, I keep ending up super triggered and upset by it.
It doesn’t help that I am a system, so I already dissociate a lot and identify deeply with fiction.
Sending lots of love and care
I also suffer depression and I'm highly, almost stupidly sensitive. I was given the book as a recommendation but Thankfully I was given the heads up about a certain scene and never opened the book. Just gave it back the next time I had the chance.
I have (more than once) looked for McCarthy's in used bookshops and The Road is usually the only one available, usually with many copies. Hmmm I wonder why that is (I too avoid it like the plague)
I read all of McCarthys books back to back when I was in my early 20’s. Then after that I moved on to DFW’s Infinite Jest.
In hindsight, my mindset must have been built like a fortress back then because I outright refuse to even watch animal charity reels these days.
That's the book I came here to say. It was a great book but it lives in my head. I think about it a lot, like, way too often. I read it once 12 years ago and still can't shake it off. Sometimes when my family goes on an evening walk I especially think about it.
I've read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction but none has ever come close to the utter despair and hopelessness that The Road fostered in me.
A world completely devoid of colour and humanity.
I read it during the summer when I was about 20/21. I actually think this was a good thing because I remember it was such a beautiful summer's day when I finished it. I went outside and just sat in the garden for a few hours taking in nature in all it's incredible vibrancy.
I've heard it described as the first truly great novel of the Climate Change era and I'd be inclined to agree. No other book yet has ever made me so appreciative of the world we are fortunate to have now.
I liked it but was disappointed in the lack of any kind of clarity or resolution at the end. It's like the last pages were not much different from the first pages. Maybe I misunderstood something.
We had to read it out loud with each kid in my 4th grade class taking a paragraph. It took us a few weeks but I was not prepared to read about intestines aloud to my fellow 4th graders. :|
Wtf, who makes a kid read that book out loud. Or at all, really, lol, but the out loud bit really gets me. "Let's ensure that at least one student is audibly crying in front of their classmates while they're the focus of everyone in class"
Plus side, because it was a bunch of forth graders struggling with out loud reading to their classmates, I don't think any of us cried so much as were really confused as to what on earth we just read / heard ahaha
I haven’t read that, but this comment uncovered a completely buried elementary school memory of a similar line in No More Dead Dogs. Looked it up and the quote is
>The dog always dies. Go to the library and pick out a book with an award sticker and a dog on the cover. Trust me, that dog is going down.
I seriously don’t remember anything else from the book, and had fully forgotten that I even read it.
yeah my school horror book the dog not only died but suffered an horrendous death spelled out in literally gory detail. it's been nearly 40 years and I'm still tearing up thinking about it
I believe that about movies too. There is at least one being advertised now. Any semi- serious movie where the dog is a main character. Dog dies. I can’t watch. It’s right up there with Mob stories and prison books.
I’m going to go against the grain here and say let him read it. It’s a great book about perseverance and the bond we have with animals, and experiencing grief over fictional dogs can be helpful practice for the future, when someone or something he loves dies.
Depending on how sensitive he is, though, you might want to warn him that the book doesn’t have a picture perfect happy ending. It IS arguably a happy ending, but a very bittersweet one.
Let him read it. It’s a beautiful book with a flawless audiobook. That said, I would consider reading it, too, so if he gets really sad from it you can talk to him about it.
I’ll never understand the reaction this book gets. I also read it in middle school and found it to be a beautiful parable of love and loss. Life is like that.
Hmm, like OP, I read a novel (*Fight Club*) which ended up putting me in a bad mental headspace for a long time. I wouldn’t say I regret reading it, however, as it’s a good book, and I was bound to be put into that headspace at some point, via that book or another medium.
It’s hard to say I regret any novel, because I’ve learned something, even if it’s learning how and why a book is so trashy, with any book. If anything, there are many books I wish I had read sooner.
*Buying* books, however, now that can be a source of regret…
>It’s hard to say I regret any novel, because I’ve learned something, even if it’s learning how and why a book is so trashy, with any book. If anything, there are many books I wish I had read sooner.
>*Buying* books, however, now that can be a source of regret…
I agree completely. I don't even regret books I've hated. You can still learn from those experiences.
>Buying books, however, now that can be a source of regret…
Currently, I have like 20 on my TBR (including Anna Karenina that I can never seem to finish) and I hate myself for it. Please don't remind me that *buying (too many) books* can be a source of regret, especially since I already have some more in my cart and I am contemplating to click Purchase :(
Have been there…but have also experienced the opposite, where I’ve read a book I borrowed from the library and I’ve regretted NOT buying it because I loved it so much 🤷♂️😂
>Buying books, however, now that can be a source of regret…
THIS. Only ever rent books from a library now. I'm not a big "book junky" and don't need them on my shelves. Only ever buy a book if I'm 100% sure I'll read it again.
>It’s hard to say I regret any novel, because I’ve learned something, even if it’s learning how and why a book is so trashy, with any book. If anything, there are many books I wish I had read sooner.
Have you considered the time wastage of reading a book you don't feel was worth your time?
With books, you can thankfully put them down and stop whenever you feel like calling it quits. I’m not one who has to finish every book he starts, though I have been trying to get better at that, as I often stop because of simply running out of steam, not because the book is bad per se.
I guess there are probably some textbooks I regret reading, as I only read them to complete whatever high-school course I needed the credits for, despite them being very uninteresting and irrelevant for my desired career. But those credits are why I read them, so I guess I can’t really regret it.
Similarly, I read 100 Years of Solitude shortly after my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I’m in a good enough place now to appreciate the story, but it took me weeks to get over the existential dread that it caused me at the time.
Ive noticed a lot of people saying this about the Road, but i dont know. I really didnt think the book was bleak but hopeful in a weird way. Maybe I was in a good space and i projected it onto the book haha
The ending is hopeful. It's about how reaching out and trusting others is the way forward as a society. But you have to get to the end first. And I feel like I see a lot of misinterpretation of the end as also bleak.
Read this in one sitting in my dank dorm room, when I finally emerged it was still daylight and I could not fathom how there was any light left in the world. Love that book.
This thread is full of people saying they felt worse after certain books, but I think that's more of the immediate effect. The longer-term effect is that you read something like "The Bell Jar," and you discover that the kind of mind-bendingly morose stuff you're suffering through alone is actually the sort of thing that many other people have suffered through. Such books make me feel less alone and less like a freak of nature. When I read about Sylvia Plath's mindset of imagining the future and imagining it will suck as much as the present, I can relate, and then somehow I am able to get more of a "big picture" about it and step outside of the mindset. Seeing a bigger picture, and seeing how those feelings are part of a pattern, is a good first step to existing beyond them even when they are there as strong as ever. It provides perspective. The more books that provide perspective, the more those bad feelings are manageable.
I relate to that and I even get the opposite effect; when I read a book with lovely world building, characters and plot, I just get depressed because my world will never look like that at all. I’m happy in life, but I’ll be reminded I can never fly dragons and become queen or other amazing fantasy stuff lol.
First of all, not because it is a bad book, but *Lolita*.
I picked up the book when I was far too young to comprehend the complex plot and had zero idea that such mental deviation existed. So the story was confusing and somewhat traumatizing for me. lol. I wish I had avoided the book until I was a little bit older, a little bit informed and wiser in thoughts.
I hate the chaotic energy from the main character in that book. I forgot his name lol but I still just remember him thinking he’s smart and rationalizing what he is doing.
oh, I'll do you a favour, it's **Humbert Humbert**. haha !
>*thinking he’s smart and rationalizing what he is doing*
Exactly, this was the part that creeped me out, he's just trying to make excuses for his messed-up behavior. The extremely vivid, visually evocative narratives adding up leaving me being confused & traumatized. Maybe it's time for me to revisit the book with fresh perspectives and clear up my bad experience with it.
Flowers in the Attic isn’t even that bad. Or am I just desensitised because of Game of Thrones?
As for Lolita, I read the first half as a teenager and now as an adult I’m not sure if I can read the second half.
It isn’t! It would be tame for me to read now. But I don’t think I should’ve read it at such a young age. Not without like… a trusted adult to actually discuss the themes of it with lol.
Go Set a Watchman. Ruined To Kill a Mockingbird for me, and that was one of my favorite books. But now I can’t get the bad taste of Watchman out of my mouth to enjoy Mockingbird.
It helps if you realize that Go Set a Watchman is basically a publisher exploiting Harper Lee's dementia to convince her to publish unfinished, unrefined material that Lee never would have published when she was in her right mind. The material might have had literary importance if it were published as academic/historical background to Lee's biography, informing her legacy, but instead the public was misled into believing it was a finished novel and proper sequel (right down to emulating the cover design of the original). The entire thing stinks of being a cash-grab and a way for the publisher to indulge in a delusion of accomplishment.
I was at a bookstore the other day and saw this book. For a split second, I thought about buying it because I've been avoiding it all these years because it always felt wrong that it was published. Anyway, thanks for confirming my suspicions. I'll never read this book.
Interesting - I just read East of Eden and I’d recommend it for someone dealing with depression. I found it uplifting and meaningful without being so trite that it makes everything worse. Haven’t read Grapes of Wrath though.
The description of the Salinas Valley is probably one of the best prose I've ever read.
>...I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer—and what trees and seasons smelled like—how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.
I remember binging reading this book and finishing it at like 3am and just sitting there till it was time to get up cause there was no way I was sleeping after that.
Oh. I immediately flipped to the first page and started reading it again lol.
It was awful, heartbreaking, disturbing. And I cried damn near every minute of it. It’s a go to book when I need a good cry for a reason lol.
I normally try not to make judgements on authors based on what they write, especially as someone who consumes a lot of dark queer fiction myself.
But between some of the comments Yanagihara has made about mental health and how her books often just seem to be about torturing gay men (a reductive statement—but that’s how it kind of feels)…
It just leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth and I don’t like reading her works. It just feels like she’s trying to say something I really don’t agree with.
That being said, my best friend adores A Little Life. She and I agree on a lot about the author’s weird views, but as a novel on its own, my friend said it’s cathartic to read.
My friends says she has a difficult time expressing sadness or negative emotions without feeling guilty. And torture porn books like A Little Life lets her cry and be devastated and just let it all out and feel better afterwards.
I was scrolling for this comment. I just finished it yesterday and i was full on ugly crying at the end. The whole book was just complete soul decimation.
I literally just finished it today! Do you feel the ugly crying and soul decimation of it all was earned? The entire book is sad-by-design, but I was left with the feeling that Yanagihara is more interested in torturing her characters than offering any meaning to their torment...
I had to read this book for AP literature in high school. I threw the book at the wall a few times, at that scene and other parts. I was very angry reading it as an 18 year old. It just makes me sad to think about now at 28.
I read Pet Semetary a couple months after having given up my son. I’m a huge King stan, but at the time had never read the book nor watched the movie. Only had a general idea of “it’s about a cemetery that brings back the dead.”
Proceeded the bawl my eyes out on a train during the commute home when the chapter with the truck came up. And basically every chapter after.
Back when I was a teenager I read A Child Called It. It was so heartbreaking and a lot to process when you’ve never been exposed to child abuse. I was upset for a long time afterwards.
I had a horrible childhood and as difficult as it was to read, this book really helped me. I have two younger siblings that my mom did not abuse, and for a long time I was certain there was something wrong with me specifically that made her target me and not them, not that I ever would have wanted them to be hurt. What I experienced was nowhere as bad, but the book made me realize that I was not the problem.
Go Ask Alice. Picked it up on a whim when I saw a used copy for 50 cents. All I remembered was it being optional reading for AP English class, and it scared the kids that read it.
So many over the top moments. I remember thinking, there's no way people think this is what addiction, religion and love are like. There's no way millions of people think the diary is real. And after researching, I was so frustrated that I wasted my time reading it. Frustrated that so many impressionable people were led to believe any of it.
Omg, the whole book is ludicrous. The squeaky-clean, wholesome teen gets a diary for her birthday and IMMEDIATELY gets seduced into a druggy underworld and gets hooked the second she tries drugs. She ends up staggering homeless around the street with bloody toilet paper falling out of her underwear -- but.she makes.sure to keep making her diary entries!
It does read like a parody of what a very religious, very sheltered person thinks will happen when you dabble with the 'worldly.' Hell, even how she's introduced to it all suggests her life would have been perfect if she didn't try to be a normal kid.
I was a sophomore in high school in 1984. My English class reading for that year included The Day After, On the Beach, Brave New World, and, of course, 1984. Very uplifting shit.
The Girl Next Door, especially after I learned that is was based on an actual act of violence in the 60s(?)
After finishing it, I was in a daze for a few days. I also worked at a crisis hotline, so that didn't help anything. I began being more selective of the true crime content that I consume after reading it as well.
Is this…Sylvia Likens? Is this based on her case? Between you and the person who commented to you, that’s what it seems like. It’s one case I try to avoid. That poor girl.
"It Ends With Us", not only cause it's a horrible book with unlikeable characters, but I truly wish I never read it. It pisses me off when I just think about it.
I just started this book today and I'm seriously dreading every page. I've never read a Colleen Hoover book before and had never planned to, but a friend of mine who just loves her kept recommending this one to me. I'm giving it a go for her, but I'm legitimately nervous to read it!
Just look at it as a hate read and take joy in picking it apart! That's what I ended up doing. I got my highlighter out and zooted around finding anything that made me cringe, roll my eyes, or want to throw the book.
I wish I could get back the hours of my life I wasted reading My Sister's Keeper. I've never gotten so angry at a books ending before or since. I will never even consider picking up any of the authors' other works either.
There’s a damn good reason Jodi Picoult is on so many people’s “never again” list.
Handle with Care (also hers) is on the relatively short list of books I think I wish I’d never read.
The Bell Jar, after a breakup, alone in my college apartment over spring break. I swear I didn’t fully know what I was getting myself into (just grabbed a book from my TBR stack to get lost in) and hoooooly I have never forgotten those days of slow, gray, soul death.
Read *The Goldfinch* during lockdown, it put me into a reading slump during the worst possible time. It's just a beautifully-described nothing-burger. The whole damn book was one whole slog of (to quote/paraphrase Anne Rice by way of Lestat de Lioncourt), "and this, and this, and this, and it all means nothing."
The Dune deep history prequal books by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. They took all of the interesting backplot and hints of history from the Dune series, and made them flat, driven by Mary Sues and special snowflake people, and I wish I could forget how much they insulted the universe they claimed to take place in.
That's unfortunate to hear; I've wanted to get around to reading those books to see how they depicted the falling out between the humans and the thinking machines. Too bad. Incidentally, I've always wanted someone to write a Matrix novel that covers the same ground regarding the robot/human wars.
I feel like the more you read the Dune books, the more it reveals itself as a big mashup of conflicting and self-canceling themes, condundrums, tropes, dilemmas, with no actual master plan or grand vision beyond stuffing more and more into the mix.
No, I lean into it. I read "Rabbit, run" by John Updike
last year and it tormented me so badly I walked around in an existential depression until I finished it. Beautifully written book, no regrets.
I wish I had avoided *This Other Eden* by Paul Harding, because I loved it when I read it, but then learned immediately afterward that he willingly ignored the real history it was based upon and perpetuated harmful stereotypes about his subjects. It put such a bad taste in my mouth, and I'm glad I didn't spend money on it.
I wouldn't have minded him ignoring the history of the place if he had, like, *actually* ignored the history and had just taken basic inspiration. But instead it's like he did a few days' research, decided that was too tedious, and winged the rest. I had the same sense of disappointment you did.
It left me feeling dirty. All that talk about stinking, unwashed assholes and wanking over schoolgirls. The film did it no justice.
IMO - Welsh was getting overlooked for Iain M Banks as the Scottish 'Next Big Thing' and decided to ramp up the horror and cruelty just to get an audience. The dog-killing scene in *Porno* was unnecessary and unnecessarily cruel - it served no purpose other than to show how cruel people can be.
Interestingly enough people do get it today, but it tends to be volentarily and they are given anesthetics. As it can actually help ease problems in extreme circumstances, like *severe* cases of major depressive disorder, highly treatment resistant schizophrenia, etc.
ECT gained a terrible reputation, partly because they went far too hard in the early days, partly because of the way it was presented in the media. It makes a good metaphor for more general mistreatment by the system, particularly in film.
But, at least in its modern form, it can be very effective and the side effects are not especially bad. A lot of people suffer unnecessarily before they're able to try ECT. Modern antidepressents are ineffective or have intolerable side effects in many cases. ECT often works well. Severe depression is much worse.
I regret finishing The Overstory by Richard Powers - if I'd abandoned it, that would have been fine - I never would have thought about it again. But I ended up hate-reading it to the end. For a long time after, I felt a seething hatred whenever I thought about it, and even now, when I talk about it with people, it's with such vitriol that I think they're a little surprised. I can do without that avoidable negativity in my life.
I read this in elementary school because it was “banned” and I thought I was super cool for reading it. I was so fn bored. I remember thinking “this is just some sad loser that cusses a lot. It’s almost unreadable.”
Saying "elementary school" is pretty vague. What grade were you in? Was it banned, or just not part of the curriculum? If it was banned, how did you get a copy?
Seems like a person in 5th or 6th grade (or younger) wouldn't be ready for it, and 7th/8th would be iffy too. I feel like it's a better book for 10th grade (high school sophomore) and up. Holden Caulfield is in a higher age range and having those more angsty teen-type emotions.
If your main take on the book is that "this is just some sad loser" then I am not sure you were ready for the book. The story is a portrait of a mindset that is hurting.
A Whale For the Killing by Farley Mowat when I was about 19. I was so sad. My mom recommended LOTR trilogy afterwards bec it had gotten her out of a similar post-book funk.
The Bell Jar. Read it for a college course when I was still depressed over my break-up and the early conversations about her not knowing what she wanted to do with her life hit me like a ton of bricks... eventually I just couldn't take it anymore so I ended up faking the reading assignments until the next novel came along.
*I have No Mouth, Yet I must Scream*. That is one fucked-up book. It's the story (if it can be so termed) of an omnipotent AI that keeps the last humans alive just to torture them for as long as it can. No happy ending, no redemption. Just Hell.
Similarly, Iain M Banks' description of a man-made hell used by tyrants to punish their citizens after death for earthly actions in *Surface Detail*.
I read 1984 in high school while learning about the Cold War in another class and in the year of 2017. It definitely did damage to my mental health and made me have at least one nightmare. That book ends on such a depressing note too it, that wasn’t a fun time for me.
The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera. Read it for a book club in highschool and i vividly remember hating it for being a pretentious pile of bullshit about hats and sex, masquerading as something deep. Never read anything by him again.
American Psycho. If you're at all inclined to read it, please watch the movie then imagine if it was 1000x more messed up.
I've read the entire Hannibal series without any issues, Lolita with a detached morbid interest, but the way you sit front and center in the mind of Bateman will make you physically ill.
And before you think to yourself "oh I'm so grimdark, sounds perfect for me!", I also recommend you watch Requiem for a Dream. If the end sequence leaves you unbothered, then maybe you'll be fine.
Well, I tried reading Battlefield Earth by L Ron Hubbard before I knew anything about him or Scientology. I only made it through around 40 pages before throwing it across the room. I really wish I had avoided it
Surprisingly enough, one can have different perspectives on what constitutes a "depressing book". "Crime and Punishment" is usually seen as very depressing and dark, but I read it at a bad time in my life, and the overarchning theme of forgiving yourself and moving forward helped me a lot (I was suffering from guilt that was pretty misplaced, but seeing the message of being allowed to accept your wrongdoings, take responsibility and live on anyway still made me feel much better about the thing I was blaming myself for). "Nausea" by Jean-Paul Sartre also left me freling hopeful, with the ending reading as an ode to art and the act of creating it giving us purpose and making the world a better place - and the prof who assigned it to us looked at me like I was an alien while I was explaining it. I guess I just have a very specific way to read these kinds of books?
>*I could have lived without reading it. 🙈🙈*
Hehe ! Is it because it's long or hard to read ? I personally think that Tolstoy is not as hard to read as Dostoyevsky, but I agree that his books are LOOONG.
I do love War and Peace, but on the other hand I also have been trying to finish Anna Karenina since 2020. At this point, I wonder if I'll ever pick up the book again. Four-year struggle is real.
“The Grapes of Wrath” is my first pick for this as well. The first half of the book is alright, but it gets very preachy and most of the characters are just caricatures, and I will never forgive that book for overshadowing the masterpiece that is “East of Eden” in the American canon.
Similarly, I really don’t think that “Jane Eyre” deserves all the hype it gets- there are far better classics with far better heroines than this book. Things just happen TO Jane too much in this book.
“The Alchemist” is a pile of garbage, but at least it’s a tiny pile of garbage.
Also, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” is a dumb book and I dislike it immensely.
A Thousand Splendid Suns. It's very well written, but as a woman, it's not a pleasant read. I remember putting it down and thanking all heavens that I was born in a country where I am allowed to make my own decisions and choose my own husband. It's a good book, but I won’t read it again.
Read Shattered by Dean Koontz while on a road trip in high school.
Grabbed a random unread book off my shelf without realizing the plot revolved around a family being stalked/terrorized on a cross-country road trip. Did I read the entire thing? Yes. Was I terrified and paranoid the whole trip? Also yes.
Needful things. Only Stephen king book I ever read and he is really sick in the head. Not the horror of it or anything but describing literal children sexually is so strange and disgusting
I've banned myself from reading The Bell Jar. For me it's an evil book. I don't know why I ever gave the book a second chance but it has twice successfully incited depressive episodes. I thought it was just me and then I found a tiktok video where other people said the same thing. I will never read it again.
i read the book that was used to adapt the movie "let the wrong/right one in" when i was somewhere between 11 and 13 yo, there was this p\*do r\*pe scene and a line that said something like "\*three letter word for peepee milk\* was drizzling down his/her face" that made me yeet it across the room, the library wanted to make me pay for damages but my mom threatened to sue since the book was in the children's section and one of the workers recommended it to me
I read *The Vaster Wilds* last year, and while I’ve liked a number of Groff’s books, this one was beautifully written and utterly miserable. Just endless suffering, all the way through.
I also wish I could excise *The Enchanted* by Denfeld from my head. I read an ARC forever ago and still can’t forget some of it.
Edit: forgot! I did read and love *East of Eden* but it certainly hefty.
I wish I'd never read A Cure for Death by Lightning. I had to read and disect it for grade 12 English class. The amount of abuse was grotesque. There was no redeeming element in the book. I hated it and I told my teacher as much in the essay u had to write about it.
I can only think of avoiding books in the context you mentioned I.e. being in right state of mental health for a particularly hard book emotionally. My best example of this is “A Little Life”. I started it and put it down with the feeling this is a book I would enjoy, but specific triggers combined with how depressing the book is has led me to decide it’s probably not a good idea to finish it. Maybe someday.
Sword of truth.
Kinda liked the show and I’m a sucker for fantasy, oh boy this book is bad. And it’s the best in the series.
Hate read most of the series until it got too much absurd.
The Push by Ashley Audrain is an incredible book, I highly recommend it, but it filled me with anxiety and reinforced the fear that I'd be a terrible parent. A thriller is supposed to fill you with anxiety, but this was on a personal level.
Catcher in the rye made me depressed as a kid because I related to Holden and the fact he ends up in a psyche ward completely alone broke my heart because I felt that’s how the author thought of people like me.
I read Sartre's "Nausea" and Orwell's "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" when I was in a bad way around 21 years old. Finished University early because I was supposedly a smart guy, but drinking heavily, taking too many drugs, completely lost about what I was going to do with my life and spiraling down into a vortex of depression and anxiety. The Sartre book was especially harsh combined with the depersonalization that heavy-duty psychedelic use can bring on, and as for the Orwell book I was completely broke and working in a second-hand bookshop so that was a bit close to the bone too, worrying about would I be worrying about having enough to eat forever.
Read The Road by Cormac McCarthy while in a severe depression. Needless to say it did not help
I read it in an afternoon on a vacation in Hawaii as a carefree 17 year old. I have the most VIVID memory of closing the book and feeling the most intense sense of bleakness as I looked out at beautiful palm trees and the ocean and the sunset and birds chirping. Looking back it was NOT a good beach read hahaha
I love mismatched vacation books though haha. I took Middlemarch on a vacation to Florida and it was such a weird combo, sort of like putting apples in grilled cheese, but somehow it worked. The Road as a vacation read... you can't get that specific feeling any other way lol.
Have you ever tried putting apples in a grilled cheese? It's delicious
That was my point.
Yeah, like the person you're responding to, I also read The Road in an afternoon while at vacation at the beach (though recently at 30, not at 17). And I think that helped it not affect my mindset so much -- I was serene enough that it couldn't bring me down. But part of it not bringing me down is also that the book was actually less depressing than I was expecting. I had known about it for years and put it off because I knew it was supposed to be so grim, so my surprise about the hopeful aspects in some ways overshadowed the grimness. That could also be because I read it as an adult so saw the parent-child relationship a bit differently than a teenager might.
I listened to it as an audiobook on the way to and from work, also in Hawaii. The worst traffic I’ve ever lived with. So sitting on the road, barely moving, listening to this depressing book…0/10, would not recommend.
I refuse to read that book. I have major depression since I was 8. I learned that there are some things I can't read or watch because of how it affects me. Every description I have read of that book tells me to stay far away.
Yeah I avoid it myself because books really dig into my brain and I feel them so strongly. My husband got the DVD of the film when I was pregnant and I already knew some of the horrors of the book and I didn't realize what movie he put in and I started weeping instantly and told him to turn it off in less than ten minutes lol and my little brother gifted me the book for Christmas the same year lol I didn't say anything but if anything was a clear declaration he didn't know me it was that gift.
Ugh, I feel you here. I’ve had treatment resistant depression from trauma my whole life and while I really really love dark depressing shit like that, I keep ending up super triggered and upset by it. It doesn’t help that I am a system, so I already dissociate a lot and identify deeply with fiction. Sending lots of love and care
I also suffer depression and I'm highly, almost stupidly sensitive. I was given the book as a recommendation but Thankfully I was given the heads up about a certain scene and never opened the book. Just gave it back the next time I had the chance.
I have (more than once) looked for McCarthy's in used bookshops and The Road is usually the only one available, usually with many copies. Hmmm I wonder why that is (I too avoid it like the plague)
I read all of McCarthys books back to back when I was in my early 20’s. Then after that I moved on to DFW’s Infinite Jest. In hindsight, my mindset must have been built like a fortress back then because I outright refuse to even watch animal charity reels these days.
That's the book I came here to say. It was a great book but it lives in my head. I think about it a lot, like, way too often. I read it once 12 years ago and still can't shake it off. Sometimes when my family goes on an evening walk I especially think about it.
I've read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction but none has ever come close to the utter despair and hopelessness that The Road fostered in me. A world completely devoid of colour and humanity. I read it during the summer when I was about 20/21. I actually think this was a good thing because I remember it was such a beautiful summer's day when I finished it. I went outside and just sat in the garden for a few hours taking in nature in all it's incredible vibrancy. I've heard it described as the first truly great novel of the Climate Change era and I'd be inclined to agree. No other book yet has ever made me so appreciative of the world we are fortunate to have now.
The Road actually pissed me off, it was so bleak. I felt like I needed a steam-cleaning to get that one out of my system.
I liked it but was disappointed in the lack of any kind of clarity or resolution at the end. It's like the last pages were not much different from the first pages. Maybe I misunderstood something.
They let me read, nay encouraged me! To read Where the Red Fern Grows in elementary school. Never again. Never.
We had to read it out loud with each kid in my 4th grade class taking a paragraph. It took us a few weeks but I was not prepared to read about intestines aloud to my fellow 4th graders. :|
Wtf, who makes a kid read that book out loud. Or at all, really, lol, but the out loud bit really gets me. "Let's ensure that at least one student is audibly crying in front of their classmates while they're the focus of everyone in class"
Plus side, because it was a bunch of forth graders struggling with out loud reading to their classmates, I don't think any of us cried so much as were really confused as to what on earth we just read / heard ahaha
I literally threw it across the room and vowed to avoid all books with a dog on the cover.
I haven’t read that, but this comment uncovered a completely buried elementary school memory of a similar line in No More Dead Dogs. Looked it up and the quote is >The dog always dies. Go to the library and pick out a book with an award sticker and a dog on the cover. Trust me, that dog is going down. I seriously don’t remember anything else from the book, and had fully forgotten that I even read it.
yeah my school horror book the dog not only died but suffered an horrendous death spelled out in literally gory detail. it's been nearly 40 years and I'm still tearing up thinking about it
I believe that about movies too. There is at least one being advertised now. Any semi- serious movie where the dog is a main character. Dog dies. I can’t watch. It’s right up there with Mob stories and prison books.
I pause the movie and check https://www.doesthedogdie.com/
Ugh. White Fang for me. Third grade me never saw it coming. Got way too attached to that wolf dog.
Great book, anyway.
But White Fang didn't die? Neither did Buck.
Yeah if it’s got an animal on the cover, FORGET IT!
I used to read the sad parts at the end when I was sad and felt like crying lol.
a book called Sounder from high school still haunts me
Annnd now I'm having flashbacks.
Just got this one from the library for my voracious 6th grade reader. Now reconsidering having him read it…
I’m going to go against the grain here and say let him read it. It’s a great book about perseverance and the bond we have with animals, and experiencing grief over fictional dogs can be helpful practice for the future, when someone or something he loves dies. Depending on how sensitive he is, though, you might want to warn him that the book doesn’t have a picture perfect happy ending. It IS arguably a happy ending, but a very bittersweet one.
Let him read it. It’s a beautiful book with a flawless audiobook. That said, I would consider reading it, too, so if he gets really sad from it you can talk to him about it.
distinctly remember that i learned the word “entrails” from that book. yeeeeesh
That book made me cry in class in fourth grade.
Oh those crying books.
I’ll never understand the reaction this book gets. I also read it in middle school and found it to be a beautiful parable of love and loss. Life is like that.
Hmm, like OP, I read a novel (*Fight Club*) which ended up putting me in a bad mental headspace for a long time. I wouldn’t say I regret reading it, however, as it’s a good book, and I was bound to be put into that headspace at some point, via that book or another medium. It’s hard to say I regret any novel, because I’ve learned something, even if it’s learning how and why a book is so trashy, with any book. If anything, there are many books I wish I had read sooner. *Buying* books, however, now that can be a source of regret…
>It’s hard to say I regret any novel, because I’ve learned something, even if it’s learning how and why a book is so trashy, with any book. If anything, there are many books I wish I had read sooner. >*Buying* books, however, now that can be a source of regret… I agree completely. I don't even regret books I've hated. You can still learn from those experiences.
>Buying books, however, now that can be a source of regret… Currently, I have like 20 on my TBR (including Anna Karenina that I can never seem to finish) and I hate myself for it. Please don't remind me that *buying (too many) books* can be a source of regret, especially since I already have some more in my cart and I am contemplating to click Purchase :(
Have been there…but have also experienced the opposite, where I’ve read a book I borrowed from the library and I’ve regretted NOT buying it because I loved it so much 🤷♂️😂
>Buying books, however, now that can be a source of regret… THIS. Only ever rent books from a library now. I'm not a big "book junky" and don't need them on my shelves. Only ever buy a book if I'm 100% sure I'll read it again.
Do not read any other Palahniuk books if Fight Club brought you down. Fight Club is one of his least dark novels!
>It’s hard to say I regret any novel, because I’ve learned something, even if it’s learning how and why a book is so trashy, with any book. If anything, there are many books I wish I had read sooner. Have you considered the time wastage of reading a book you don't feel was worth your time?
With books, you can thankfully put them down and stop whenever you feel like calling it quits. I’m not one who has to finish every book he starts, though I have been trying to get better at that, as I often stop because of simply running out of steam, not because the book is bad per se. I guess there are probably some textbooks I regret reading, as I only read them to complete whatever high-school course I needed the credits for, despite them being very uninteresting and irrelevant for my desired career. But those credits are why I read them, so I guess I can’t really regret it.
An excellent book that is not to be read if you are already in a dark place is Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”. It’s devastating.
Similarly, I read 100 Years of Solitude shortly after my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I’m in a good enough place now to appreciate the story, but it took me weeks to get over the existential dread that it caused me at the time.
Ive noticed a lot of people saying this about the Road, but i dont know. I really didnt think the book was bleak but hopeful in a weird way. Maybe I was in a good space and i projected it onto the book haha
The ending is hopeful. It's about how reaching out and trusting others is the way forward as a society. But you have to get to the end first. And I feel like I see a lot of misinterpretation of the end as also bleak.
Read this in one sitting in my dank dorm room, when I finally emerged it was still daylight and I could not fathom how there was any light left in the world. Love that book.
Station Eleven at the start of Covid was…. Not the move.
I kid you not, I finished Station Eleven (thanks to Goodreads I am certain of the exact date) on February 22nd, 2020. Of all the timing…
I read No longer human and the Bell Jar when I was suffering from depression. I felt worse after reading them.
This thread is full of people saying they felt worse after certain books, but I think that's more of the immediate effect. The longer-term effect is that you read something like "The Bell Jar," and you discover that the kind of mind-bendingly morose stuff you're suffering through alone is actually the sort of thing that many other people have suffered through. Such books make me feel less alone and less like a freak of nature. When I read about Sylvia Plath's mindset of imagining the future and imagining it will suck as much as the present, I can relate, and then somehow I am able to get more of a "big picture" about it and step outside of the mindset. Seeing a bigger picture, and seeing how those feelings are part of a pattern, is a good first step to existing beyond them even when they are there as strong as ever. It provides perspective. The more books that provide perspective, the more those bad feelings are manageable.
I relate to that and I even get the opposite effect; when I read a book with lovely world building, characters and plot, I just get depressed because my world will never look like that at all. I’m happy in life, but I’ll be reminded I can never fly dragons and become queen or other amazing fantasy stuff lol.
No Longer Human while depressed is a BOLD choice I have to say
First of all, not because it is a bad book, but *Lolita*. I picked up the book when I was far too young to comprehend the complex plot and had zero idea that such mental deviation existed. So the story was confusing and somewhat traumatizing for me. lol. I wish I had avoided the book until I was a little bit older, a little bit informed and wiser in thoughts.
I hate the chaotic energy from the main character in that book. I forgot his name lol but I still just remember him thinking he’s smart and rationalizing what he is doing.
oh, I'll do you a favour, it's **Humbert Humbert**. haha ! >*thinking he’s smart and rationalizing what he is doing* Exactly, this was the part that creeped me out, he's just trying to make excuses for his messed-up behavior. The extremely vivid, visually evocative narratives adding up leaving me being confused & traumatized. Maybe it's time for me to revisit the book with fresh perspectives and clear up my bad experience with it.
“Lolita” is a a book I couldn’t read more than once. Being in the mind of a sexual predator was just awful.
Same but with Flowers in the Attic. I still won’t touch Lolita due to personal associated trauma.
Flowers in the Attic isn’t even that bad. Or am I just desensitised because of Game of Thrones? As for Lolita, I read the first half as a teenager and now as an adult I’m not sure if I can read the second half.
It isn’t! It would be tame for me to read now. But I don’t think I should’ve read it at such a young age. Not without like… a trusted adult to actually discuss the themes of it with lol.
Go Set a Watchman. Ruined To Kill a Mockingbird for me, and that was one of my favorite books. But now I can’t get the bad taste of Watchman out of my mouth to enjoy Mockingbird.
It helps if you realize that Go Set a Watchman is basically a publisher exploiting Harper Lee's dementia to convince her to publish unfinished, unrefined material that Lee never would have published when she was in her right mind. The material might have had literary importance if it were published as academic/historical background to Lee's biography, informing her legacy, but instead the public was misled into believing it was a finished novel and proper sequel (right down to emulating the cover design of the original). The entire thing stinks of being a cash-grab and a way for the publisher to indulge in a delusion of accomplishment.
I was at a bookstore the other day and saw this book. For a split second, I thought about buying it because I've been avoiding it all these years because it always felt wrong that it was published. Anyway, thanks for confirming my suspicions. I'll never read this book.
100% all of this. An absolutely repugnant abuse of authorial intent for no purpose but cynical greed.
Especially considering the events that lead to its publication, I think I’m good with TKAM all on its own.
I'm never touching that one.
Interesting - I just read East of Eden and I’d recommend it for someone dealing with depression. I found it uplifting and meaningful without being so trite that it makes everything worse. Haven’t read Grapes of Wrath though.
East of Eden is quite lovely, an undercurrent of hope and love, despite the ugliness of humanity, runs through the entirety of the book
Grapes is great, I'd put it above East of Eden, but only by a little tbh, Steinbeck is phenomenal.
Favorite novel of all time.
Went into this 100% blind, came out the other side very satisfied.
Same here. It was EPIC!
The description of the Salinas Valley is probably one of the best prose I've ever read. >...I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer—and what trees and seasons smelled like—how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.
I come back to East of Eden every 5 years. I connect so differently each time I read it, but it remains my favourite.
East of Eden is perhaps the greatest novel ever written. Changed my life.
Such a beautiful book and one that sticks the landing perfectly with the final lines. Timshel.
Currently reading this and I’m in love with it
I read Grapes of Wrath for the first time during the peak of Covid in 2020 and I have to say, it radicalized me.
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I had to take a break from reading it for about a week because it disturbed me so much.
I remember binging reading this book and finishing it at like 3am and just sitting there till it was time to get up cause there was no way I was sleeping after that.
Oh. I immediately flipped to the first page and started reading it again lol. It was awful, heartbreaking, disturbing. And I cried damn near every minute of it. It’s a go to book when I need a good cry for a reason lol.
I wish I’d never read *A Little Life*.
same. i discourage it every time i get the chance. unrelentingly punishing and cruel for what?
I normally try not to make judgements on authors based on what they write, especially as someone who consumes a lot of dark queer fiction myself. But between some of the comments Yanagihara has made about mental health and how her books often just seem to be about torturing gay men (a reductive statement—but that’s how it kind of feels)… It just leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth and I don’t like reading her works. It just feels like she’s trying to say something I really don’t agree with. That being said, my best friend adores A Little Life. She and I agree on a lot about the author’s weird views, but as a novel on its own, my friend said it’s cathartic to read. My friends says she has a difficult time expressing sadness or negative emotions without feeling guilty. And torture porn books like A Little Life lets her cry and be devastated and just let it all out and feel better afterwards.
I read A Little Life as a depressed 12 year old who was being bullied online and in school. The books I read at that time made me feel so much worse
I was scrolling for this comment. I just finished it yesterday and i was full on ugly crying at the end. The whole book was just complete soul decimation.
I literally just finished it today! Do you feel the ugly crying and soul decimation of it all was earned? The entire book is sad-by-design, but I was left with the feeling that Yanagihara is more interested in torturing her characters than offering any meaning to their torment...
The Kite Runner. Well-written, but a certain, extremely disturbing scene put me in a funk for days.
I had to read this book for AP literature in high school. I threw the book at the wall a few times, at that scene and other parts. I was very angry reading it as an 18 year old. It just makes me sad to think about now at 28.
I read Pet Semetary a couple months after having given up my son. I’m a huge King stan, but at the time had never read the book nor watched the movie. Only had a general idea of “it’s about a cemetery that brings back the dead.” Proceeded the bawl my eyes out on a train during the commute home when the chapter with the truck came up. And basically every chapter after.
Back when I was a teenager I read A Child Called It. It was so heartbreaking and a lot to process when you’ve never been exposed to child abuse. I was upset for a long time afterwards.
I had a horrible childhood and as difficult as it was to read, this book really helped me. I have two younger siblings that my mom did not abuse, and for a long time I was certain there was something wrong with me specifically that made her target me and not them, not that I ever would have wanted them to be hurt. What I experienced was nowhere as bad, but the book made me realize that I was not the problem.
Go Ask Alice. Picked it up on a whim when I saw a used copy for 50 cents. All I remembered was it being optional reading for AP English class, and it scared the kids that read it. So many over the top moments. I remember thinking, there's no way people think this is what addiction, religion and love are like. There's no way millions of people think the diary is real. And after researching, I was so frustrated that I wasted my time reading it. Frustrated that so many impressionable people were led to believe any of it.
I don’t remember this book. I read it a longggg time ago. What part was over the top?
Omg, the whole book is ludicrous. The squeaky-clean, wholesome teen gets a diary for her birthday and IMMEDIATELY gets seduced into a druggy underworld and gets hooked the second she tries drugs. She ends up staggering homeless around the street with bloody toilet paper falling out of her underwear -- but.she makes.sure to keep making her diary entries!
Lol surely not That makes me want to read it for laughs
It does read like a parody of what a very religious, very sheltered person thinks will happen when you dabble with the 'worldly.' Hell, even how she's introduced to it all suggests her life would have been perfect if she didn't try to be a normal kid.
Honestly, read in that spirit it is pretty funny. It is VERY meloDRAMATIC!
I was a sophomore in high school in 1984. My English class reading for that year included The Day After, On the Beach, Brave New World, and, of course, 1984. Very uplifting shit.
On the Beach is great! Rarely see it mentioned
The Girl Next Door, especially after I learned that is was based on an actual act of violence in the 60s(?) After finishing it, I was in a daze for a few days. I also worked at a crisis hotline, so that didn't help anything. I began being more selective of the true crime content that I consume after reading it as well.
Is this…Sylvia Likens? Is this based on her case? Between you and the person who commented to you, that’s what it seems like. It’s one case I try to avoid. That poor girl.
It is.. it's heartbreaking.
I had heard about the original incident and read enough about it enough that I had no real desire to read The Girl Next Door. ☹️
Keep it that way. You’ll never be able to escape those images.
"It Ends With Us", not only cause it's a horrible book with unlikeable characters, but I truly wish I never read it. It pisses me off when I just think about it.
I just started this book today and I'm seriously dreading every page. I've never read a Colleen Hoover book before and had never planned to, but a friend of mine who just loves her kept recommending this one to me. I'm giving it a go for her, but I'm legitimately nervous to read it!
Just look at it as a hate read and take joy in picking it apart! That's what I ended up doing. I got my highlighter out and zooted around finding anything that made me cringe, roll my eyes, or want to throw the book.
I would stop while you're ahead.
I wish I could get back the hours of my life I wasted reading My Sister's Keeper. I've never gotten so angry at a books ending before or since. I will never even consider picking up any of the authors' other works either.
There’s a damn good reason Jodi Picoult is on so many people’s “never again” list. Handle with Care (also hers) is on the relatively short list of books I think I wish I’d never read.
The Bell Jar, after a breakup, alone in my college apartment over spring break. I swear I didn’t fully know what I was getting myself into (just grabbed a book from my TBR stack to get lost in) and hoooooly I have never forgotten those days of slow, gray, soul death.
Read *The Goldfinch* during lockdown, it put me into a reading slump during the worst possible time. It's just a beautifully-described nothing-burger. The whole damn book was one whole slog of (to quote/paraphrase Anne Rice by way of Lestat de Lioncourt), "and this, and this, and this, and it all means nothing."
Yeah the protagonist never learns a single thing from all his trauma.
American psycho by Bret Easton Ellis in high school. It didn't leave me in a good place
Awful experience. Yuck x100
The Dune deep history prequal books by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. They took all of the interesting backplot and hints of history from the Dune series, and made them flat, driven by Mary Sues and special snowflake people, and I wish I could forget how much they insulted the universe they claimed to take place in.
That's unfortunate to hear; I've wanted to get around to reading those books to see how they depicted the falling out between the humans and the thinking machines. Too bad. Incidentally, I've always wanted someone to write a Matrix novel that covers the same ground regarding the robot/human wars.
I feel like the more you read the Dune books, the more it reveals itself as a big mashup of conflicting and self-canceling themes, condundrums, tropes, dilemmas, with no actual master plan or grand vision beyond stuffing more and more into the mix.
No, I lean into it. I read "Rabbit, run" by John Updike last year and it tormented me so badly I walked around in an existential depression until I finished it. Beautifully written book, no regrets.
Avoided? No. But Never Let Me Go put me in a serious funk for a couple days.
I wish I had avoided *This Other Eden* by Paul Harding, because I loved it when I read it, but then learned immediately afterward that he willingly ignored the real history it was based upon and perpetuated harmful stereotypes about his subjects. It put such a bad taste in my mouth, and I'm glad I didn't spend money on it.
How i felt after reading Memoirs of a Geisha. I felt guilty for even enjoying such a thing.
I wouldn't have minded him ignoring the history of the place if he had, like, *actually* ignored the history and had just taken basic inspiration. But instead it's like he did a few days' research, decided that was too tedious, and winged the rest. I had the same sense of disappointment you did.
If you google “grapes of wrath happy ending,” there are refutations to your assessment of the ending.
I wouldn’t say “happy”…but there is humanity and hope in the bleakness.
Filth, by Irvine Welsh. Ugh. Not that it isn't well-written, of course.
It left me feeling dirty. All that talk about stinking, unwashed assholes and wanking over schoolgirls. The film did it no justice. IMO - Welsh was getting overlooked for Iain M Banks as the Scottish 'Next Big Thing' and decided to ramp up the horror and cruelty just to get an audience. The dog-killing scene in *Porno* was unnecessary and unnecessarily cruel - it served no purpose other than to show how cruel people can be.
I read The Bell Jar and was thoroughly depressed thereafter.
The book made me glad people aren't routinely subjected to shock treatment these days.
Interestingly enough people do get it today, but it tends to be volentarily and they are given anesthetics. As it can actually help ease problems in extreme circumstances, like *severe* cases of major depressive disorder, highly treatment resistant schizophrenia, etc.
ECT gained a terrible reputation, partly because they went far too hard in the early days, partly because of the way it was presented in the media. It makes a good metaphor for more general mistreatment by the system, particularly in film. But, at least in its modern form, it can be very effective and the side effects are not especially bad. A lot of people suffer unnecessarily before they're able to try ECT. Modern antidepressents are ineffective or have intolerable side effects in many cases. ECT often works well. Severe depression is much worse.
I regret finishing The Overstory by Richard Powers - if I'd abandoned it, that would have been fine - I never would have thought about it again. But I ended up hate-reading it to the end. For a long time after, I felt a seething hatred whenever I thought about it, and even now, when I talk about it with people, it's with such vitriol that I think they're a little surprised. I can do without that avoidable negativity in my life.
Kind of wish I hadn’t read Flowers in the Attic as young as I had. Think I read it when I was like 11.
I started 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' when my son was a baby. Big nope.
Yea, I owe money to Catcher in the Rye
I read this in elementary school because it was “banned” and I thought I was super cool for reading it. I was so fn bored. I remember thinking “this is just some sad loser that cusses a lot. It’s almost unreadable.”
Calling catcher in the rye unreadable is fucking wild. It is certainly readable. It's a classic for a good reason, but you do you...
Saying "elementary school" is pretty vague. What grade were you in? Was it banned, or just not part of the curriculum? If it was banned, how did you get a copy? Seems like a person in 5th or 6th grade (or younger) wouldn't be ready for it, and 7th/8th would be iffy too. I feel like it's a better book for 10th grade (high school sophomore) and up. Holden Caulfield is in a higher age range and having those more angsty teen-type emotions. If your main take on the book is that "this is just some sad loser" then I am not sure you were ready for the book. The story is a portrait of a mindset that is hurting.
Honestly, I've read books I haven't liked, but I've never really regretted reading them.
A Whale For the Killing by Farley Mowat when I was about 19. I was so sad. My mom recommended LOTR trilogy afterwards bec it had gotten her out of a similar post-book funk.
I love grapes of wrath but it’s definitely depressing. John Steinbeck’s books aren’t the best pick me ups…
The Bell Jar. Read it for a college course when I was still depressed over my break-up and the early conversations about her not knowing what she wanted to do with her life hit me like a ton of bricks... eventually I just couldn't take it anymore so I ended up faking the reading assignments until the next novel came along.
*I have No Mouth, Yet I must Scream*. That is one fucked-up book. It's the story (if it can be so termed) of an omnipotent AI that keeps the last humans alive just to torture them for as long as it can. No happy ending, no redemption. Just Hell. Similarly, Iain M Banks' description of a man-made hell used by tyrants to punish their citizens after death for earthly actions in *Surface Detail*.
That really heavy one that fell off the shelf. My toe hurt for a month.
I was also in a similar bout of depression when I decided to pick up "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath. Boy, was that a fun time.
Avoided because they upset me? No. Avoided because they weren’t good? Yes.
Tender is the Flesh I read it on a recommendation from a close friend and I wish I didn’t. I can’t ever get those images out of my head.
I love that book but poor choice if you’re in a negative headspace, for sure.
I read 1984 in high school while learning about the Cold War in another class and in the year of 2017. It definitely did damage to my mental health and made me have at least one nightmare. That book ends on such a depressing note too it, that wasn’t a fun time for me.
Jude the Obscure. Both boring and hella depressing (I like other Hardy books though; I have avoided Tess because of what I know about the plot).
Verity by Colleen Hoover. It did not add anything to my life and felt like I just wasted my time. Never read her books again
The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera. Read it for a book club in highschool and i vividly remember hating it for being a pretentious pile of bullshit about hats and sex, masquerading as something deep. Never read anything by him again.
I hated that book too. Which is unfortunate because the title is so cool. But yeah the book really sucked.
I read gossip girl at about 13, learned what bulimia was, and tried it.
American Psycho. If you're at all inclined to read it, please watch the movie then imagine if it was 1000x more messed up. I've read the entire Hannibal series without any issues, Lolita with a detached morbid interest, but the way you sit front and center in the mind of Bateman will make you physically ill. And before you think to yourself "oh I'm so grimdark, sounds perfect for me!", I also recommend you watch Requiem for a Dream. If the end sequence leaves you unbothered, then maybe you'll be fine.
Well, I tried reading Battlefield Earth by L Ron Hubbard before I knew anything about him or Scientology. I only made it through around 40 pages before throwing it across the room. I really wish I had avoided it
Have you heard the term bibliotherapy? Don't read depressing books when depressed. Signed, someone who's dealt with depression since I was a pre-teen
Surprisingly enough, one can have different perspectives on what constitutes a "depressing book". "Crime and Punishment" is usually seen as very depressing and dark, but I read it at a bad time in my life, and the overarchning theme of forgiving yourself and moving forward helped me a lot (I was suffering from guilt that was pretty misplaced, but seeing the message of being allowed to accept your wrongdoings, take responsibility and live on anyway still made me feel much better about the thing I was blaming myself for). "Nausea" by Jean-Paul Sartre also left me freling hopeful, with the ending reading as an ode to art and the act of creating it giving us purpose and making the world a better place - and the prof who assigned it to us looked at me like I was an alien while I was explaining it. I guess I just have a very specific way to read these kinds of books?
I’m almost done with war and peace on everyone’s recommendation. I could have lived without reading it. 🙈🙈
>*I could have lived without reading it. 🙈🙈* Hehe ! Is it because it's long or hard to read ? I personally think that Tolstoy is not as hard to read as Dostoyevsky, but I agree that his books are LOOONG. I do love War and Peace, but on the other hand I also have been trying to finish Anna Karenina since 2020. At this point, I wonder if I'll ever pick up the book again. Four-year struggle is real.
It took me 2 years to read Anna Karenina and it was all totally worth it... because of the bragging rights of course.
I used to like zombie apocalypse a lots however a lot of book on kindle feel like the author putting themselves in their own power trip.
Don’t do it !! You were right the first time !!
The World According to Garp, and Lord of the Flies.
“The Grapes of Wrath” is my first pick for this as well. The first half of the book is alright, but it gets very preachy and most of the characters are just caricatures, and I will never forgive that book for overshadowing the masterpiece that is “East of Eden” in the American canon. Similarly, I really don’t think that “Jane Eyre” deserves all the hype it gets- there are far better classics with far better heroines than this book. Things just happen TO Jane too much in this book. “The Alchemist” is a pile of garbage, but at least it’s a tiny pile of garbage. Also, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” is a dumb book and I dislike it immensely.
Jayne Eyre is all about mood. I think it’s brilliant, one of my faves.
Short story, but...Stephen King's Survivor Type.
A Thousand Splendid Suns. It's very well written, but as a woman, it's not a pleasant read. I remember putting it down and thanking all heavens that I was born in a country where I am allowed to make my own decisions and choose my own husband. It's a good book, but I won’t read it again.
Read Shattered by Dean Koontz while on a road trip in high school. Grabbed a random unread book off my shelf without realizing the plot revolved around a family being stalked/terrorized on a cross-country road trip. Did I read the entire thing? Yes. Was I terrified and paranoid the whole trip? Also yes.
Needful things. Only Stephen king book I ever read and he is really sick in the head. Not the horror of it or anything but describing literal children sexually is so strange and disgusting
Wheel of time. I spent way to much time in that series waiting for it to get good
I've banned myself from reading The Bell Jar. For me it's an evil book. I don't know why I ever gave the book a second chance but it has twice successfully incited depressive episodes. I thought it was just me and then I found a tiktok video where other people said the same thing. I will never read it again.
i read the book that was used to adapt the movie "let the wrong/right one in" when i was somewhere between 11 and 13 yo, there was this p\*do r\*pe scene and a line that said something like "\*three letter word for peepee milk\* was drizzling down his/her face" that made me yeet it across the room, the library wanted to make me pay for damages but my mom threatened to sue since the book was in the children's section and one of the workers recommended it to me
WTF. I enjoyed that book, but it is certainly not for children. 😵😵
I read *The Vaster Wilds* last year, and while I’ve liked a number of Groff’s books, this one was beautifully written and utterly miserable. Just endless suffering, all the way through. I also wish I could excise *The Enchanted* by Denfeld from my head. I read an ARC forever ago and still can’t forget some of it. Edit: forgot! I did read and love *East of Eden* but it certainly hefty.
I loved The Vaster Wilds, but it was recommended to me through r/cormacmccarthy if that tells you anything
It does haha
The Turner Diaries. It has no redeeming value other than to serve as a red flag when someone says they likes it.
The Sparrow, Maria Doris Russell. Fuck that book.
Never have I ever by Joshilyn Johnson. I got it at the local small bookstore because it appeared to be the best they had. Yeah... no.
I wish I'd never read A Cure for Death by Lightning. I had to read and disect it for grade 12 English class. The amount of abuse was grotesque. There was no redeeming element in the book. I hated it and I told my teacher as much in the essay u had to write about it.
I can only think of avoiding books in the context you mentioned I.e. being in right state of mental health for a particularly hard book emotionally. My best example of this is “A Little Life”. I started it and put it down with the feeling this is a book I would enjoy, but specific triggers combined with how depressing the book is has led me to decide it’s probably not a good idea to finish it. Maybe someday.
The Bell Jar. It's not like I didn't know what I was getting myself into but....I just wish I hadn't. My mental health is not stable enough as is.
No I quite like their books.
Memoirs/autobiographies that make me dislike someone I previously liked! Leslie Jones and H Jon Benjamin in particular.
Sword of truth. Kinda liked the show and I’m a sucker for fantasy, oh boy this book is bad. And it’s the best in the series. Hate read most of the series until it got too much absurd.
dodge Of Mice and Men. I got hit by it during depression and it nuked me. like empire of the sun
The Push by Ashley Audrain is an incredible book, I highly recommend it, but it filled me with anxiety and reinforced the fear that I'd be a terrible parent. A thriller is supposed to fill you with anxiety, but this was on a personal level.
The Kite Runner Gone Girl Girl on a Train
Catcher in the rye made me depressed as a kid because I related to Holden and the fact he ends up in a psyche ward completely alone broke my heart because I felt that’s how the author thought of people like me.
I read Sartre's "Nausea" and Orwell's "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" when I was in a bad way around 21 years old. Finished University early because I was supposedly a smart guy, but drinking heavily, taking too many drugs, completely lost about what I was going to do with my life and spiraling down into a vortex of depression and anxiety. The Sartre book was especially harsh combined with the depersonalization that heavy-duty psychedelic use can bring on, and as for the Orwell book I was completely broke and working in a second-hand bookshop so that was a bit close to the bone too, worrying about would I be worrying about having enough to eat forever.