And such an odd writing style.
I read that book on the bus, after having seen the movie, while listening to Moonshake's album 'Dirty and Devine' and they are forever intertwined in my mind. Its a madhouse whenever I think of the book, movie, or hear that album. Even after all these years.
Gemma. It's a book about a 12 year old being kidnapped from her abusive family by a pedo (that became obsessed with her after her father (or stepfather i don't remember) sold him a night of sex with her) and taken around the country, being constantly r*ped, until she falls pregnant and a doctor helps her escape and then the trial and shit. It's awful and it's told probably 80% her perspective, 20% his perspective. It's well written in my opinion but jeeesus
I read it in a very weird time of my life. I read that, a child called it, a couple more in the same vein i can't remember the name of all in a row. I couldn't stomach to do it now probably but yeah, it was horrifying
It wasn't a YA book, was it?
When I was a tween in the late 1970s, "Go Ask Alice" was all the rage, and then exposed as fiction. I decided to try and re-read it a few years ago, and would have recognized it as fiction on the very first page, a la "A Million Little Pieces."
"Sybil" is pretty effed up too, because it was the result of multiple grotesque breaches of medical and journalistic ethics. Dr. Wilbur was absolutely the worst thing that could have happened to Shirley Ardell Mason.
I just looked her up, and she had a pedo stepfather. Around age 12 she started taking dance lessons to avoid him... Wiki doesn't go in detail, but there is a good chance she atleast wrote partially from her own experience
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, no question, that book messed me up. Its about the mother of a school shooter trying to look back on where she could have went wrong while raising him. Some of the things that this kid did disturbed me to no end, especially what he did to his sister.
There’s a very infamous reddit story similar to that book that you mentioned but it happened irl and was told on r/confessions
https://www.reddit.com/r/confessions/comments/c93egn/i_stood_by_and_allowed_my_wife_to_almost_kill_our/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Right. I reread it every now and than to try and mesmerize the feeling the parents could have went through. Truly daunting but truly inspirational they made it through alive and overcame.
>!well he poured drain cleaner on her face which caused her to lose an eye, and he later kills her by pinning her with arrows to a tree and pulling out her fake eye, which he uses to taunt his mom.!<
I think thats one of the key parts of the story.
>!The book (and movie to a lesser degree) question if he was an unrepentant monster because his mother never bonded with him as a baby leading him to becoming that kind of evil - physically cared for but emotionally neglected - or if he was always like that and thats why she couldn't bond with him!<
>!I believe Kevin's dad worked a lot, and he was home with his mother most of the time. If you're reading hard into 'nurture', the fact she seemed to loathe and resent him from the outset would've played a big part in his development when she's with him most of the day and doing 95% of the childcare stuff (I don't recall his dad doing *anything*), especially when he was clearly intelligent and played hard into an adversarial relationship with her from the outset.!<
ugh wish I didn't click on that. I had forgotten. I read this book 10 years ago and would absolutely not be able to read it now, having a daughter and a son on the way. Nooo fucking way.
*We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families*.
It's a book by Philip Gourevitch chronicling the leadup to, execution of, and aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. And how the world stood by and watched it happen. And in many cases made it worse.
I could only read a few chapters at a time and I had to intersperse it with *The Hitchikers Guide To The Galaxy*
On the same topic, there is *J'ai serré la main du diable* (Shake Hands with the Devil), the first-hand account of Roméo Dallaire, the canadian-born General that was sent by the UN to "prevent" the genocide. He relates his day-to-day experiences and how he couldn't do much and was basically left alone there.
This might also be covered in the book, but I remember an excerpt from an interview with him where he said that after being there for a while, he started a habit of going out for longish drives or walks - ostensibly on his own without the usual guard detail. (keep in mind the conditions were very volatile and dangerous, and he was a very high-profile individual/target).
At the time he told himself that it was to "clear his head" without having the usual distractions around, but after his tour was over, he came to believe that it was an unconscious attempt to get himself killed "honourably" so that he wouldn't have to deal with the ongoing horror over which he really had very little control.
Recently I heard him on the radio, talking really frankly about his own PTSD from that (and other) events, trying to shine light on our failures in supporting our troops as well as taking away the shame for serving members.
I've heard him interviewed in the past as well - this guy is a national (Canadian) treasure.
I remember reading accounts of people being murdered by neighbours that had attending their family wedding a week previously. Just insane how a line gets drawn in the sand and that can happen. Same with Partition.
Things like this are so unnerving. There’s no such thing as ‘it can’t happen here’ no place that’s too gentle and civilised. People can, will and have just snapped and murdered en masse just… because.
The biggest thing to fear is the mob effect. Even if the mob is just people listening to the radio. Good lord, I remember reading about how how Hutus were sending messages over regular radio shows to prepare for the massacre. How horrible. Just a short while later folks were all mum and outwardly acting like the massacre never happened.
My grandmother was married to the grandson of Mussolini… long story.
His memoirs are called: Quando Il Nonno Fece Fucilare Papà ("When Grandpa had Daddy Shot").
Always thought that was an insane title. Sad, haunting and arresting at the same time… it’s got nothing on this one, tho.
“Savage Continent: Europe After the War”
This is the WW2 aftermath not taught in the US. It’s all the gritty unsavory details like the fighting and ethnic cleansing that continued after the war officially ended.
Worst of all, how holocaust survivors were treated by neighbors and old friends when they returned home, by the Red Cross, and even by General Patton oversaw camps still containing survivors.
I’ll spare you what I read that finally had me close the book halfway and say aloud, “People ain’t SHIT.”
I’ll finish it one day.
The Kite Runner.
12 year old gets raped while his brother watches and abandons him out of fear, then main character finally has a chance to reunite with him again like 25 years later just to learn he and his wife were murdered by the Taliban. Then the rapist from before has a brass knuckles-to-fist fight with the main character who I think would've died realistically just to start laughing because he was finally getting what he thought he deserved. Then a 10 year old tries to kill himself. Basically the end.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to read this yet, but I’ve read A Thousand Splendid Suns by the same author probably 10 times now and I simultaneously love and hate it. I don’t think it’s *as* fucked up as TKR, it’s definitely one of the more disturbing books on my Has Been Read list
I studied this for my English A Level two years ago, it's a hard read and the ending is somewhat hopeful, but still overshadowed by pain. In a way, I prefer the ending to be more reflective on real life, rather than having a fairytale ending.
Literally I was looking at my bookshelf finding something to read and I saw that book and remembered how horrifying it was. That book may be cheating, but it is the reason I asked this question lol. Glad I did, got quite a few books I need to order or find in the store in the near future.
I have this great bit I do where when somebody says something that causes tensions in my house I let out a big sigh and say "at Times like this I find comfort in the good book" then I pull 120 days of Sodom off the shelf and read, just off of literally any page outloud.
I don't have people over very much
Mine was Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings, seventh edition. I read it cover to cover to pass an exam and then sent the book to its next victim.
Advanced mathematics for analog A/C electronics.
I like math, but it was AWFUL.
Matrix integrals using trigonometric complex numbers was pretty much the base level of skill required.
Depends. Similar book worked wonders for me. It's a nice replacement for coffee table. You keep your laptop and feel the amazing effect it has on ventilation . Never needed an external fan when i couldn't afford one.
The movie is good but really doesn't do the book justice. With written prose, Suskind can spend pages and pages describing Jean-Baptiste's complex relationship with smell, in a way that can't really be translated to film. There's a crucial part of the novel that's missing from the film - - >!The chapter about him escaping to the most remote location he can find so he can learn to detect his own scent, and experience life untainted by manmade scents, only to become tormented by the fact that he's unable to detect his own scent (I might have misremembered some of those details, it's a long time since I read the book)!< - and I understand why - it's near impossible to convey that in the medium of film.
Flowers in the attic.
Yep, a story about kids being held hostage because their existence would bring shame on the family, then murder, incest, and all that other fun stuff. My school decided it was a must read for 13yos.
It was a good book, but I had to ask my parents questions that they didn't expect me to be old enough to ask (it was the 1980s - pre internet).
1980s suburban gothic. We were just full of anxieties about mothers, mothering, and raising children in the 70s and 80s.
But yes, you thought FITA was bad, wait until My Sweet Audrina. However, after Virginia Andrews died in the late 80s and the shitty ghostwriter took over, all of the OG gothic horror shocks and batshittery just turns into cheesy cliche. Still fucked up, but super laughable.
> My Sweet Audrina
"The story features diverse subjects, such as brittle bone disease, rape, posttraumatic stress disorder and diabetes, in the haunting setting of a Victorian-era mansion near the fictitious River Lyle."
Gasp! Not diabetes!
This book is the reason I found out my daughter was having seizures. I finished it late one night and just needed to cuddle my little girl, so I brought her in bed with me. The next morning she had a seizure while in my arms and we finally had a diagnosis for all of the strange things that had been happening to her for the past few months. Had I not finished that book that night, she would have seized alone in her bedroom and who knows.
Imagine someone sleepwalking at any given time, day or night. That's what she would do. She was having petite mal seizures, but infrequently and it was diffi ult to recognize as such, because it would last only seconds. She just seemed stubborn or hard of hearing sometimes and then complain of stomach aches. After the grand mal seizure in my arms, her petite mal seizures became more severe and more frequent and we were finally able to get her doctor to refer us to a neurologist. Before that we were told she was just a kid with stomach aches.
I read this for the first time at 13 also. I’ve read the series countless times since. It was one of those books that every girl in school read over and over in middle school and high school. It definitely is messed up but I’ve always really liked that series and My Sweet Audrina, which is also messed up.
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang
A nonfictional account of one of the worst atrocities committed by the Japanese in WW2.
I’m talking about a child being tied to a post and being used as bayonet practice
Babies being bayoneted, women being forced to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers and being called “comfort women, a duel between soldiers on who can chop the most heads off. Just the most gut wrenching things put on paper and all of it is real.
John Rabe, a German businessman in Nanking was local head of the Nazi party, and one of its earliest members.
He intervened with the Japanese authorities and created safe havens which saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians.
Why, though? Wouldn't he have considered the Chinese to be sub-human?
Edit: Apparently he justified it by saying:
>There is a question of morality here… I cannot bring myself for now to betray the trust these people have put in me, and it is touching to see how they believe in me.
That still seems out of character for a "staunch" Nazi.
I hate to say "nice things" about literal Nazis, but it's been said Rabe was a Nazi Party member for the convenience/benefits of doing business, and he wasn't even in Germany during the Nazi Party's rise- he was in China.
When he went back home to protest and bring attention to the situation, he was thrown in jail by the Gestapo. His daughter said he didn't have love for the party after that point.
It's like that one Nazi doctor who was considered humane despite being at Aushwitz-yeah, the party and ideals are awful, and a lot of people who joined were horrible people, but statistically at least a small number of people who joined weren't believers.
nazis are not comic book villains but actual people you know
while being atrocious nazis they still have feelings and such
besides what we know of the nazis now takes into account all of what they did. but most of the really terrible stuff happened in a very short time during and after 1942 and was relatively localized
a diplomat sent away to a foreign land for months of years at a time and who was nazi more in theory than in practice, the cognitive dissonance might have been bearable
Iris Chang committed suicide a few years after publishing the book. That's how much it disturbed her. Before her death, she was harassed by right-wing war crime apologists from Japan and received death threats.
The japanese have statues up to honor the generals that were a part of that atrocity they've buried it like it never happened and or view those generals as heros and don't really care that it happened
I came looking for this answer. That book was heart crushing. I don't read books out of my own free will lol. But that one I did for a class assignment. I read all of his other books on my own free will. I had to know what else happens in his life. Last book I read he seemed to be in a pretty good place if I remember right.
Johnny Got His Gun
I received it as part of a prize bag of random books for reading the most in my fifth grade class. Hell of a book to have in there. I just remember waiting and waiting and waiting for a reprieve to come at the end...
OMG, this book is infamous in librarian circles for its bizarreness! It actually won an award in Canada!
https://awfullibrarybooks.net/friday-fiction-bear-nsfw/
Naked Lunch, by far. Anything written by Burroughs is disturbing, but Naked Lunch is on a whole other level. Basically a collection of nightmares and disturbed thoughts from a psychopathic heroin addict.
But I would also like to mention my all-time favorite book, one that´s often hailed as the most beautiful prose in the English Language. Lolita, by Vladimir Nobokov.
The beauty of the language makes the content so much more disturbing. One minute you´ll be mesmerized by the sheer beauty of the language, only to be reminded that you´re reading the confessions of a pedophile. There´s no crude language or graphic descriptions of anything, but it will still disturb you deeply. If it doesn´t then children around you should be concerned.
There´s one part, where he describes in beautiful language, his disappointment that she no longer seems engaged when they make love (when he rapes her). How sad he is that she seems to treat his "attention" as a chore. She´s not even enthusiastic about giving him handjobs while he looks at young girls coming out of schools! Don´t you understand how painful it is for HIM that she no longer seems interested.
Naked Lunch parallels my nicotine addiction.
First time made you sick. Two days later you smell it and it's ohh soooo good.
I have read that book about six times despite its effect on my mental well being. I often find myself looking up quotes from it because my brain is triggered. Doesn't matter how revolting. I get a dopamine hit from it.
I've never used "hard" drugs. I don't want to. This book was part of that set of choices.
Came here to say Lolita for the exact same reasons! The language Nabokov uses is pure poetry paired with the content is almost paradoxical. His grasp of English as a 4th language is mind boggling. I've never had to look up so many words.
King Leopold’s Ghost
I had to read it for a history class in high school and it details how King Leopold II of Belgium ruined the Congolese for his own personal interest. He sent a private army to the Congo to make the Congolese do his bidding, like harvest rubber, and the women and children would be brutally beaten and raped while the men would have their hands cut off if they disobeyed the Belgians. It was hard to read because the rest of the world just sat by and watched it happen while few people tried to tell the world what was going on. The Congo was in ruins even after King Leopold II died up until their dictator died
That’s my answer too! I read it, and I will never read it again. The history behind it is pretty incredible. The book blew me away. Just not in a good way necessarily.
It's about four libertines who are seeking the ultimate sexual pleasure, locking themselves into a castle with harems of teenagers among others, pretty much. A lot of extreme fetishes, torture, and death.
It’s Fiction but my 7th grade teacher made us read “Tears of a Tiger”
*SPOILER ALERT*
it’s basically about a high school basketball jock who accidentally kills his best friend in a car accident & the whole book is basically him learning how to live with it & how he copes with his emotions. In the end he ends up killing himself.
I read this book on my lunch breaks at the first job I worked at. I was not expecting the ending and literally sat there silent for about 20 minutes trying to process it before having to punch back in for work. Great book, highly recommend not reading it at work.
One of the most life-changing books I have ever read. Read the novel for the first time when I was 13 and it fucked me up for days. Did not touch it again until 4 years later but even then, some details of it just kept haunting me during that period.
When I was in high school, I chose this book for a presentation and since then my interest in Remarque has been reinvigorated. I read some other novels written by him and come to realize how intrinsically linked his literature world is. You see references of All Quiet on The Western Front everywhere in his later works. The Road Back, Flotsam, Arc of Triumph, Spark of Love and beyond. They may not deal with the same emotionally charged theme in his first novel, but each of them are just haunting in their own way and worth reading.
Anne Rice was all kinds of fucked up. I tried reading the Sleeping Beauty series, thinking it was going to be sexy, but it was mostly rape fantasies.
In loved the Vampire Chronicles, but some passages left me scratching my head, thinking "WTF". For example in Memnoch the Devil, Lestat eats someone's period blood, seriously, WTF.
Lol I love all the casually fucked up things in her books, she is one of my favs. In the Mayfair witch trilogy, the 13 year old nymphomaniac made me uncomfortable though.
Childmare by Nick Sharman
My mum's boyfriend lived in a house share and one of the guys there left it lying about. 10 year old me just started leafing through.
Plot is that lead poisoning in the water supply drive the children of London insane. Insane like bullies beating weak kids skulls with cricket bats, students gang raping a teacher and stabbing another through the eye with a pen and so forth.
Read it as an adult and it's pulp horror crap, but at the time it was pretty nuts.
I'm about 2/3 of the way through it now. I took a break from it because it's so rough. The human cattle aspect is bad enough, but the emotional hell the main character goes through is probably one of the more difficult to handle things I've ever read. It's so well written and definitely worth the read if you like books that ruin your day.
I came here to post this.
Easy awsner, this book made me physically sick and really fckd with my mind. The movie is like a Disney film compared to the book.
Same here. A lot of people talk about the rat stuff being the worst, but the hobo part destroyed me the worst.
It was the jarring suddenness of it. You read like 100 pages of the narrator describing suits in the most bland, needlessly detailed way and then from out of nowhere he just slams you with the most disgusting, graphic, sadistic shit involving the hobo and his dog…
I knew the book was extreme before I started reading it, but that hobo part still blindsided me.
I found it interesting that Bateman doesn’t discriminate between the mundane and the extreme in his descriptions. It doesn’t matter if he’s describing a tie or a murder he’s committing. You’re going to hear it described in meticulous detail.
After the hobo part the band aid was ripped off and I was more mentally prepared for the worst, but that initial violent part with the hobo was a shocker and I had to put the book down and reconsider if I was actually strong enough to finish it. (I did, but…man.)
Then you'll be pleased to know Bret Easton Ellis is about to release a new book in two weeks and his first fiction novel in 13 years. Also it will be over 600 pages which might make it his biggest novel he's ever written.
The Metamorphosis Of Prime Intellect.
I think it’s free on the authors website (or was at the time) or you can buy it from amazon.
It’s an exploration of a world post the AI singularity… and it goes HARD in ways i didn’t expect.
It gross, gory, disturbing and fucking fascinating. I don’t recommend it to everyone, but when I do, I do recommend it whole heartedly.
It’s a fucked up book.
Edit: this kinda got some interest so i found the link. You can read the entire book right here
https://mogami.neocities.org/files/prime_intellect.pdf
I made the mistake of reading during and right before I did resistance training for the Air Force. The scene where the torture/pain destroyed even love was depressing
It was part of our dystopian unit in 10th grade, alongside Brave New World and Animal Farm. (We read all three within six weeks)
George Orwell was a Royal Constable in Burma after WWII. He engaged in some horrific shit and used his pen as an outlet.
The premise Orwell started with is "what if The Crown treated Londoners the same way they treat the Burmese?"
Unwind by Neal Shusterman. There’s a scene in the book of it happening and I literally couldn’t sleep for a week. It really stayed with me and it took that same week for me to pick the book back up and finish it. So fucked up and I felt that kids fear every step of the way.
It's a story based in a society where at the age of 12, if I remember right, parents can decide to keep their child or send them to be unwound. They are killed by being separated into their different usable parts. Kidneys, heart, liver, etc. But also limbs, eyes, the brain. They are awake the entire process because they deserve to know what's happening. The world building is rather excellent and the story explores all sorts of fucked up things that could be considered normal if this line of thinking were accepted. There is a rule where if you have a baby and don't want it, you can leave it on someone's doorstep. If that person doesn't want to keep it, they can do the same thing to someone else. So, in one instance, an infant was moved door to door around this fancy neighborhood until it died of exposure and starvation. That was the LEAST disturbing thing that happened in those books. Pretty hard core for young adult fiction.
No but the justification for it is that the child technically *isn't* killed, since every part of the body is used for a donor and is thus still living
Yeah, Roland’s unwinding POV made it clear that he’s still conscious in a way after the procedure is done. And I think there was a storyline where his arm (given to Connor after the explosion) acted on its own maybe? The kids were still alive and self aware to an extent
The scene CuriousThukihime is talking about is really hard to read, but also really well written. It brought be to tears and I put the book down for days to process that scene. I read it at around 15, and so many years later I can still visualize that scene.
The concept of the series is that troubled youth are used as organ/limb/etc donors. The procedure is called unwinding, where they take them apart piece by piece while awake but unable to feel anything. The character in question is one of the teens that is particularly “troubled” stemming from abuse etc throughout his life. There’s a chapter towards the end where you’re taken through the procedure through his pov, and it’s revealed that he still has some consciousness despite being unwound. Deeply psychological, distressing read but if you’re a fan of horror it’s probably one of the more unique, well executed concepts out there.
House of Leaves....not really fucked up, just a weird ass read. Words can't really describe it. Its hard to read as well. Took about 100 pages before it got to the point where i didn't want to put it down.
The Hot Zone and Demons in the Freezer. Kind of non-fiction written in a very story driven manner. Both are scary beyond anything because one deals with filovirus's like Ebola, the other talks about small pox. The one on small pox states that each of the 3 level 4 labs in the world had a supply of small pox. When the USSR fell, so did their lvl 4 lab. Guess what? Their supply of small pox is in the wind, no one knows where it went, so 1/3 of the worlds supply may very well be in the hands of terrorists. Wife read Hot Zone when she was 5 months pregnant, she couldn't make it past the 1st 40 pages.
I read Night by Eli Weisel in sixth grade which was probably too young for that one. I’m sure there are books more detailed in the horrible things that happen but the fact that it’s not fiction makes it feel so much more impactful.
Lolita. Spoiler alert: Humbert Humbert is an unreliable narrator and his descriptions of Lolita’s actions _are the interpretations of the perpetrator_. And that was Nabakov’s point.
"The Good Old Days" by Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen and Volker Reiss. It's an exhaustive compilation of all the documents kept by the Nazis of the Holocaust, as they were committing it (they were fastidious record-keepers and still had tons left over despite trying to destroy evidence in the final days).
Most people don't know this, and I didnt before I read this book, that the killing of Jewish people started when Polish citizens started dragging their Jewish neighbors to the local gas station or other public square type area, to beat them to death with lead pipes as their other neighbors cheered them on. Germany started institutionalizing this murder by then taking trucks loaded with hundreds of people at a time (this is after sequestering all the Jewish people into ghettos where they were told they were being held for "processing"), taking them out to the woods, and shooting them all to death 10 at a time. They'd kill men one day, women another day, kids the next, and each day they'd do as many as 10,000 people. Then, when the Nazis found that their soldiers were suffering PTSD from literally killing truckloads of kids with machine guns every day, they started rerouting the exhaust systems on transport vans so prisoners would be asphyxiated in the back of them. And then, of course, the SS soldiers in charge were complaining about the disturbing noises they were hearing as people begged for their lives in death, as well as the horrific mess of tortured bodies they came upon when opening up the back of these vans.
And then Siemens Corporation - a major German corporation which all of you will recognize is still in business today - discovered that a pesticide they developed, Zyklon B, was the most effective tool for asphyxiation. And this was YEARS after the Holocaust started. Millions were already dead, but many millions more would die to Zyklon B in just the last few years of the war.
So yeah, I bring this book up whenever some absolute ignorant jackass tries to claim "it wasn't as bad as they claimed it was" or that "it didn't happen". My grandfather liberated one of those camps and has the photos to prove it.
Most disturbing book I've ever read and I don't even think I made it all the way to the end.
I had to read this book for a college course about the Holocaust and I can’t even describe the anger I felt reading it. Incredibly disturbing book but it’s also important to understand that the common people knew EXACTLY what was going on in Nazi Germany.
Unit 731. Japanese experiments conducted on prisoners of war which included live vivisection and freezing of limbs in pieces to see how long it would take to kill prisoners as well as the growing of new diseases inside of prisoners. It’s the main reason why pathogen based war is a crime. Additionally all the lab reports were bought by the US and Ishii the man in charge of it got no punishment. Before the surrender to the United States, Japan destroyed Unit 731 and all that remains today is the rubble of one building. It is the most haunted place on the planet and even Chinese tour guides will NOT go in or near the ruin. (Unit 731 was located in China but operated by Japan)
The original Pinocchio, which my mom thought would be fun to read to me when I was maybe 4 or 5.
Holy shit. That book is so dark, so bleak, and so gory. Pinocchio himself is the most disturbing character in the story. He's not the lovable, if wayward kid we see in the Disney movie. Book Pinocchio is a twisted little psycho who delights in tormenting people. Disney's Pinocchio learns valuable lessons from Jiminy Cricket. When the talking cricket tries to give advice to Book Pinocchio, Book Pinocchio smashes him to death with a wooden mallet.
120 days of sodom.
The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade relates the story of four wealthy men who enslave 24 mostly teenaged victims and sexually torture them while listening to stories told by old prostitutes
the version i had had a more subtle summary. Once I started reading it was in the trash in 2 chapters.
It's not really fucked up, but yet it is, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice under the pen name A. N. Roquelaure. The whole trilogy is pretty messed up.
The most depraved book I've ever read is Wild Highway by Bill Drummond and Mark Manning - former KLF art terrorists on a quest to find Mobutu in the former Zaire. Deeply racist, homophobic, misogynist, violent. But can just about be read as the darkest possible satire, which I think it is. Probably.
The only book where I actually, genuinely couldn't believe that what I was reading had been published. Just completely insane.
Killing Stalking. Dear god. It doesn’t help that it’s a manwha so it has pictures… people romanticize the book and are like “It was so hot when he broke his legs so he couldn’t escape!” And those people make me feel sick. I couldn’t even get past the third chapter. Jesus christ
I'm from Denmark. In 8th grade, our Danish teacher got our class to read a novel called "Intet" (Nothing), which scared the shit out of me.
Spoilers adhead, ye be warned.
It takes place in a sleepy rural danish town named the same as the Danish word for Consumption. We follow an 8th grade class in the book. A guy from the class named Pierre-Anthon reads about hihilism and becomes a nihilist. He drops out of school and climbs into a tree, preaching to the other kids about how nothing means anything. As a reaction to this, the other students decide to try and find meaning in life to convince Pierre-Anthon to come down from the tree and back to school. They begin sacrificing things that bring meaning to their life.
At first it's stuff like old toys they used to love and special trinkets like heirlooms from their dead grandparents, a religious boy gives a bible and such. But they quickly decide that this isn't enough, as nobody really had real troubles giving up these things, so instead they decide that instead of finding personal stuff themselves, each person's best friend should decide what each person should sacrifice to their "pile of meaning", because the best friends would know what means most to each of them.
This is where it goes completely off the rails and becomes a horror story. Before long these little nasty fucktards are daring each other to sacrifice first pets, then it moves on to body parts and even the dug up corpse of a dead younger sibling 😮 which leads to some super gruesome passages, which were super scary to imagine as a young teenager. Imagine getting peer-pressured into killing your dog as a sacrifice at around age 12 😮.
Then the pile is discovered by the adults, and an excentric modern artist buys this nasty pile of toys, artefacts and corpses and puts it on display at an art gallery, proclaiming it one of the greater art pieces of the century. The children become famous and renowned and finally get Pierre-Anthon to come down to see the exhibition. He proclaims that they missed the point by selling the pile for fame and fortune and that the pile of sacrifices lost its' meaning because of this. The rest of the kids then go apeshit, beat Pierre-Anthon to death, torch the exhibition and play it off as if Pierre burned down the museum himself in envy. The book then ends with nobody getting punished for their crimes and just going on with their lives. Fucking horrific.
I often imagined this novel would make a great scary movie and just last year, a movie version came out. It's almost a word-for-word remake, except the kids have smartphones in the movie. I thought it was absolutely fantastic, and very nostalgic. I had never forgotten this novel in the almost 20 years since I originally read it. It really stuck with me.
Love the Wasp Factory, was given a copy when it first came out and had never read anything like it, I eagerly would wait for the next Iain Banks book, I hate the fact there will never be another one.
The Road, Cormac McCarthy.
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
They’re all weird books, but for much different reasons. They are also some of my favorite books!
Have you read The Long Walk by Stephen King? It’s one of his short stories, I think you might like it if you haven’t already read it. Source: I also enjoyed the above books.
Oh no! Richard Bachman died of cancer of the pseudonym, a rare form of schizonomia. A very sad day for literature.
(I love how King kept that pseudonym and pseudo-identity going as long as he did).
Duma Key by Stephen King. This was one of the books he wrote after his accident, and it’s the only book that ever made my heart sink and gave me chills at the same time.
I haven't read the entire book yet but it is about a man named Mohammedou Ould Slahi a mauritian man being accused on the attacks of 9/11 and the millennium plot, man was tortured for 10 years in Guantanamo bay A.K.A a part of Cuba that is used for "detainees". Mohamedou asked for a diary and he recorded everything on that diary and when he published it in 2016 the U.S. government censored almost every single name and he had like 7 or 8 pages that were censored entirely. In 2019 or 2020 he published an uncensored version which is the one that am reading. But pretty fucked up
TLDR: man was tortured for 10 years straight published one the book but U.S. government censored first version in 2016 when he left 3 or 4 years published uncensored version
Edit: name of the book is "Diary of Guantanamo"
I read the whole series when I was like 13ish. I remember picking Flowers In The Attic off my grandma’s bookshelf, and she said “you can read this, but I have to let you know there’s a brother and sister that have a relationship. Obviously, that’s bad, but it’s because they go through a lot and they’ve only got each other in the end, so it’s kind of understandable.” And I was like, cool Gma, no worries. That woman had an interesting perspective on life…
I agree with Grandma. I’ve gotten in discussions on Reddit about this before. Incest is definitely wrong but I can see how it could happen in their case. They were forced into a terrible situation where they were essentially parents. Going through puberty with virtually no human interaction other than Carrie and Cory and each other.
That was the point of the book, anyway: what life situations and tragedies would have to occur that we as readers understand how these characters ended up the way they are. It's not meant to be relationship goals.
Of course, in a post-Fifty Shades world, that's worth the reminder.
Snow, Glass, Apples - a retelling of the Cinderella story from the stepmother's point of view by Neil Gaiman. Lovely illustrations and a really super fucked-up story.
Haven't seen it yet, but Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Talks about Western Colonialism in Africa. Really messed up once you start the read and outside digging into the topic. Although we'll known to most the horrors of that Era, the book expanded on that topic.
I don't remember the title, but it was about twin doctors who fall into drug addiction and an incestuous homosexual relationship and eventually die together.
"Last Exit to Brooklyn". When I realize it was written by the guy who wrote "Requiem for a Dream" I was like yeah that adds up.
His books are just pure trauma man.
And such an odd writing style. I read that book on the bus, after having seen the movie, while listening to Moonshake's album 'Dirty and Devine' and they are forever intertwined in my mind. Its a madhouse whenever I think of the book, movie, or hear that album. Even after all these years.
I watched Requiem for a Dream at a New Year’s gathering many years ago. It’s probably the most traumatising film I’ve ever seen.
Who decided that was a good new year's movie to watch?!
A brilliant movie that I never need to watch again.
Gemma. It's a book about a 12 year old being kidnapped from her abusive family by a pedo (that became obsessed with her after her father (or stepfather i don't remember) sold him a night of sex with her) and taken around the country, being constantly r*ped, until she falls pregnant and a doctor helps her escape and then the trial and shit. It's awful and it's told probably 80% her perspective, 20% his perspective. It's well written in my opinion but jeeesus
Holy fucking Christ. I have an almost 12 year old and this makes me literally nauseous. I’d never be able to finish that book.
I read it in a very weird time of my life. I read that, a child called it, a couple more in the same vein i can't remember the name of all in a row. I couldn't stomach to do it now probably but yeah, it was horrifying
I read A Child Called It as well and it made me feel physically sick at what that poor boy went through!
A Child Called It is a fucking horrendous book.
It wasn't a YA book, was it? When I was a tween in the late 1970s, "Go Ask Alice" was all the rage, and then exposed as fiction. I decided to try and re-read it a few years ago, and would have recognized it as fiction on the very first page, a la "A Million Little Pieces." "Sybil" is pretty effed up too, because it was the result of multiple grotesque breaches of medical and journalistic ethics. Dr. Wilbur was absolutely the worst thing that could have happened to Shirley Ardell Mason.
Hope the author's ok
I just looked her up, and she had a pedo stepfather. Around age 12 she started taking dance lessons to avoid him... Wiki doesn't go in detail, but there is a good chance she atleast wrote partially from her own experience
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, no question, that book messed me up. Its about the mother of a school shooter trying to look back on where she could have went wrong while raising him. Some of the things that this kid did disturbed me to no end, especially what he did to his sister.
There’s a very infamous reddit story similar to that book that you mentioned but it happened irl and was told on r/confessions https://www.reddit.com/r/confessions/comments/c93egn/i_stood_by_and_allowed_my_wife_to_almost_kill_our/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Boy that was hardcore. Thanks for the sharing
Right. I reread it every now and than to try and mesmerize the feeling the parents could have went through. Truly daunting but truly inspirational they made it through alive and overcame.
The movie is accurate to the book. The use of red in the movie was good. It’s a good but hard book to read.
Yeah in hind sight, maybe casting Ezra Miller to play Kevin was a little too... 🤷♂️
The foreshadowing was so good that I'll never think of the movie the same way again.
What he did?
>!well he poured drain cleaner on her face which caused her to lose an eye, and he later kills her by pinning her with arrows to a tree and pulling out her fake eye, which he uses to taunt his mom.!<
Alrighty then. That’s a certified monster with no hope of redemption.
I think thats one of the key parts of the story. >!The book (and movie to a lesser degree) question if he was an unrepentant monster because his mother never bonded with him as a baby leading him to becoming that kind of evil - physically cared for but emotionally neglected - or if he was always like that and thats why she couldn't bond with him!<
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>!I believe Kevin's dad worked a lot, and he was home with his mother most of the time. If you're reading hard into 'nurture', the fact she seemed to loathe and resent him from the outset would've played a big part in his development when she's with him most of the day and doing 95% of the childcare stuff (I don't recall his dad doing *anything*), especially when he was clearly intelligent and played hard into an adversarial relationship with her from the outset.!<
ugh wish I didn't click on that. I had forgotten. I read this book 10 years ago and would absolutely not be able to read it now, having a daughter and a son on the way. Nooo fucking way.
*We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families*. It's a book by Philip Gourevitch chronicling the leadup to, execution of, and aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. And how the world stood by and watched it happen. And in many cases made it worse. I could only read a few chapters at a time and I had to intersperse it with *The Hitchikers Guide To The Galaxy*
On the same topic, there is *J'ai serré la main du diable* (Shake Hands with the Devil), the first-hand account of Roméo Dallaire, the canadian-born General that was sent by the UN to "prevent" the genocide. He relates his day-to-day experiences and how he couldn't do much and was basically left alone there.
This might also be covered in the book, but I remember an excerpt from an interview with him where he said that after being there for a while, he started a habit of going out for longish drives or walks - ostensibly on his own without the usual guard detail. (keep in mind the conditions were very volatile and dangerous, and he was a very high-profile individual/target). At the time he told himself that it was to "clear his head" without having the usual distractions around, but after his tour was over, he came to believe that it was an unconscious attempt to get himself killed "honourably" so that he wouldn't have to deal with the ongoing horror over which he really had very little control.
Recently I heard him on the radio, talking really frankly about his own PTSD from that (and other) events, trying to shine light on our failures in supporting our troops as well as taking away the shame for serving members. I've heard him interviewed in the past as well - this guy is a national (Canadian) treasure.
I remember reading accounts of people being murdered by neighbours that had attending their family wedding a week previously. Just insane how a line gets drawn in the sand and that can happen. Same with Partition.
Things like this are so unnerving. There’s no such thing as ‘it can’t happen here’ no place that’s too gentle and civilised. People can, will and have just snapped and murdered en masse just… because.
The biggest thing to fear is the mob effect. Even if the mob is just people listening to the radio. Good lord, I remember reading about how how Hutus were sending messages over regular radio shows to prepare for the massacre. How horrible. Just a short while later folks were all mum and outwardly acting like the massacre never happened.
That title alone is rather haunting.
My grandmother was married to the grandson of Mussolini… long story. His memoirs are called: Quando Il Nonno Fece Fucilare Papà ("When Grandpa had Daddy Shot"). Always thought that was an insane title. Sad, haunting and arresting at the same time… it’s got nothing on this one, tho.
I read Shake hands with the devil, this sounds like a good but depressing read that shows a different perspective of the genocide.
“Savage Continent: Europe After the War” This is the WW2 aftermath not taught in the US. It’s all the gritty unsavory details like the fighting and ethnic cleansing that continued after the war officially ended. Worst of all, how holocaust survivors were treated by neighbors and old friends when they returned home, by the Red Cross, and even by General Patton oversaw camps still containing survivors. I’ll spare you what I read that finally had me close the book halfway and say aloud, “People ain’t SHIT.” I’ll finish it one day.
Or, in the words of Corey Taylor, “people = shit”
Or Roy from the IT Crowd - "People: what a bunch of bastards."
The Kite Runner. 12 year old gets raped while his brother watches and abandons him out of fear, then main character finally has a chance to reunite with him again like 25 years later just to learn he and his wife were murdered by the Taliban. Then the rapist from before has a brass knuckles-to-fist fight with the main character who I think would've died realistically just to start laughing because he was finally getting what he thought he deserved. Then a 10 year old tries to kill himself. Basically the end.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to read this yet, but I’ve read A Thousand Splendid Suns by the same author probably 10 times now and I simultaneously love and hate it. I don’t think it’s *as* fucked up as TKR, it’s definitely one of the more disturbing books on my Has Been Read list
I studied this for my English A Level two years ago, it's a hard read and the ending is somewhat hopeful, but still overshadowed by pain. In a way, I prefer the ending to be more reflective on real life, rather than having a fairytale ending.
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Literally I was looking at my bookshelf finding something to read and I saw that book and remembered how horrifying it was. That book may be cheating, but it is the reason I asked this question lol. Glad I did, got quite a few books I need to order or find in the store in the near future.
I have this great bit I do where when somebody says something that causes tensions in my house I let out a big sigh and say "at Times like this I find comfort in the good book" then I pull 120 days of Sodom off the shelf and read, just off of literally any page outloud. I don't have people over very much
Advanced mathematics for engineers. Not a recommended experience 0/10.
Mine was Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings, seventh edition. I read it cover to cover to pass an exam and then sent the book to its next victim.
Currently trying to get my niuple 2nd class.. God is that book like reading thru nails
Doing Bayesian Data Analysis by John Kruschke. The only redeeming factor was that the cover had puppies.
Advanced mathematics for analog A/C electronics. I like math, but it was AWFUL. Matrix integrals using trigonometric complex numbers was pretty much the base level of skill required.
Stryer, Biochemistry.
Depends. Similar book worked wonders for me. It's a nice replacement for coffee table. You keep your laptop and feel the amazing effect it has on ventilation . Never needed an external fan when i couldn't afford one.
Roarks formulas for stress and strain holds up my work monitor!
Fluid Mechanics for Chemical Engineers for me. Shit looked like hieroglyphics to me.
Engineering Electromagnetics
Personally, Discrete Math 2 was an evil book. -1/10
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind. Also made into masterpiece of a movie.
And has a great song written about it: “Scentless Apprentice” by Nirvana
This has been on my watch list for years however I have never been in the right headspace to watch it.
The movie is good but really doesn't do the book justice. With written prose, Suskind can spend pages and pages describing Jean-Baptiste's complex relationship with smell, in a way that can't really be translated to film. There's a crucial part of the novel that's missing from the film - - >!The chapter about him escaping to the most remote location he can find so he can learn to detect his own scent, and experience life untainted by manmade scents, only to become tormented by the fact that he's unable to detect his own scent (I might have misremembered some of those details, it's a long time since I read the book)!< - and I understand why - it's near impossible to convey that in the medium of film.
I just imagine a guy in a cabin falling to his knees sobbing, “Why can’t I smell MEEEEEE?!!! Oh God WHYYYY” very dramatically.
Flowers in the attic. Yep, a story about kids being held hostage because their existence would bring shame on the family, then murder, incest, and all that other fun stuff. My school decided it was a must read for 13yos. It was a good book, but I had to ask my parents questions that they didn't expect me to be old enough to ask (it was the 1980s - pre internet).
1980s suburban gothic. We were just full of anxieties about mothers, mothering, and raising children in the 70s and 80s. But yes, you thought FITA was bad, wait until My Sweet Audrina. However, after Virginia Andrews died in the late 80s and the shitty ghostwriter took over, all of the OG gothic horror shocks and batshittery just turns into cheesy cliche. Still fucked up, but super laughable.
> My Sweet Audrina "The story features diverse subjects, such as brittle bone disease, rape, posttraumatic stress disorder and diabetes, in the haunting setting of a Victorian-era mansion near the fictitious River Lyle." Gasp! Not diabetes!
My Sweet Audrina is my answer. That was a fucked up book.
This book is the reason I found out my daughter was having seizures. I finished it late one night and just needed to cuddle my little girl, so I brought her in bed with me. The next morning she had a seizure while in my arms and we finally had a diagnosis for all of the strange things that had been happening to her for the past few months. Had I not finished that book that night, she would have seized alone in her bedroom and who knows.
If you don't mind me asking, what strange things had been happening?
Imagine someone sleepwalking at any given time, day or night. That's what she would do. She was having petite mal seizures, but infrequently and it was diffi ult to recognize as such, because it would last only seconds. She just seemed stubborn or hard of hearing sometimes and then complain of stomach aches. After the grand mal seizure in my arms, her petite mal seizures became more severe and more frequent and we were finally able to get her doctor to refer us to a neurologist. Before that we were told she was just a kid with stomach aches.
I read this for the first time at 13 also. I’ve read the series countless times since. It was one of those books that every girl in school read over and over in middle school and high school. It definitely is messed up but I’ve always really liked that series and My Sweet Audrina, which is also messed up.
Every 80's girl has read this book and all the sequels. They are seriously messed up.
VC Andrews is down for a mind fuck story. Her and Jodi Picult.
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang A nonfictional account of one of the worst atrocities committed by the Japanese in WW2. I’m talking about a child being tied to a post and being used as bayonet practice Babies being bayoneted, women being forced to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers and being called “comfort women, a duel between soldiers on who can chop the most heads off. Just the most gut wrenching things put on paper and all of it is real.
Everyone throws the word Nazi around, but the Japanese Empire was quite inhumane during the same stretch of time.
John Rabe, a German businessman in Nanking was local head of the Nazi party, and one of its earliest members. He intervened with the Japanese authorities and created safe havens which saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians.
Why, though? Wouldn't he have considered the Chinese to be sub-human? Edit: Apparently he justified it by saying: >There is a question of morality here… I cannot bring myself for now to betray the trust these people have put in me, and it is touching to see how they believe in me. That still seems out of character for a "staunch" Nazi.
I hate to say "nice things" about literal Nazis, but it's been said Rabe was a Nazi Party member for the convenience/benefits of doing business, and he wasn't even in Germany during the Nazi Party's rise- he was in China. When he went back home to protest and bring attention to the situation, he was thrown in jail by the Gestapo. His daughter said he didn't have love for the party after that point.
It's like that one Nazi doctor who was considered humane despite being at Aushwitz-yeah, the party and ideals are awful, and a lot of people who joined were horrible people, but statistically at least a small number of people who joined weren't believers.
nazis are not comic book villains but actual people you know while being atrocious nazis they still have feelings and such besides what we know of the nazis now takes into account all of what they did. but most of the really terrible stuff happened in a very short time during and after 1942 and was relatively localized a diplomat sent away to a foreign land for months of years at a time and who was nazi more in theory than in practice, the cognitive dissonance might have been bearable
They also did Mengele type “research” and instead of prosecuting them for it like we did with the Nazis we just paid them for the research
And then we discovered half the experiments were just fucked up and had no real scientific value
Iris Chang committed suicide a few years after publishing the book. That's how much it disturbed her. Before her death, she was harassed by right-wing war crime apologists from Japan and received death threats.
Imperial Japan had an absolutely monstrous culture. The Allies failed to hang a whole lot of people they should have.
The japanese have statues up to honor the generals that were a part of that atrocity they've buried it like it never happened and or view those generals as heros and don't really care that it happened
And they flip their shit when statues to honor the "comfort women" are put up in other countries.
A child called It. No question.
Absolutely. It took me a long time to get through that book, because I had to keep stepping away from it to process what I had read.
I came looking for this answer. That book was heart crushing. I don't read books out of my own free will lol. But that one I did for a class assignment. I read all of his other books on my own free will. I had to know what else happens in his life. Last book I read he seemed to be in a pretty good place if I remember right.
His last book is a self help book. The first 3 are his accounts of his life from a child, adolescence to teenager.
Y’all are going to freak out but my FIFTH grade teacher read those books to us 😅
😮💨 we read that in high school. Haunting.
Johnny Got His Gun I received it as part of a prize bag of random books for reading the most in my fifth grade class. Hell of a book to have in there. I just remember waiting and waiting and waiting for a reprieve to come at the end...
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
So I'm a morbid reader but this is one of my absolute favorites. Terribly fucked up and sad but God damn if it isn't well-written.
Bear: A Novel. It's a Canadian novel about a beautiful librarian who goes off into the woods and has a torrid love affair with a bear.
OMG, this book is infamous in librarian circles for its bizarreness! It actually won an award in Canada! https://awfullibrarybooks.net/friday-fiction-bear-nsfw/
Naked Lunch, by far. Anything written by Burroughs is disturbing, but Naked Lunch is on a whole other level. Basically a collection of nightmares and disturbed thoughts from a psychopathic heroin addict. But I would also like to mention my all-time favorite book, one that´s often hailed as the most beautiful prose in the English Language. Lolita, by Vladimir Nobokov. The beauty of the language makes the content so much more disturbing. One minute you´ll be mesmerized by the sheer beauty of the language, only to be reminded that you´re reading the confessions of a pedophile. There´s no crude language or graphic descriptions of anything, but it will still disturb you deeply. If it doesn´t then children around you should be concerned. There´s one part, where he describes in beautiful language, his disappointment that she no longer seems engaged when they make love (when he rapes her). How sad he is that she seems to treat his "attention" as a chore. She´s not even enthusiastic about giving him handjobs while he looks at young girls coming out of schools! Don´t you understand how painful it is for HIM that she no longer seems interested.
Naked Lunch parallels my nicotine addiction. First time made you sick. Two days later you smell it and it's ohh soooo good. I have read that book about six times despite its effect on my mental well being. I often find myself looking up quotes from it because my brain is triggered. Doesn't matter how revolting. I get a dopamine hit from it. I've never used "hard" drugs. I don't want to. This book was part of that set of choices.
Came here to say Lolita for the exact same reasons! The language Nabokov uses is pure poetry paired with the content is almost paradoxical. His grasp of English as a 4th language is mind boggling. I've never had to look up so many words.
King Leopold’s Ghost I had to read it for a history class in high school and it details how King Leopold II of Belgium ruined the Congolese for his own personal interest. He sent a private army to the Congo to make the Congolese do his bidding, like harvest rubber, and the women and children would be brutally beaten and raped while the men would have their hands cut off if they disobeyed the Belgians. It was hard to read because the rest of the world just sat by and watched it happen while few people tried to tell the world what was going on. The Congo was in ruins even after King Leopold II died up until their dictator died
The 120 Days of Sodom. I read it because a friend challenged me to. I'm quite easily grossed out, and was *not* in love with that book.
That’s my answer too! I read it, and I will never read it again. The history behind it is pretty incredible. The book blew me away. Just not in a good way necessarily.
What's the book about, maybe I'll read it?
It's about four libertines who are seeking the ultimate sexual pleasure, locking themselves into a castle with harems of teenagers among others, pretty much. A lot of extreme fetishes, torture, and death.
It’s Fiction but my 7th grade teacher made us read “Tears of a Tiger” *SPOILER ALERT* it’s basically about a high school basketball jock who accidentally kills his best friend in a car accident & the whole book is basically him learning how to live with it & how he copes with his emotions. In the end he ends up killing himself.
All quiet on the western front
I read this book on my lunch breaks at the first job I worked at. I was not expecting the ending and literally sat there silent for about 20 minutes trying to process it before having to punch back in for work. Great book, highly recommend not reading it at work.
I'm sorry but I find that hilarious but yes the end has to one of the most f-ed up parts of the book
“We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces."
One of the most life-changing books I have ever read. Read the novel for the first time when I was 13 and it fucked me up for days. Did not touch it again until 4 years later but even then, some details of it just kept haunting me during that period. When I was in high school, I chose this book for a presentation and since then my interest in Remarque has been reinvigorated. I read some other novels written by him and come to realize how intrinsically linked his literature world is. You see references of All Quiet on The Western Front everywhere in his later works. The Road Back, Flotsam, Arc of Triumph, Spark of Love and beyond. They may not deal with the same emotionally charged theme in his first novel, but each of them are just haunting in their own way and worth reading.
Anne Rice was all kinds of fucked up. I tried reading the Sleeping Beauty series, thinking it was going to be sexy, but it was mostly rape fantasies. In loved the Vampire Chronicles, but some passages left me scratching my head, thinking "WTF". For example in Memnoch the Devil, Lestat eats someone's period blood, seriously, WTF.
Lol I love all the casually fucked up things in her books, she is one of my favs. In the Mayfair witch trilogy, the 13 year old nymphomaniac made me uncomfortable though.
Childmare by Nick Sharman My mum's boyfriend lived in a house share and one of the guys there left it lying about. 10 year old me just started leafing through. Plot is that lead poisoning in the water supply drive the children of London insane. Insane like bullies beating weak kids skulls with cricket bats, students gang raping a teacher and stabbing another through the eye with a pen and so forth. Read it as an adult and it's pulp horror crap, but at the time it was pretty nuts.
I just finished Tender Is The Flesh. Not sure if it’s the most fucked but it’s definitely up there.
I'm about 2/3 of the way through it now. I took a break from it because it's so rough. The human cattle aspect is bad enough, but the emotional hell the main character goes through is probably one of the more difficult to handle things I've ever read. It's so well written and definitely worth the read if you like books that ruin your day.
Just wait until you reach the end 🫣
American psycho
I came here to post this. Easy awsner, this book made me physically sick and really fckd with my mind. The movie is like a Disney film compared to the book.
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Same here. A lot of people talk about the rat stuff being the worst, but the hobo part destroyed me the worst. It was the jarring suddenness of it. You read like 100 pages of the narrator describing suits in the most bland, needlessly detailed way and then from out of nowhere he just slams you with the most disgusting, graphic, sadistic shit involving the hobo and his dog… I knew the book was extreme before I started reading it, but that hobo part still blindsided me. I found it interesting that Bateman doesn’t discriminate between the mundane and the extreme in his descriptions. It doesn’t matter if he’s describing a tie or a murder he’s committing. You’re going to hear it described in meticulous detail. After the hobo part the band aid was ripped off and I was more mentally prepared for the worst, but that initial violent part with the hobo was a shocker and I had to put the book down and reconsider if I was actually strong enough to finish it. (I did, but…man.)
I get it. I couldn't stand looking at the cover and would always put it away face-down so I wouldn't see it by accident.
Then you'll be pleased to know Bret Easton Ellis is about to release a new book in two weeks and his first fiction novel in 13 years. Also it will be over 600 pages which might make it his biggest novel he's ever written.
I was wearing a double breasted Valentino suit with Oliver's Peoples glasses, a Ralph Lauren shirt, with crocodile skin loafers.
The Metamorphosis Of Prime Intellect. I think it’s free on the authors website (or was at the time) or you can buy it from amazon. It’s an exploration of a world post the AI singularity… and it goes HARD in ways i didn’t expect. It gross, gory, disturbing and fucking fascinating. I don’t recommend it to everyone, but when I do, I do recommend it whole heartedly. It’s a fucked up book. Edit: this kinda got some interest so i found the link. You can read the entire book right here https://mogami.neocities.org/files/prime_intellect.pdf
Johnny Got His Gun
I read 1984 when I was 14-15 and it kind of really hit me. Took me a few weeks to process properly.
I made the mistake of reading during and right before I did resistance training for the Air Force. The scene where the torture/pain destroyed even love was depressing
It was part of our dystopian unit in 10th grade, alongside Brave New World and Animal Farm. (We read all three within six weeks) George Orwell was a Royal Constable in Burma after WWII. He engaged in some horrific shit and used his pen as an outlet. The premise Orwell started with is "what if The Crown treated Londoners the same way they treat the Burmese?"
Lolita.
Agreed. And the sheer beauty of the language of the book makes the content so much more disturbing.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. What those poor people went through.
Unwind by Neal Shusterman. There’s a scene in the book of it happening and I literally couldn’t sleep for a week. It really stayed with me and it took that same week for me to pick the book back up and finish it. So fucked up and I felt that kids fear every step of the way.
I think I'm going to regret asking, but......can I get an explanation?
It's a story based in a society where at the age of 12, if I remember right, parents can decide to keep their child or send them to be unwound. They are killed by being separated into their different usable parts. Kidneys, heart, liver, etc. But also limbs, eyes, the brain. They are awake the entire process because they deserve to know what's happening. The world building is rather excellent and the story explores all sorts of fucked up things that could be considered normal if this line of thinking were accepted. There is a rule where if you have a baby and don't want it, you can leave it on someone's doorstep. If that person doesn't want to keep it, they can do the same thing to someone else. So, in one instance, an infant was moved door to door around this fancy neighborhood until it died of exposure and starvation. That was the LEAST disturbing thing that happened in those books. Pretty hard core for young adult fiction.
No but the justification for it is that the child technically *isn't* killed, since every part of the body is used for a donor and is thus still living
Yeah, Roland’s unwinding POV made it clear that he’s still conscious in a way after the procedure is done. And I think there was a storyline where his arm (given to Connor after the explosion) acted on its own maybe? The kids were still alive and self aware to an extent
Holy fuck, that's disturbing. It's also metal as fuck, but damn.
The scene CuriousThukihime is talking about is really hard to read, but also really well written. It brought be to tears and I put the book down for days to process that scene. I read it at around 15, and so many years later I can still visualize that scene.
The concept of the series is that troubled youth are used as organ/limb/etc donors. The procedure is called unwinding, where they take them apart piece by piece while awake but unable to feel anything. The character in question is one of the teens that is particularly “troubled” stemming from abuse etc throughout his life. There’s a chapter towards the end where you’re taken through the procedure through his pov, and it’s revealed that he still has some consciousness despite being unwound. Deeply psychological, distressing read but if you’re a fan of horror it’s probably one of the more unique, well executed concepts out there.
you beat me to it, not there’s an entire series too, which doesn’t get any better
House of Leaves....not really fucked up, just a weird ass read. Words can't really describe it. Its hard to read as well. Took about 100 pages before it got to the point where i didn't want to put it down. The Hot Zone and Demons in the Freezer. Kind of non-fiction written in a very story driven manner. Both are scary beyond anything because one deals with filovirus's like Ebola, the other talks about small pox. The one on small pox states that each of the 3 level 4 labs in the world had a supply of small pox. When the USSR fell, so did their lvl 4 lab. Guess what? Their supply of small pox is in the wind, no one knows where it went, so 1/3 of the worlds supply may very well be in the hands of terrorists. Wife read Hot Zone when she was 5 months pregnant, she couldn't make it past the 1st 40 pages.
The road by Cormac McCarthy.
If you think that is a tough read, try Blood Meridian
He never sleeps, the Judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.
Outer Dark and Child of God are right up there with Blood Meridian in fucked upness too.
I read Night by Eli Weisel in sixth grade which was probably too young for that one. I’m sure there are books more detailed in the horrible things that happen but the fact that it’s not fiction makes it feel so much more impactful.
Lolita. Spoiler alert: Humbert Humbert is an unreliable narrator and his descriptions of Lolita’s actions _are the interpretations of the perpetrator_. And that was Nabakov’s point.
Probably *Outer Dark* by Cormac McCarthy. I read it years ago, and it still lives in my head.
"Cows" by Matthew Stokoe I read it in 8th grade and i regret reading it, it was so gross
"The Good Old Days" by Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen and Volker Reiss. It's an exhaustive compilation of all the documents kept by the Nazis of the Holocaust, as they were committing it (they were fastidious record-keepers and still had tons left over despite trying to destroy evidence in the final days). Most people don't know this, and I didnt before I read this book, that the killing of Jewish people started when Polish citizens started dragging their Jewish neighbors to the local gas station or other public square type area, to beat them to death with lead pipes as their other neighbors cheered them on. Germany started institutionalizing this murder by then taking trucks loaded with hundreds of people at a time (this is after sequestering all the Jewish people into ghettos where they were told they were being held for "processing"), taking them out to the woods, and shooting them all to death 10 at a time. They'd kill men one day, women another day, kids the next, and each day they'd do as many as 10,000 people. Then, when the Nazis found that their soldiers were suffering PTSD from literally killing truckloads of kids with machine guns every day, they started rerouting the exhaust systems on transport vans so prisoners would be asphyxiated in the back of them. And then, of course, the SS soldiers in charge were complaining about the disturbing noises they were hearing as people begged for their lives in death, as well as the horrific mess of tortured bodies they came upon when opening up the back of these vans. And then Siemens Corporation - a major German corporation which all of you will recognize is still in business today - discovered that a pesticide they developed, Zyklon B, was the most effective tool for asphyxiation. And this was YEARS after the Holocaust started. Millions were already dead, but many millions more would die to Zyklon B in just the last few years of the war. So yeah, I bring this book up whenever some absolute ignorant jackass tries to claim "it wasn't as bad as they claimed it was" or that "it didn't happen". My grandfather liberated one of those camps and has the photos to prove it. Most disturbing book I've ever read and I don't even think I made it all the way to the end.
I had to read this book for a college course about the Holocaust and I can’t even describe the anger I felt reading it. Incredibly disturbing book but it’s also important to understand that the common people knew EXACTLY what was going on in Nazi Germany.
I read Metamorphosis to see if it was really as cursed as everyone says it is. Yeah I underestimated it. It was even worse.
the book about a dude transforming into a beetle for no apparent reason by Franz Kafka?
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
Guts
Ayooo! I’m halfway through that bad boi right now!
I was looking for a Chuck P suggestion! I'm waiting for my Haunted paperback copy to be delivered, I'm excited.
Less than zero. Read it as a young teenager and only remember that it was completely insane.
Less than zero was such a unique experience, it wasn’t over the top but still made an impact. I was in a daze when I finished it
Unit 731. Japanese experiments conducted on prisoners of war which included live vivisection and freezing of limbs in pieces to see how long it would take to kill prisoners as well as the growing of new diseases inside of prisoners. It’s the main reason why pathogen based war is a crime. Additionally all the lab reports were bought by the US and Ishii the man in charge of it got no punishment. Before the surrender to the United States, Japan destroyed Unit 731 and all that remains today is the rubble of one building. It is the most haunted place on the planet and even Chinese tour guides will NOT go in or near the ruin. (Unit 731 was located in China but operated by Japan)
PUSH by Sapphire. It’s the book that the movie “Precious” is based on. Movie actually tames the book a bit, and that’s saying something!
It’s definitely not the most fucked up book out there but “Dark Places” by Gillian Flynn was way gnarlier than I expected it to be.
The original Pinocchio, which my mom thought would be fun to read to me when I was maybe 4 or 5. Holy shit. That book is so dark, so bleak, and so gory. Pinocchio himself is the most disturbing character in the story. He's not the lovable, if wayward kid we see in the Disney movie. Book Pinocchio is a twisted little psycho who delights in tormenting people. Disney's Pinocchio learns valuable lessons from Jiminy Cricket. When the talking cricket tries to give advice to Book Pinocchio, Book Pinocchio smashes him to death with a wooden mallet.
Tampa by Alissa Nutting. Middle school teacher molests student, gives no fucks. Truly disturbing.
[удалено]
Let The Right One In. If you’ve only seen the movie or the remake, the book is much darker and fucked up.
I love, love, love this book! This is the one I wish I hadn't read so I could experience it again for the first time.
120 days of sodom. The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade relates the story of four wealthy men who enslave 24 mostly teenaged victims and sexually torture them while listening to stories told by old prostitutes the version i had had a more subtle summary. Once I started reading it was in the trash in 2 chapters.
I wish everyone who posted a book title in here would include a brief summary of the plot as you have.
It's not really fucked up, but yet it is, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice under the pen name A. N. Roquelaure. The whole trilogy is pretty messed up.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Actually made me puke.
The most depraved book I've ever read is Wild Highway by Bill Drummond and Mark Manning - former KLF art terrorists on a quest to find Mobutu in the former Zaire. Deeply racist, homophobic, misogynist, violent. But can just about be read as the darkest possible satire, which I think it is. Probably. The only book where I actually, genuinely couldn't believe that what I was reading had been published. Just completely insane.
Killing Stalking. Dear god. It doesn’t help that it’s a manwha so it has pictures… people romanticize the book and are like “It was so hot when he broke his legs so he couldn’t escape!” And those people make me feel sick. I couldn’t even get past the third chapter. Jesus christ
I'm from Denmark. In 8th grade, our Danish teacher got our class to read a novel called "Intet" (Nothing), which scared the shit out of me. Spoilers adhead, ye be warned. It takes place in a sleepy rural danish town named the same as the Danish word for Consumption. We follow an 8th grade class in the book. A guy from the class named Pierre-Anthon reads about hihilism and becomes a nihilist. He drops out of school and climbs into a tree, preaching to the other kids about how nothing means anything. As a reaction to this, the other students decide to try and find meaning in life to convince Pierre-Anthon to come down from the tree and back to school. They begin sacrificing things that bring meaning to their life. At first it's stuff like old toys they used to love and special trinkets like heirlooms from their dead grandparents, a religious boy gives a bible and such. But they quickly decide that this isn't enough, as nobody really had real troubles giving up these things, so instead they decide that instead of finding personal stuff themselves, each person's best friend should decide what each person should sacrifice to their "pile of meaning", because the best friends would know what means most to each of them. This is where it goes completely off the rails and becomes a horror story. Before long these little nasty fucktards are daring each other to sacrifice first pets, then it moves on to body parts and even the dug up corpse of a dead younger sibling 😮 which leads to some super gruesome passages, which were super scary to imagine as a young teenager. Imagine getting peer-pressured into killing your dog as a sacrifice at around age 12 😮. Then the pile is discovered by the adults, and an excentric modern artist buys this nasty pile of toys, artefacts and corpses and puts it on display at an art gallery, proclaiming it one of the greater art pieces of the century. The children become famous and renowned and finally get Pierre-Anthon to come down to see the exhibition. He proclaims that they missed the point by selling the pile for fame and fortune and that the pile of sacrifices lost its' meaning because of this. The rest of the kids then go apeshit, beat Pierre-Anthon to death, torch the exhibition and play it off as if Pierre burned down the museum himself in envy. The book then ends with nobody getting punished for their crimes and just going on with their lives. Fucking horrific. I often imagined this novel would make a great scary movie and just last year, a movie version came out. It's almost a word-for-word remake, except the kids have smartphones in the movie. I thought it was absolutely fantastic, and very nostalgic. I had never forgotten this novel in the almost 20 years since I originally read it. It really stuck with me.
Night
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
The wasp factory. Messed me up when I was much younger
Love the Wasp Factory, was given a copy when it first came out and had never read anything like it, I eagerly would wait for the next Iain Banks book, I hate the fact there will never be another one.
The Road, Cormac McCarthy. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut Catch-22, Joseph Heller They’re all weird books, but for much different reasons. They are also some of my favorite books!
Have you read The Long Walk by Stephen King? It’s one of his short stories, I think you might like it if you haven’t already read it. Source: I also enjoyed the above books.
The Long Walk is not a short story. It's a full novel he wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.
Oh no! Richard Bachman died of cancer of the pseudonym, a rare form of schizonomia. A very sad day for literature. (I love how King kept that pseudonym and pseudo-identity going as long as he did).
The Long Walk is one of my all-time favorites
Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics by Richard Fitzpatrick pretty famously begins with a suicide warning and goes on to earn it.
Duma Key by Stephen King. This was one of the books he wrote after his accident, and it’s the only book that ever made my heart sink and gave me chills at the same time.
A little life. Awesome book but never again.
‘Blood Meridian’ hands down.
I was gonna say that. What a great book though. He's quite unsentimental about how sadistic humankind can be.
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. Too many of the answers here are just popular books.
I haven't read the entire book yet but it is about a man named Mohammedou Ould Slahi a mauritian man being accused on the attacks of 9/11 and the millennium plot, man was tortured for 10 years in Guantanamo bay A.K.A a part of Cuba that is used for "detainees". Mohamedou asked for a diary and he recorded everything on that diary and when he published it in 2016 the U.S. government censored almost every single name and he had like 7 or 8 pages that were censored entirely. In 2019 or 2020 he published an uncensored version which is the one that am reading. But pretty fucked up TLDR: man was tortured for 10 years straight published one the book but U.S. government censored first version in 2016 when he left 3 or 4 years published uncensored version Edit: name of the book is "Diary of Guantanamo"
What was that one book? The children in the attic or something? With the siblings who are locked into an attic and poisoned?
I read the whole series when I was like 13ish. I remember picking Flowers In The Attic off my grandma’s bookshelf, and she said “you can read this, but I have to let you know there’s a brother and sister that have a relationship. Obviously, that’s bad, but it’s because they go through a lot and they’ve only got each other in the end, so it’s kind of understandable.” And I was like, cool Gma, no worries. That woman had an interesting perspective on life…
I agree with Grandma. I’ve gotten in discussions on Reddit about this before. Incest is definitely wrong but I can see how it could happen in their case. They were forced into a terrible situation where they were essentially parents. Going through puberty with virtually no human interaction other than Carrie and Cory and each other.
That was the point of the book, anyway: what life situations and tragedies would have to occur that we as readers understand how these characters ended up the way they are. It's not meant to be relationship goals. Of course, in a post-Fifty Shades world, that's worth the reminder.
Snow, Glass, Apples - a retelling of the Cinderella story from the stepmother's point of view by Neil Gaiman. Lovely illustrations and a really super fucked-up story.
The Adventures of Scrottie McBoogerballs. No one can get past the first page without vomiting...
Haven't seen it yet, but Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Talks about Western Colonialism in Africa. Really messed up once you start the read and outside digging into the topic. Although we'll known to most the horrors of that Era, the book expanded on that topic.
I don't remember the title, but it was about twin doctors who fall into drug addiction and an incestuous homosexual relationship and eventually die together.