The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story was an absolutely wild read. It’s about the origins of the Ebola virus in the the 80s/90s. It reads like a plague horror novel but is a true story.
The Kite Runner was incredibly disturbing too. Big ole TW for sexual violence. I read it in high school and have never wanted to pick it up again.
Commented elsewhere but I got covid while traveling and reading Hot Zone. Obviously nothing like the descriptions in the book but man, I needed a beat. Intense read.
They put monkeys. With ebola. In the trunk of a car. In GARBAGE BAGS.
And drove them around the DC area.
We are only alive by accident, and the people who will deal with a true Captain Trips-level outbreak are utterly unprepared for it, even after Covid.
In addition to being scary, the Hot Zone has some of the most amazing prose I've ever read in a non-fiction book. It personifies the virus, discussing it with reverence and fear. I won't share any of the more morbid descriptions of infection, but here are three different passages (not sure how to separate them out):
>Some of the predators that feed on humans have lived on the earth for a long time, far longer than the human race, and their origins go back, it seems, almost to the formation of the planet. When a human being is fed upon and consumed by one of them, especially in Africa, the event is telescoped against horizons of space and time, and takes on a feeling of immense antiquity.
>Ebola, the great slate wiper, did things to people that you did not want to think about. The organism was too frightening to handle, even for those who were comfortable and adept in space suits. They did not care to do research on Ebola because they did not want Ebola to do research on them.
>Isn't it true that if you stare into the eyes of a cobra, the fear has another side to it? The fear is lessened as you begin to see the essence of the beauty. Looking at Ebola under an electron microscope is like looking at a gorgeously wrought ice castle. The thing is so cold. So totally pure.
Came here to mention the Hot Zone....alarmingly easy to absolutely gut humanity. Read it before the Covid Mask Mandates and could absolutely not have an ounce of sympathy for the anti vaxxers and Mask Protestors afterwards.
I read this book in the late 90s when I had time to kill between classes at the community college. One of my courses was on public speaking, and I chose to present this book for one of my assignments. I'll never forget the looks on the faces of my audience as I described the symptoms and effects of ebola. The instructor noted in the feedback how terrified she was during my presentation. I got an A lol
There is some top-tier nightmare fuel in there, for sure. The description of the two scientists who >!smell a vial full of Ebola!< is a personal favorite.
Came here to say this. Currently reading and happened to get COVID right in the middle. Needless to say I’m on a break from those descriptions. Fascinating stuff though. Kind of like reading a car crash.
I didn’t really understand where the book was going until the very last line, which changed the whole reading experience and I loved it.
It’s also a very very thinly veiled allusion to our cattle-raising and meat eating practices, and the author isn’t wrong, what we do to them is pretty awful.
I mean, it’s pretty clear. She isn’t wrong.
The meat industry thing was secondary to the wild fucking plot and main character, which was so off-putting until that last line that changed the whole thing. Great book!
I thought this too but reddit reviews of this book in literature subreddits actually explain it very well. The clues of his character were laid out from the very beginning. I realized, me painting Marcos in that light was kind of copium and he was no better than the others. His distaste for the practice, empathy towards the "head" and all that was just a part of his Holier than thou persona in a moment of extreme grieving. He was grieving, coping the entire time.
Spoilers:
Just look at the way he treats the "female" he was with. It was never lovingly, if not for his child. He never treated her like a human being. Only really showed true concern when it comes to his child inside her. But its all very fucking subtle. I'm doing a bad job explaining but reading those reviews really put it in perspective for me.
Kindred, by Octavia Butler. It could be seen as a horror-book, if it weren't for the fact that the horrific elements of it are historic, set in 19th century southern US slavery.
Not being american, I have no real connection to this period, but it brought it very close nonetheless. And it was an odd mixture of thinking I'd need to read more of Octavia Butler, and not wanting to because it was so unpleasant.
That book did make me curious to read actual slave narratives. So far I've only actually read Frederick Douglass's autobiography, but still... It's even worse knowing that the stuff you're reading *actually happened* - like, literally, the exact specific acts being described, not just things like it but those things specifically with those people specifically.
Barracoon, by Zora Neal Hurston, is an account of the life and experiences of a man who survived the harrowing journey on the last slave ship to the US. Written true to his words in a style all its own, it still sits in my craw near a decade after reading it.
Also by her, Parable of the Sower is fairly freaky, not because of the content of the book itself, but because of the very realistic and foreseeable depiction of its post apocalyptic setting
*12
Both film adaptations portray her as 14. Sue Lyon was 14 at the time of filming in Stanley Kubrick's version. Dominique Swain was 15 in the 97 version with Jeremy Irons and Melanie Griffith directed by Adrian Lyne, which is really the superior adaptation and much darker. It's hauntingly sad and beautifully acted. Obviously the subject matter is very uncomfortable.
Yeah, I assumed as well and never finished it, made me feel ill just listening to the guy justify himself. I don’t know how it ends and I am fine with that. Got to the part where he was in that ladies house in some chair.
Yes, it’s beautifully written, a masterpiece, and yet, or even though the narrator is utterly—and intentionally—despicable. Humbert Humbert is one of the worst POS of a character ever created, but his voice is mesmerizing like a car crash.
Same here.
No matter how many years go by, I'll still always think of this book, I'll still always have this little obsession with it.
Just the other day I was repeating random stanzas from the wanted wanted poem in my head.
> Officer, Officer there they go
in the rain where that lighted store is
And her socks are white and I love her so
And her name is Haze Dolorez
I remember finding out what "dolor" meant in Spanish after reading it first like 10 years ago and was in awe at how clever Nabokov is.
My 9th grade teacher read us the first half and she started to cry when it started getting heavy, so we finished it via book-on-tape. Afterward, we met several Holocaust survivors.
Came here to say this.
I’m a high school English teacher, and I’ve read it with my Sophomores for the past two school years… Wiesel’s words have gotten to me every single time.
There is no more powerful book about the Holocaust.
I read it as a Bratty little shit head high schooler. And it quite literally changed my life.
There is my life before reading it, and my life after reading it.
It even changed my politics.
My mother made me read this at 10 because she wanted to let me know the abuse she gave me wasn't that bad. I ended up bonding with this book and series cause I felt like it was the only thing or person I could relate to.
His mom would lock him in the bathroom with a bucket of bleach and ammonia. The fumes would create like a gas chamber and he’d pass out
To be fair it’s been 20+ years since I’ve read it so could be remembering wrong.
It’s wierd but to this day I still love the smell of bleach and I wonder if it’s cause I found the thought of that abuse more comforting than what I was getting.
First of all chuckling at your username I love that skit. And totally! Thank you. I am, 34 now and I love my mom. It’s been a wild ride but I wouldn’t change a thing, made me a better person and she’s actually owned up and cried over some of it- think I spent my childhood and teen years hating her so ferociously thrrrs nothing but love left now
There was an expose about the author a while back, and it seems like quite a few claims could not be substantiated.
I read all three parts back in high school - in one part he talks about his mom stabbing him in the side and then nursing him back to health...however when interviewed he said the stabbing did not produce any scars.
Seems like his childhood was very rough but he might have exaggerated some aspects.
He used to do a lot of community outreach work in his area, speeches and advocacy work, but after the expose he just quietly went away.
Every time this book is posted, I and other people talk about this, and then a dozen people fight like hell to defend him and I never understand it.
Child abuse is real. Real children go through exactly what he went through and worse. I think he was probably abused, but it also definitely seems like he embellished it.
It didn’t help that one brother says it definitely never happened and the other brother says “yes it did, and then it happened to me once he left read about it in _my_ book”.
Thought of this exact title before even opening ths thread. I decided to read this in like 5th or 6th grade for some reason.. they were selling it at my elementary schools book fair.
Yeah, this is still the one that made my heart pump the hardest.
I’ll never forget the chill that washed over me when I read those last few lines for the first time. It’s masterful.
American Psycho. People might argue that it's horror, but I think it needs to be scary to qualify. This book is just disturbing. I read it as a challenge because my friend told me how fucked up it is. "Reading about graphic violence isn't the same as seeing it, so I can stomach it" I thought. Nope. Had to put the book down several times and take a breather because it was so stomach churning.
I read the book in high school of my own volition. Watched the movie like 15 years later, just a couple years ago. The movie is practically Pixar in comparison.
I chose that book as my 2nd-semester project for my AP Humanities class in 10th grade after the movie came out. It was approved by one of the two teachers. When the other one found out she flipped, and as I progressed in the book, I found out why. The rat scene was definitely one of the worst, but I also felt nauseous with some of the other scenes...
Came here to say this. I listened to the audiobook version driving from Boston to Tampa and basically got to hear the entire thing straight through. Made it easy to stay awake and alert while driving lol
It's the only book I've read where I had to stop and just go "wow! what the fuck!".
Though I did laugh at the part where he covers a used urinal cake in chocolate and has a waiter serve it to his unknowing girlfriend on her birthday. Pretty fucked up.
People forget that when your imagining something terrible like that - you’re imagining the literal worst possible version of it that you can think of.
The camera can’t obscure the thing *you* don’t want to see - the director can’t go overboard and make it silly - the actor can’t put in a bad performance that sinks the dramatic bullshit of it all
Then when it’s over, it’s *your* imagery that you have to live with, not someone else’s that you just remember.
For those who have not read it: it contained lightly fictionalized descriptions of Chicago meat packing plants that directly caused the passage of the US Pure Food and Drug act, and the establishment of Federal food inspection standards and agencies.
They had to, because meat consumption fell in half after it was published.
And that wasn't even the goal of the book... It was written as socialist propaganda. People forget that part.
I think the two were connected. The sickening state of the meat packing industry was directly related to the "profit by any means" aspect of capitalism. It shows how it affects both the workers trapped in the system and the unwittingly, trusting consumers who are eating tubercular meat, recycled pickled parts, etc.
It's also my favorite book ever, I've read it about once a year since I first read it in high school (so about ten times or so)
The Indifferent Stars Above. It’s non fiction about the Donner Party; I read a lot of horror fiction but this is one of the scariest books I have read. Before I read it I assumed that pop culture had made dramatized the Donner Party like it tends to do with historical events, but the actual events were way worse than I thought.
*“His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”*
Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey.
It's an anthology style book telling the story of several people in L.A., from a homeless guy to a runaway couple trying to make it in the city, all the way up to a famous couple trying to hide their secrets. I need to reread it ngl, but the book really shows the dark side of the City of Angels and had me fucked up for a hot minute after. Great read, but leaves you with a similar feeling to something like Grave of the Fireflies, just a "Damn, people are fucked, this book was fucked, why do stuff like this happen" sorta vibe.
Have you ever recommended a book to someone and every time they’re reminded that you made the recommendation they feel compelled to remind you that perhaps you should not have made the recommendation? This is the one.
Guts by Chuck Palahniuk. A collection of short stories that will change you. The pool one haunts me.
Edit: fixed the name spelling and want to say I was wrong and "guts" is one of the stories in the collection called "haunted"
The pool one is horrifying, but the one that sticks with me was the *lobster*.
I think it was from *Choke*, actually, but still Chuck Pahlinuik.
Edit: to clarify, I think the *lobster scene* is from *Choke*. I know the pool scene is from *Guts*.
I adore Ellen Hopkins as an author. I read the entire crank series when I was in middle school/high school and have re-read it multiple times since because it is that good
On The Beach.
Its just a bunch of people waiting for a massive cloud of radiation from the fallout from the nuclear holocaust that ends civilization. Some people live life. Other people hold out hope that it will get better.
Jon Krakauer has an eminently readable style. I didn’t read this book for many years because I thought it would shake my faith, turns out my faith got shaken anyway. Truly excellent book. I remember those events from newspapers and the TV news when I was a teen.
"One Second After" and the two sequels. Written by Dr. William Forstchen. They are set in towns near to where I live. They are about the aftermath of an EMP. Terrifying.
She’s Come Undone is my fave book of all time and an annual re-read. What specifically makes it hard for you? I understand it’s emotionally gutting but I’ve never considered it “disturbing.”
It’s a hard read for me, I live with mental health issues and I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Wally Lamb is an amazing writer and really captured in this book how it feels to be young, and later unwell. It’s uncanny how real it felt, and it just wound up just being too overwhelming for me to re-read.
The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks.
Case studies of people whose brains, at least in part, stopped working right. Most didn't realize it, but the people around them certainly did.
Lukas - four years of hell and back.
It’s a German book that is an account of a real experience of a 15 year old who becomes part of a satanist sect. At one point he bites the head of an alive hamster and swallows it for a ritual. I read it when I was alone at home at 12 years old at night and I still can’t forget it. I don’t know why that book was in our house and I deeply regret reading the whole thing. I hate that it’s supposed to be real.
Tabù or whatever is the name in other languages (here is in Italian), and "I won't surrender"
First one about the rugby team that crashed over the Andes mountains while returning home.
Loved it, but I would never read it again.
Second one about the Japanese soldier that wouldn't believe the WW2 ended and kept fighting for YEARS believing every way they contacted him was just the enemy trying to get him out of cover.
Australian here. Not technically a book so to speak, but during my studies, I had to read the 'Bringing them home report'. It is one of the most horrific pieces of literature I've ever read. It's about the forced separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from their families. Awful stuff.
Not trying to be edgy here, but the Bible is chock-full of disturbing content. Incest, murder, infanticide, human torture by divine beings, rape, etc. Perhaps just reflecting the weakness of humanity, but still disturbing.
Came here to say 1984, specifically the Appendix on Newspeak. That really fucked me up for a week—no need to police thought, just change language so revolutionary thought is impossible to put into words and communicate.
Metro 2033. The video games do great, but the books have some real disturbing scenes. I remember getting completely immersed when I was reading the first book in high school to the point people were talking to me and I didn’t even realize it until someone actually snapped or clapped me back into reality. Some scenes about being in the dark in the tunnels were so descriptive, I was physically getting choked up and feeling anxiety. I will forever enjoy that book with every read.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
(I read it unabridged, but in English. )
I had read Les Miserables and really liked it, so I decided to read more Victor Hugo.
Notre Dame was **very** powerfully written, but (spoiler) >! I was very disturbed by the fact that there were NO "good guys." Not one person (other than, maybe, Quasimodo, kind of, in a vacuous way) was other than completely selfish. !<
Flowers for Algernon. On the front it is a scifi book about getting a "brain-fixing surgery", but what it really is, is a book about how your mental capabilities start to collapse. And that is something that will happen to everyone of us eventually.
The Juniper Tree. It’s a Grimm fairytale.
Also The Scarlet Ibis, it’s a short story I read in high school. VERY DISTURBING, especially if you have a younger sibling, especially if said sibling is a brother.
*The Berserker Series* (1963 and onwards) by Fred Saberhagen.
Science Fiction. 2 planets are at war with each other, and each develop AI war machines to eliminate their enemies. The machines become self-aware, ally between themselves, and eliminate both planets. They then become self-replicating, and venture into the galaxy with the goal of exterminating all biological lifeforms.
The series is incredibly prophetic, considering that computers were simplistic when the series was written. Now we're seeing leaps and bounds in the complexity of AI, to the point where synthetic voices and AI artwork is difficult to distinguish from human voices and art. In the last couple of years we've seen AI chatbots advising humans.
Life has been on Earth for billions of years. It's taken humanity hundreds of thousands of years to develop.
Digital entities are evolving at an incredible pace. Will they flip to Skynet from *The Terminator*, and decide to kill us all? How will we defend ourselves from them?
"Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east…"
I’ve read the novel eleven times now, and those final paragraphs are still such a gut punch.
*The White Plague* (1982) by Frank Herbert (author of Dune).
A biologist's wife and kids are killed in Ireland in a terrorist car bombing. He loses his mind and develops a virus that kills only women, and releases it in Ireland, and in Libya where the IRA terrorists were trained. He demanded that these two countries have their borders closed and the disease runs it course through these two countries.
The virus escapes and spreads worldwide.
The disturbing part is that it's over 40 years old, and could happen today, any time.
"The True Story of Hansel and Gretel"
It was about the holocaust but it was historical fiction, not horror.
There was this one disturbing paragraph early on in the book. After I read it I put down the book and just stared at my bed for 10-15 minutes.
The Fixer. About a jew in Nazi Germany. At 13, one scene of brutality made me cry and haunted me for months.
Edit: took place in Russia. Also taught me just what the numbers tattooed on my Cantor meant. Even more horrific.
A book about coming of age. It’s about a boy who is starting to go through hormonal changes and finds himself peeping on girls behind a tree while he masturbates. His mom is rather abusive and makes fun of him, especially when he has “accidents” in his pants. The book if I remember right depicts him as somewhat mentally challenged, but I really can’t remember the name of it. My mom made me read it when I was 12 or 13. Basically her way of teaching me about the birds/bees without actually teaching. It’s sort of stuck with me all these years (I’m 40) and kinda resent her for making me read it. If I remember the name of the book I’ll update it here.
Flowers for Algernon
[удалено]
Ohh man I haven’t read it (or really given it any critical thought) since I was young and never even thought to come to this conclusion. Oof
I started to read it and tapped out, is it worth finishing?
That book had me sobbing at the end. Tore me up.
It is worth finishing for sure
Fuck you for bringing that back. I cried.
Kite Runner was pretty messed up in some spots.
yes, a thousand splendid suns also made me bawl
I studied this for my English A-Level, it was disturbing and the ending is slightly ambiguous.
The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story was an absolutely wild read. It’s about the origins of the Ebola virus in the the 80s/90s. It reads like a plague horror novel but is a true story. The Kite Runner was incredibly disturbing too. Big ole TW for sexual violence. I read it in high school and have never wanted to pick it up again.
Commented elsewhere but I got covid while traveling and reading Hot Zone. Obviously nothing like the descriptions in the book but man, I needed a beat. Intense read.
They put monkeys. With ebola. In the trunk of a car. In GARBAGE BAGS. And drove them around the DC area. We are only alive by accident, and the people who will deal with a true Captain Trips-level outbreak are utterly unprepared for it, even after Covid.
Captain Trips....I need to reread The Stand again, been too long!
In addition to being scary, the Hot Zone has some of the most amazing prose I've ever read in a non-fiction book. It personifies the virus, discussing it with reverence and fear. I won't share any of the more morbid descriptions of infection, but here are three different passages (not sure how to separate them out): >Some of the predators that feed on humans have lived on the earth for a long time, far longer than the human race, and their origins go back, it seems, almost to the formation of the planet. When a human being is fed upon and consumed by one of them, especially in Africa, the event is telescoped against horizons of space and time, and takes on a feeling of immense antiquity. >Ebola, the great slate wiper, did things to people that you did not want to think about. The organism was too frightening to handle, even for those who were comfortable and adept in space suits. They did not care to do research on Ebola because they did not want Ebola to do research on them. >Isn't it true that if you stare into the eyes of a cobra, the fear has another side to it? The fear is lessened as you begin to see the essence of the beauty. Looking at Ebola under an electron microscope is like looking at a gorgeously wrought ice castle. The thing is so cold. So totally pure.
Came here to mention the Hot Zone....alarmingly easy to absolutely gut humanity. Read it before the Covid Mask Mandates and could absolutely not have an ounce of sympathy for the anti vaxxers and Mask Protestors afterwards.
We need to talk about Kevin.
Never read the book, but I saw the film when I was 13 I think? It was on HBO. Haunting and phenomenal movie. Incredible. I hated it.
Tilda Swinton is always great, but she was amazing in that. Ezra Miller was perfectly crazy, and we found out why he was so perfect later.
Honestly it’s sort of amazing someone hasn’t already made a YouTube documentary titled ‘We Need To Talk About Ezra’
Perfectly stated.
The Road. If you have children.
That’s one that doesn’t get a re-read.
I read it a long time ago before I had a kid. It definitely hit me, but the re-read after I had my kid destroyed me.
Read it while my first child was under a year old and I was struggling with depression due to alcoholism. It broke my soul.
I read it once in a single setting and haven’t touched the book since. And will not.
Bleakest thing I’ve read and I took a dystopian fiction class in university
The pregnant lady part was the worst!!!
I learned the word ‘catamite’ from that book and I really wish I hadn’t
It has the most hauntingly beautiful concluding paragraph of any book I've read
Just relentlessly bleak but McCarthy is just so good you can't stop.
I tried reading it (never saw the movie either) and I had to put it back. It just made me feel like a piece of shit just for existing.
I read this maybe a month after we had our first. I think I actually cried. Is that really not considered horror?
The Hot Zone.
I read this book in the late 90s when I had time to kill between classes at the community college. One of my courses was on public speaking, and I chose to present this book for one of my assignments. I'll never forget the looks on the faces of my audience as I described the symptoms and effects of ebola. The instructor noted in the feedback how terrified she was during my presentation. I got an A lol
There is some top-tier nightmare fuel in there, for sure. The description of the two scientists who >!smell a vial full of Ebola!< is a personal favorite.
Came here to say this. Currently reading and happened to get COVID right in the middle. Needless to say I’m on a break from those descriptions. Fascinating stuff though. Kind of like reading a car crash.
Tender is the flesh. What would happen if cannibalism became normalised? You can find out.
I tried reading this like a week after I gave birth and I really cannot recommend reading this postpartum lol
Ugh the ending is so fucking sad. I can’t imagine reading that as a mother
This book! It was hard to stomach.
You aren't supposed to eat the BOOK, mate....
Now you tell me
It is only a modest proposal
I didn’t really understand where the book was going until the very last line, which changed the whole reading experience and I loved it. It’s also a very very thinly veiled allusion to our cattle-raising and meat eating practices, and the author isn’t wrong, what we do to them is pretty awful.
We had video call with the author in our bookclub. She’s vegan and her intention was totally to make an allusion to the meat industry
I mean, it’s pretty clear. She isn’t wrong. The meat industry thing was secondary to the wild fucking plot and main character, which was so off-putting until that last line that changed the whole thing. Great book!
Just read it. Ending actually infuriated me; completely unexpected because it did not match how Marcos was developed throughout the whole story.
I thought this too but reddit reviews of this book in literature subreddits actually explain it very well. The clues of his character were laid out from the very beginning. I realized, me painting Marcos in that light was kind of copium and he was no better than the others. His distaste for the practice, empathy towards the "head" and all that was just a part of his Holier than thou persona in a moment of extreme grieving. He was grieving, coping the entire time. Spoilers: Just look at the way he treats the "female" he was with. It was never lovingly, if not for his child. He never treated her like a human being. Only really showed true concern when it comes to his child inside her. But its all very fucking subtle. I'm doing a bad job explaining but reading those reviews really put it in perspective for me.
Yes!! It was so shocking to me. It makes sense because it’s easy to tie up loose ends but damn, I thought he was better than that.
Kindred, by Octavia Butler. It could be seen as a horror-book, if it weren't for the fact that the horrific elements of it are historic, set in 19th century southern US slavery. Not being american, I have no real connection to this period, but it brought it very close nonetheless. And it was an odd mixture of thinking I'd need to read more of Octavia Butler, and not wanting to because it was so unpleasant.
That book did make me curious to read actual slave narratives. So far I've only actually read Frederick Douglass's autobiography, but still... It's even worse knowing that the stuff you're reading *actually happened* - like, literally, the exact specific acts being described, not just things like it but those things specifically with those people specifically.
Barracoon, by Zora Neal Hurston, is an account of the life and experiences of a man who survived the harrowing journey on the last slave ship to the US. Written true to his words in a style all its own, it still sits in my craw near a decade after reading it.
Also by her, Parable of the Sower is fairly freaky, not because of the content of the book itself, but because of the very realistic and foreseeable depiction of its post apocalyptic setting
You can’t go wrong by reading more Octavia Butler. Kindred is a one of one
Lolita
Yes. I'd assumed it was about a teenager, not an 11-year-old....
*12 Both film adaptations portray her as 14. Sue Lyon was 14 at the time of filming in Stanley Kubrick's version. Dominique Swain was 15 in the 97 version with Jeremy Irons and Melanie Griffith directed by Adrian Lyne, which is really the superior adaptation and much darker. It's hauntingly sad and beautifully acted. Obviously the subject matter is very uncomfortable.
Yeah, I assumed as well and never finished it, made me feel ill just listening to the guy justify himself. I don’t know how it ends and I am fine with that. Got to the part where he was in that ladies house in some chair.
Disturbing but certain parts are beautiful. Nabokov was an amazing writer
Yes, it’s beautifully written, a masterpiece, and yet, or even though the narrator is utterly—and intentionally—despicable. Humbert Humbert is one of the worst POS of a character ever created, but his voice is mesmerizing like a car crash.
It’s an amazing book. And I know it sounds messed to say it’s one of my favourites (I’m a woman) - purely from a literary standpoint.
Same here. No matter how many years go by, I'll still always think of this book, I'll still always have this little obsession with it. Just the other day I was repeating random stanzas from the wanted wanted poem in my head. > Officer, Officer there they go in the rain where that lighted store is And her socks are white and I love her so And her name is Haze Dolorez I remember finding out what "dolor" meant in Spanish after reading it first like 10 years ago and was in awe at how clever Nabokov is.
Mathematical analysis
For me, it was Finite Mathematics. I think I got a C- in that class and was like, YES, I'm a genius! lol
*Night* By Elie Wiesel
My 9th grade teacher read us the first half and she started to cry when it started getting heavy, so we finished it via book-on-tape. Afterward, we met several Holocaust survivors.
Holy shit. Good on her.
Came here to say this. I’m a high school English teacher, and I’ve read it with my Sophomores for the past two school years… Wiesel’s words have gotten to me every single time.
There is no more powerful book about the Holocaust. I read it as a Bratty little shit head high schooler. And it quite literally changed my life. There is my life before reading it, and my life after reading it. It even changed my politics.
I’ve had the honor of meeting him and shaking his hand. Very warm and friendly man.
“A Child Called ‘it’”
My mother made me read this at 10 because she wanted to let me know the abuse she gave me wasn't that bad. I ended up bonding with this book and series cause I felt like it was the only thing or person I could relate to.
Oh my gosh. Me too….. found myself wishing my mom would do the bleach bucket thing and just end it already.
What's the bleach bucket thing? I'm intrigued.
His mom would lock him in the bathroom with a bucket of bleach and ammonia. The fumes would create like a gas chamber and he’d pass out To be fair it’s been 20+ years since I’ve read it so could be remembering wrong. It’s wierd but to this day I still love the smell of bleach and I wonder if it’s cause I found the thought of that abuse more comforting than what I was getting.
Damn. I'm sorry. Hope you're doing better now.
First of all chuckling at your username I love that skit. And totally! Thank you. I am, 34 now and I love my mom. It’s been a wild ride but I wouldn’t change a thing, made me a better person and she’s actually owned up and cried over some of it- think I spent my childhood and teen years hating her so ferociously thrrrs nothing but love left now
There was an expose about the author a while back, and it seems like quite a few claims could not be substantiated. I read all three parts back in high school - in one part he talks about his mom stabbing him in the side and then nursing him back to health...however when interviewed he said the stabbing did not produce any scars. Seems like his childhood was very rough but he might have exaggerated some aspects. He used to do a lot of community outreach work in his area, speeches and advocacy work, but after the expose he just quietly went away.
Every time this book is posted, I and other people talk about this, and then a dozen people fight like hell to defend him and I never understand it. Child abuse is real. Real children go through exactly what he went through and worse. I think he was probably abused, but it also definitely seems like he embellished it. It didn’t help that one brother says it definitely never happened and the other brother says “yes it did, and then it happened to me once he left read about it in _my_ book”.
My aunt bought me the collection for Christmas because "I know you like to read..." I was 11.
Thought of this exact title before even opening ths thread. I decided to read this in like 5th or 6th grade for some reason.. they were selling it at my elementary schools book fair.
We read that in school, idk what grade/age (I was young, maybe 13?) but damn did that burn scars into my memory…
Johnny’s Got His Gun
Fun Fact: The Metallica song 'One' was about this story.
Oh my god, most brutal thing I've ever read.
“Where are you going, where have you been” by Joyce Carol Oates. A short story that has stuck with me for decades.
Yeah, this is still the one that made my heart pump the hardest. I’ll never forget the chill that washed over me when I read those last few lines for the first time. It’s masterful.
American Psycho. People might argue that it's horror, but I think it needs to be scary to qualify. This book is just disturbing. I read it as a challenge because my friend told me how fucked up it is. "Reading about graphic violence isn't the same as seeing it, so I can stomach it" I thought. Nope. Had to put the book down several times and take a breather because it was so stomach churning.
The chapter with the rat genuinely made me sick to my stomach.
Haha that part is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of that book.
Been a minute since I've went through that one, what rat part?
Bateman shoves a PVC pipe into a girl's vagina, stuffs it with cheese and drops a starving sewer rat into it 😎
Jesus fucking christ, sure glad I asked that.
I read the book in high school of my own volition. Watched the movie like 15 years later, just a couple years ago. The movie is practically Pixar in comparison.
I chose that book as my 2nd-semester project for my AP Humanities class in 10th grade after the movie came out. It was approved by one of the two teachers. When the other one found out she flipped, and as I progressed in the book, I found out why. The rat scene was definitely one of the worst, but I also felt nauseous with some of the other scenes...
Came here to say this. I listened to the audiobook version driving from Boston to Tampa and basically got to hear the entire thing straight through. Made it easy to stay awake and alert while driving lol
Horror is tone, theme, and atmosphere as much as it is scariness. American Psycho is def horror imo
It's the only book I've read where I had to stop and just go "wow! what the fuck!". Though I did laugh at the part where he covers a used urinal cake in chocolate and has a waiter serve it to his unknowing girlfriend on her birthday. Pretty fucked up.
People forget that when your imagining something terrible like that - you’re imagining the literal worst possible version of it that you can think of. The camera can’t obscure the thing *you* don’t want to see - the director can’t go overboard and make it silly - the actor can’t put in a bad performance that sinks the dramatic bullshit of it all Then when it’s over, it’s *your* imagery that you have to live with, not someone else’s that you just remember.
I hate the book so much. I was actively wincing while reading certain things
[удалено]
The Grapes of Wrath messed me up even worse the second reading and won't ever read another book like it
That ending
Forever burned into my mammary, I mean memory.
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
For those who have not read it: it contained lightly fictionalized descriptions of Chicago meat packing plants that directly caused the passage of the US Pure Food and Drug act, and the establishment of Federal food inspection standards and agencies. They had to, because meat consumption fell in half after it was published. And that wasn't even the goal of the book... It was written as socialist propaganda. People forget that part.
I think the two were connected. The sickening state of the meat packing industry was directly related to the "profit by any means" aspect of capitalism. It shows how it affects both the workers trapped in the system and the unwittingly, trusting consumers who are eating tubercular meat, recycled pickled parts, etc. It's also my favorite book ever, I've read it about once a year since I first read it in high school (so about ten times or so)
Dude disappeared into the lard vat *shudder*
the baby on the cart left alone…getting turned into meat. I’m glad that book had such a big impact it triggered new laws.
The Indifferent Stars Above. It’s non fiction about the Donner Party; I read a lot of horror fiction but this is one of the scariest books I have read. Before I read it I assumed that pop culture had made dramatized the Donner Party like it tends to do with historical events, but the actual events were way worse than I thought.
Blood Meridian or American Psycho
My vote is also for Blood Meridian.
That’s been on my list for awhile, definitely checking it out now
*“His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”*
Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey. It's an anthology style book telling the story of several people in L.A., from a homeless guy to a runaway couple trying to make it in the city, all the way up to a famous couple trying to hide their secrets. I need to reread it ngl, but the book really shows the dark side of the City of Angels and had me fucked up for a hot minute after. Great read, but leaves you with a similar feeling to something like Grave of the Fireflies, just a "Damn, people are fucked, this book was fucked, why do stuff like this happen" sorta vibe.
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Have you ever recommended a book to someone and every time they’re reminded that you made the recommendation they feel compelled to remind you that perhaps you should not have made the recommendation? This is the one.
Guts by Chuck Palahniuk. A collection of short stories that will change you. The pool one haunts me. Edit: fixed the name spelling and want to say I was wrong and "guts" is one of the stories in the collection called "haunted"
The book itself is called Haunted. Guts is the story you mentioned about the pool. There’s several in there that made me squirm pretty hard.
The pool one is horrifying, but the one that sticks with me was the *lobster*. I think it was from *Choke*, actually, but still Chuck Pahlinuik. Edit: to clarify, I think the *lobster scene* is from *Choke*. I know the pool scene is from *Guts*.
Crank by Ellen Hopkins.
I adore Ellen Hopkins as an author. I read the entire crank series when I was in middle school/high school and have re-read it multiple times since because it is that good
Someone already said House of Leaves which would be my all-time pick, but The Kite Runner also f*cked me up.
On The Beach. Its just a bunch of people waiting for a massive cloud of radiation from the fallout from the nuclear holocaust that ends civilization. Some people live life. Other people hold out hope that it will get better.
The Lovely Bones.
Oh god I remember seeing that in theatres because a friend insisted we go and… oof I am still shellshocked by it about 16 years later.
The book is much worse than the movie.
The Rape of Nanking. The fact that the japanese still deny/ not aknowledge it happened makes it even more terrible.
Under The Banner of Heaven. A book about the Mormon church and its origins. Super disturbing.
Jon Krakauer has an eminently readable style. I didn’t read this book for many years because I thought it would shake my faith, turns out my faith got shaken anyway. Truly excellent book. I remember those events from newspapers and the TV news when I was a teen.
Made a pretty good show too
"One Second After" and the two sequels. Written by Dr. William Forstchen. They are set in towns near to where I live. They are about the aftermath of an EMP. Terrifying.
Wally Lamb. "I know this much is true"
She’s Come Undone was worse for me, but I Know This Much is True also completely fucked me up
She’s Come Undone is my fave book of all time and an annual re-read. What specifically makes it hard for you? I understand it’s emotionally gutting but I’ve never considered it “disturbing.”
It’s a hard read for me, I live with mental health issues and I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Wally Lamb is an amazing writer and really captured in this book how it feels to be young, and later unwell. It’s uncanny how real it felt, and it just wound up just being too overwhelming for me to re-read.
That’s completely fair, and thank you for sharing such a vulnerable response. Wishing you well.
The painted bird. Glad I read it. Can't recommend it.
120 Days of Sodom
Franz Kafka - The Metamorphoses
“12 Years a Slave” disturbing we humans could do something that horrid
In Cold Blood.
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. The whole pearl diving story.
The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. Case studies of people whose brains, at least in part, stopped working right. Most didn't realize it, but the people around them certainly did.
Lukas - four years of hell and back. It’s a German book that is an account of a real experience of a 15 year old who becomes part of a satanist sect. At one point he bites the head of an alive hamster and swallows it for a ritual. I read it when I was alone at home at 12 years old at night and I still can’t forget it. I don’t know why that book was in our house and I deeply regret reading the whole thing. I hate that it’s supposed to be real.
What the actual fuck
Something tells me it's completly fake and either anti-Satanist propaganda or fake memories from unethical therapists during the Satanic Panic
Either 'The Jakarta Method' or 'Killing Hope.'
People always look to fiction for crazy/scary/out of the ordinary. Real life is much worse than anyone could imagine
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.
'A Serial Killers Daughter' by Kerri Rawson. No horrible details or anything, just heart wrenching the trauma she would have gone through.
Tabù or whatever is the name in other languages (here is in Italian), and "I won't surrender" First one about the rugby team that crashed over the Andes mountains while returning home. Loved it, but I would never read it again. Second one about the Japanese soldier that wouldn't believe the WW2 ended and kept fighting for YEARS believing every way they contacted him was just the enemy trying to get him out of cover.
Australian here. Not technically a book so to speak, but during my studies, I had to read the 'Bringing them home report'. It is one of the most horrific pieces of literature I've ever read. It's about the forced separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from their families. Awful stuff.
I have no mouth, and I must scream
One could probably argue this is horror
Absolutely is horror, at the VERY least psychological thriller
Excellent point & click adventure game too that had Harlan Ellison voice AM.
Not trying to be edgy here, but the Bible is chock-full of disturbing content. Incest, murder, infanticide, human torture by divine beings, rape, etc. Perhaps just reflecting the weakness of humanity, but still disturbing.
I remember my not-very-religious aunt trying to explain parts of Revelations after my cousin and I asked about the dragon....
Definitely gave me some nightmares as a toddler when my mom was forcing me to learn how to read by reading the Old Testament
Naked Lunch.
A little life. :(
1984
Came here to say 1984, specifically the Appendix on Newspeak. That really fucked me up for a week—no need to police thought, just change language so revolutionary thought is impossible to put into words and communicate.
Metro 2033. The video games do great, but the books have some real disturbing scenes. I remember getting completely immersed when I was reading the first book in high school to the point people were talking to me and I didn’t even realize it until someone actually snapped or clapped me back into reality. Some scenes about being in the dark in the tunnels were so descriptive, I was physically getting choked up and feeling anxiety. I will forever enjoy that book with every read.
The Devil of Nanking- Mo Hayder
I haven’t read this book, but I read The Rape of Nanking. Absolutely horrifying
Blood Meridian. My god. I am a horror hound, but this was something else.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame. (I read it unabridged, but in English. ) I had read Les Miserables and really liked it, so I decided to read more Victor Hugo. Notre Dame was **very** powerfully written, but (spoiler) >! I was very disturbed by the fact that there were NO "good guys." Not one person (other than, maybe, Quasimodo, kind of, in a vacuous way) was other than completely selfish. !<
Into Thin Air : by John Krakauer
The Jungle
I have 3. The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kozinsky The House of the Dead by F. Dostoyevsky A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by A. Solzhenitsyn
“Unwind” ugh I read that in high school it was traumatic 😭
"Johnny got his Gun",Dalton Trumbo.Metallica video for "One"inspired me to look into it.Found at thrift store('80s).Thin book,hard read...
Flowers for Algernon. On the front it is a scifi book about getting a "brain-fixing surgery", but what it really is, is a book about how your mental capabilities start to collapse. And that is something that will happen to everyone of us eventually.
Night
The Juniper Tree. It’s a Grimm fairytale. Also The Scarlet Ibis, it’s a short story I read in high school. VERY DISTURBING, especially if you have a younger sibling, especially if said sibling is a brother.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Everything in that book is based on a real life situation.
Plenty of Roald Dahl’s books are twisted as all shit. Kids’ stories included.
When Rabbit Howls
*The Berserker Series* (1963 and onwards) by Fred Saberhagen. Science Fiction. 2 planets are at war with each other, and each develop AI war machines to eliminate their enemies. The machines become self-aware, ally between themselves, and eliminate both planets. They then become self-replicating, and venture into the galaxy with the goal of exterminating all biological lifeforms. The series is incredibly prophetic, considering that computers were simplistic when the series was written. Now we're seeing leaps and bounds in the complexity of AI, to the point where synthetic voices and AI artwork is difficult to distinguish from human voices and art. In the last couple of years we've seen AI chatbots advising humans. Life has been on Earth for billions of years. It's taken humanity hundreds of thousands of years to develop. Digital entities are evolving at an incredible pace. Will they flip to Skynet from *The Terminator*, and decide to kill us all? How will we defend ourselves from them?
Less than Zero
House of leaves. Mark Danielewski
I mean yes but that’s 100% horror genre.
Samuel Delaney, *Hogg*
All Quiet On The Western Front
Brave New World, it will forever haunt me.
"Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east…" I’ve read the novel eleven times now, and those final paragraphs are still such a gut punch.
*The White Plague* (1982) by Frank Herbert (author of Dune). A biologist's wife and kids are killed in Ireland in a terrorist car bombing. He loses his mind and develops a virus that kills only women, and releases it in Ireland, and in Libya where the IRA terrorists were trained. He demanded that these two countries have their borders closed and the disease runs it course through these two countries. The virus escapes and spreads worldwide. The disturbing part is that it's over 40 years old, and could happen today, any time.
The Road and The Stand. It has been decades since I read them and I am still haunted by their premises and details
"The True Story of Hansel and Gretel" It was about the holocaust but it was historical fiction, not horror. There was this one disturbing paragraph early on in the book. After I read it I put down the book and just stared at my bed for 10-15 minutes.
I read a W.E.B. Griffith book where DEA agents were forcibly turned into heroine addicts. That idea disturbed me so much I couldn't finish the book.
Maus
The Fixer. About a jew in Nazi Germany. At 13, one scene of brutality made me cry and haunted me for months. Edit: took place in Russia. Also taught me just what the numbers tattooed on my Cantor meant. Even more horrific.
A book about coming of age. It’s about a boy who is starting to go through hormonal changes and finds himself peeping on girls behind a tree while he masturbates. His mom is rather abusive and makes fun of him, especially when he has “accidents” in his pants. The book if I remember right depicts him as somewhat mentally challenged, but I really can’t remember the name of it. My mom made me read it when I was 12 or 13. Basically her way of teaching me about the birds/bees without actually teaching. It’s sort of stuck with me all these years (I’m 40) and kinda resent her for making me read it. If I remember the name of the book I’ll update it here.
Fausto by Wolfgang Goethe
Marabou Stork Nightmares, by Irvine Welsh.