The Bible series, but things really jumped the shark with the Book of Mormon.
The Bible did fuck me up as a kid.
But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.
Matthew 5:28-5:29
Reading this as a super religious + horny 12 year old was terrifying. I felt extreme guilt for not maiming myself for a few years before I finally realized religion was bullshit.
My wife was raised Southern Baptist, she has a lot of sex hang ups, despite having been out of the church for about 30 years.
You are not alone in this.
“If a man is considered guilty for what goes on in his mind, then give me the electric chair for all my future crimes.”
-Prince 1989
That one is crazy how the main character does shitty things like wiping out civilizations just out of spite, then he impregnates a teenage girl and the baby grows up and is all nice and loving but says he is actually his dad and he/his dad love everyone. So much gaslighting.
Indeed, among the religious books I have read, the Book of Mormon takes the top position on the loony pile. What kind of indoctrination and drugs do you need to believe that?
Grooming the youth, that’s the kind of indoctrination you need. As a missionary, the only non-indoctrinated adults who got into the BoM were, let’s say, simple.
American Psycho contained scenes so graphic that I’d have to pause and stare out the window briefly before I could go on.
I used to sell books and this elderly couple came up to the counter saying they were buying it as a Christmas present.
So I told them “Hey, it’s not my place to say what is or is not a good Christmas present, but before I sell it to you, could I get you to just flip the pages, randomly stick your finger in, and start reading?”
They thought I was kidding, but they did it…
“OH MY GOD!”
“Yeah…”
“OH MY GOD!”
Better they find out then than AFTER I sold it to them!
That’s a pretty interesting encounter. Glad you helped them know what they were about to do.
It was more self preservation. I didn’t want them coming back after the fact. ;)
Yeah first time I read a grueling book. Couldn’t believe how much worse literature gore affects me compared to onscreen blood.
Pausing is a regular thing with books for me, disturbing or no
The pause was forced was my point. I couldn’t go on otherwise because I was overwhelmed.
Aside from the occasional designed-to-offend ones, probably The Road. Only book I’ve ever read that haunted me
I got offended at the lack of punctuation or anything. Didn’t get far. Fuck you Oprah and fuck your book club.
Hm I wonder how the next scene will go. Gray ash huh? Well I guess I should have seen that coming.
I read it and then watched the movie and it was depressing. His other book Outer Dark involves brother sister incest, child murder, and cannibalism! Very cheery.
Anytjing that marquis de sade wrote. Dont read it. Its the work of someone who pretended to “pose interesting questions” while write the worst rape fanfiction with his dick in his hand.
Trigger warning: just straight up awful assault
!There is a scene in which a father is forced to raped his underaged daughter and then gets shot while cumming inside her. The daughter of course gets spared. Oh wait no. She gets raped a gun point, mutilated and then rape killed again. Repeat this fof roughly 400 pages. Oh wow, so challenging and insightful! I truly believe that de Sade was horrified by this! Fuck off. !<
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That’s pretty terrible. Good luck to you.
Naked Lunch by Christopher Burroughs
The Trial by Franz Kafka. Anything by Kafka is pretty mental.
Now imagine being German and having to read several works by that loony in middle school.
William S. Burroughs, not Christopher! Unless that’s I joke I’m missing…
Oh sbit
Was just talking about this yesterday because of the “would you pick the man or the bear” question going around. The novel Bear by Marian Engel is quite literally about a woman who falls in love with and tries to have sex with a large bear. It won the Governor General’s award in Canada.
Also The Wasp Factory is seriously fucked up.
The Reckoning by Grisham.
Death in Her Hands by Moshfegh.
The Long Walk by King.
The Children of Hurin by Tolkien.
Angela’s Ashes by McCourt.
Already mentioned but The Road, definitely.
On the Beach by Nevil Schute. Read it as a kid and didn’t realize what I was getting into. Kept waiting for the ending to have some kind of silver lining. Something. Then the last of humanity fucking dies and the last character commits suicide.
I think it was called “Welcome to Night Vale”. After painfully reading page after page of absurd drivel that was probably “written” by a drunk AI, I finally gave up. It really reads like the output of a low-quality Markov chain. My daughter insists it isn’t, but then they managed to simulate that very, very well (I have worked with Markov chains before, so I have a bit of experience how that looks like).
It is very rare that I give up on a book, maybe one in several thousands. But this one was a perfect waste of paper and ink, worse than some books we had to read in school, which is probably the harshest criticism I can offer.
Blood Meridian by Cormac Mccarthy.
It’s kinda hard to describe. I recon it’s a parable about American colonization and the genocide of the native people. Like a map of how a project like that gets done and who benefits from it.
It’s like a melodrama in that it’s light on plot, and character motivation, but without the extreme circumstances unless you count the pervasive, persistent, and senseless violence. (that the characters themselves barely seem to notice) Not exactly a supernatural tale, but filled with dream logic, oh and the literal Christian Devil is one of the main characters.
This is the only book Ive ever read twice, back to back. I got to the end and was like WTF, turned to the first page and started again.
“Mangez le si vous voulez” (Eat him of you wish)
A book relating events that happened in 1870 in a French village. From a misunderstanding one guy is beaten, released, tortured and ultimately burned alive with people bridging toast to collect the fat that was dripping from the fire.
All the events happened in a single day that goes from mundane to horror.
Not really quite as bad as the others here, but I read the first two books of the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind as a young teen before getting squicked out by it. The female lead almost gets sexually assaulted four times (one of them being when she rides into the middle of a battlefield completely naked for incredibly contrived reasons). The entire first half of the second book is the author’s BDSM fantasy forced into plot relevancy. But perhaps the worst I read was some evil ritual that involved the villain cutting off and eating the genitals of a young boy.
So yeah, I stopped reading it.
I came here to talk about this exact series.
I think I read up to about book 8 and every one had some fucked up rape/bdsm shit.
I read Hunter S Thompson’s book about the Hells Angels when i was in high school and i regret it, i also really fucking hate bikers. Just rolling packs of rapists.
I’ve heard of Bikers Against Child Abuse that plays upon the stereotype to guard kids against their abusers and provide a protective presence as the kids testify in court 🤔
Good for them. But i’ve also heard of public relations so i don’t trust these things. Im sure priests also offer support services for victims of child abuse.
Well, there are bikers and then there are bikers.
Also sexual predators are often victims themselves. It is not far fetched that some would try to help people is a similar situation. But it is also not far fetched to think that some become perpetrators of similar actions.
It’s so creepy because you read the repeated sexual abuse of a minor through the eyes of the perpetrator who continuously justifies his acts and misrepresents Lolita’s reactions. He’s a very unreliable narrator. First he even becomes her stepdad to have better access to her. Then her mother dies, through a car accident just before she can call the police on him. Again this is recounted through Humberts eyes, so I’m thinking it was actually murder.
I haven’t finished the book yet, it’s kind of hard to read. It’s been a few years, and I should be somewhere in the middle IIRC.
