# Disturbing books?



## velveteen (Feb 28, 2015)

Guts by Chuck Palahniuk
Guts | The Cult

And also, anything by Cormac McCarthy.


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## Ik3 (Mar 22, 2015)

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood


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## Narcissus (Dec 18, 2014)

Hands down to "Les Chants de Maldoror".
*lil' informational edit.* The book, for something written in XIX century, is a real mindfuck often described as "prose poetry". It's more surreal than surrealism and the language is suprisingly picturesque considering the fact that some ideas, visions and actions of the main character may at times be more distirbing than those Chuck Palahniuk could come up with.
Checking out a bunch of quotes in this case may be a good choice. 
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/153341.Comte_de_Lautr_amont


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## marbleous (Feb 21, 2014)

Short story: I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

About a robot who terrorizes people. Recommended by a friend, and do not want to finish it.

You can read it here: I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison


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## china (Feb 11, 2015)

a clockwork orange is good, not sure if it's what you're looking for but it's definitely worth a read


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## Metalize (Dec 18, 2014)

marbleous said:


> Short story: I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
> 
> About a robot who terrorizes people. Recommended by a friend, and do not want to finish it.
> 
> You can read it here: I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison


Damn, beat me to it.

The AI has full access to its human captives' minds, and uses it to torture them physically/psychologically as much as it can without actually killing them.

I'd suggest _A Maze of Death_, by Philip K. Dick

http://www.kkbooks.net/ScienceFiction/A_Maze_of_Death/

Frightening and fascinating, one of the few books I've read more than once. Though it's probably more mind-trip than horror.


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## Pressed Flowers (Oct 8, 2014)

_Anthem_ was very disturbing to me as an Fe user. The last few pages of the book are what I would refer to as "insane". 

_Beloved_ is pretty disturbing, on a psychological, societal, and physical level. It reminds me of _The Scarlet Letter_ only cranked up x120 with weirdness. 

_1984_ is naturally disturbing, and somewhat gruesome, but on a very "basic" level. 

_Heart of Darkness,_ _Hamlet_, and _Macbeth_ are all pretty weird, but I'm not sure if you'd be interested in such heavily literary stuff.


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## Blue Soul (Mar 14, 2015)

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.


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## Narcissus (Dec 18, 2014)

I've been wondering if maybe I should say the obvious. Marquis de Sade was a wacky libertine man. Justine had _a few_ really disturbing moments.


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## Pressed Flowers (Oct 8, 2014)

Sorry, remembered some more. 

Edgar Allen Poe might do you good. It's really easy to get ahold of a collection of his works, and they're all pretty unsettling. I only read a few and felt quite creeped out. 

_Watership Down_ is also generally agreed to be very disturbing. Little bunnies killing each other and all. I think it's just a great look at our society and an even better story, but some people see it differently. 

There's actually a _really_ morbid - absolutely morbid - collection of short stories about the post apockylptic world that we talked about in my creative writing class recently, I'll see if I can't find you the name of it. Honestly I think this could be the perfect thing for you. It might be hard to locate, but... I'll try to return with the information.

Edit: having trouble finding that short story collection, but this one seems to accomplish the same thing 

http://www.amazon.com/Wastelands-John-Joseph-Adams/product-reviews/1597801054


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## Children Of The Bad Revolution (Oct 8, 2013)

Lolita by Nobokov is disturbing and even moreso that pop culture has seemed to embrace it?


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## Narcissus (Dec 18, 2014)

alittlebear said:


> Sorry, remembered some more.
> 
> Edgar Allen Poe might do you good. It's really easy to get ahold of a collection of his works, and they're all pretty unsettling. I only read a few and felt quite creeped out.
> 
> ...


In terms of disturbing works by mr. Poe, I'd mention especially: Berenice, King Pest(that one's also quite funny, zctually), the Murders in the Rue Morgue, the Mystery of Marie Roget, the Pit and the Pendulum, Mesmeric Revelation, the Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. Maybe also Hop-Frog.


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## zanah0dia (Apr 8, 2015)

Lovecraft is good but not so much "disturbing" as "vaguely unsettling when read in bulk", as least to me. If you don't mind gore you could try the Jack Caffery series by Mo Hayder. Wonderfully gruesome crimes and very well written.
You could also try Gillian Flynn? I honestly hated both Sharp Objects and Gone Girl but idk, a lot of people seem to like her. Her plots had a lot of potential and could've been really good but I just hated the writing style too much to appreciate either. I'm notoriously picky about what I read, though, so you might not have a problem with it.


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## The Hungry One (Jan 26, 2011)

velveteen said:


> Guts by Chuck Palahniuk
> Guts | The Cult
> 
> And also, anything by Cormac McCarthy.


I was just going to post this. I can't forget it and it's terrible.


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## elpis (Mar 24, 2013)

velveteen said:


> And also, anything by Cormac McCarthy.


Yes! McCarthy's Child of God was the first book that came to mind when I thought about disturbing books. Murder and rape are disturbing enough, but when the protagonist commits these heinous acts in that order, it takes disturbing to a whole new level.


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## mhysa (Nov 27, 2014)

marbleous said:


> Short story: I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
> 
> About a robot who terrorizes people. Recommended by a friend, and do not want to finish it.
> 
> You can read it here: I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison





alittlebear said:


> _Anthem_ was very disturbing to me as an Fe user. The last few pages of the book are what I would refer to as "insane".





Blue Soul said:


> The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.


seconding all of these! they're amazing. _anthem_ in particular brought me to tears (at two different points in the story) because it was just so heavy.

i have a thing for disturbing books, not sure why. morbid curiosity, i guess. 

these are some i'd recommend if you're looking for straight-up brutal, gross, graphic content. these are the kind of books that would often have me stop reading, take deep breaths, take a walk or seek out positive human interaction, and come back later:

_american psycho_ by bret easton ellis - basically, lots of murder and sexual violence.
_hogg_ by samuel r. delaney - some real stomach-churning shit here - murder, pedophilia, necrophilia, brutal rape, scat, etc.
_the painted bird_ by jerzy kosinski - lots of rape and general, brutal violence in this one too, as well as bestiality.
_haunted_ by chuck palahniuk - a collection of 23 short stories. some of these actually prevented me from eating for a bit after reading them because they were so horrible. i think someone in this thread actually suggested one of them (guts - the author went on tour and did public readings of this one, which caused a lot of people in the audiences to faint).

and here are some that were disturbing to me on a different level, in a more emotional way:

_the invisible man_ by ralph ellison - a story about blackness, individuality, personal identity, and dissociation from these things.
_we need to talk about kevin_ by lionel shriver - not really a story, but a collection of letters from a woman to her estranged husband, reflecting on their marriage and on their son, who committed a school shooting. very well-written prose, one of my favorite books.
_geek love_ by katherine dunn - another one of my favorites. it's about a family of mutants who run and star in their own traveling carnival, and the competition and dysfunction between them.

i'll add more as i think of them, those are just off the top of my head.


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## ientipi (Oct 17, 2013)

The 47 Laws of Power is pretty sick. And sic. Lol 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Arzazar Szubrasznikarazar (Apr 9, 2015)

_The Kindly Ones_. Holocaust from from perspective of a depraved Nazi intellectualist.


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## penguin.ink (Apr 9, 2015)

OH MY GOSH!!!!
'Vampire Diaries' By: LJ Smith
I finish books, mind you, no matter how disturbing... until _shutters THAT_ book!!
The main character _gag_ worse than 'Bella Swan' I tell you!!!!!!


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## johnnyyukon (Nov 8, 2013)

The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer


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## stiletto (Oct 26, 2013)

velveteen said:


> Guts by Chuck Palahniuk
> Guts | The Cult
> 
> And also, anything by Cormac McCarthy.


I read it, but I couldn't hold my breath for that long. :/


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## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

Children Of The Bad Revolution said:


> Lolita by Nobokov is disturbing and even moreso that pop culture has seemed to embrace it?


I don't think you understand what it's about if you think it's disturbing that people like it.


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## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

I think Gillian Flynns novels are disturbing in a very human and non supernatural way. My favorite one of hers is Dark Places, it's much more disturbing on a visceral level than Gone Girl; but Gone Girl is disturbing in that both of the main narrators are deranged people who lack normal human empathy, which gives the book a kind of haha piqeresque feel because it's really in the end difficult to feel sorry for or relate to anyone except maybe the detectives.

I think the Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton is disturbing, but on a very human every day tragedy kind of feel. I'm not sure morbid is the correct term.

Wuthering Heights in its actual literary glory is faintly disturbing in not only the Gothic themes embraced by the film versions, but in the disturbing family dynamics, child abuse, selfishness and petty cruelty of many of the characters, though some parts are deeply wise or darkly funny. It's a family saga, it's not just a love story.

I see you have read The Story of the Eye, which I now feel in my thirties is pointlessly grotesque, an early 20th century version of the kind of shit that goes on in "pushing the envelope" tv/movies today, just really no apparent reason, like Robot Chicken as a pornographic French novella.


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## FourLeafCloafer (Aug 5, 2014)

House of leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. A strange book if I ever read one.


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## sockratees (Apr 7, 2015)

The Tanakh

'If a priest's daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire."

- Leviticus 21:9


18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:

19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;

20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.

21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Deuteronomy 21:18-21


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## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

Oh this is great, too...read some old fairy tales, bro:


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## KingAndrew (May 8, 2015)

Twilight: A story about a girl's choice between bestiality and necrophilia. Also the main vampire guy is over 100 years old and stalks a high school girl. Creepy pedo much?


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## Children Of The Bad Revolution (Oct 8, 2013)

Thalassa said:


> I don't think you understand what it's about if you think it's disturbing that people like it.


Explain?


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## Eudaimonia (Sep 24, 2013)

Anything by Chuck Palahniuk is pretty disturbing.

The Devil in the White City is interesting. It's about HH Holmes and Chicago's Golden Age.

The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill

A History of Cannibalism

Somebody must have mentioned RedDragon already on this thread... because it is a fascinating book.


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## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

Children Of The Bad Revolution said:


> Explain?


Lolita isn't pro-hebephilia, in fact it makes a mockery of Humbert, shows how he looks down on Lolita intellectually (this in part was also a critique of the burgeoning "pop culture" of America in the 50s)...how he stunts her growth emotionally so much that it impacts her athletic gifts...Humbert is ridiculous, pompous little man, large passages of the book are meant to be funny. ..but Lolita illustrates how a person with such "needs" thinks, and how plausibly it can happen due to a young teenager having a crush or sexual curiosity. I saw someone once call it the world's truest love story, and I thought that was terrible. ..until I actually read it, and it does show the dynamics of idealizing the other and what they are to you instead of what they are for themselves, on both sides...Lolita wanted gifts, and she later wanted the lifestyle of traveling instead of being made to go back to school, while Humberts objectification is much more plain and apparent. It's absolutely farcical in some passages, like how the mother "conveniently" dies, or how when she borrows money much later she tells her husband that Humbert is her "dad"...in the end Humbert is shamed and remorseful, haunted by the laughter of children. If anything the book is a complexity of being anti-pedophilia while still recognizing the humanity of the pedophile...I mean most good literature has that complexity. Demonizing him doesn't really speak to the reader in any way about the reality of humanity. 

Which is also why even short children's fairy tales are superior to their whitewashed Disney interpretation. "And that is the way men are, truly."


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## Ninjaws (Jul 10, 2014)

Emerald Legend said:


> Can someone recommend me some disturbing books?
> The most disturbing books I've read-
> Exquisite corpses (yes, it's about what you're thinking)
> Equus (play)
> ...


This book is extremely disturbing:










It gives me nightmares every night.


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## Fern (Sep 2, 2012)

_Flowers in the Attic

A Clockwork Orange

Equus

Sybil

The Qur'an 

Behold A Pale Horse _


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## Fern (Sep 2, 2012)

Ninjaws said:


> This book is extremely disturbing:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Dude. Trigger warning next time, please?


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## WitchPuddin (Jul 13, 2014)

Watership Down

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

at least IMO

Edit:

+ McCarthy's The Road


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