THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => ENJOY => Topic started by: Caleb on 06 Oct 2009, 10:07
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Popcrunch just did a top 10 list. I have read a bunch of them.
Here is a list if you don't want to go to that ugly-ass website.
1. The Girl Next Door
2. The Turner Diaries
3. The 120 Days of Sodom
4. Johnny Got His Gun
5. American Psycho
6. The Road
7. We Need to Talk About Kevin
8. Naked Lunch
9. Requiem For A Dream
10. Blindness
http://www.popcrunch.com/the-10-most-disturbing-books-of-all-time/
I would say that Blindness and the Road are two that stuck in my mind.
House of Leaves was also pretty brain twisting. I would have to say that is the latest one that disturbed me on some level.
How about you?
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Haunted
Snuff
both by Chuck Palahniuk, who else?
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5. American Psycho
8. Naked Lunch
9. Requiem For A Dream
Already on my to-read list. I might have to add more to the list now.
I guess I'd say The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks is the most recent disturbing novel I've read
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Cell, by Stephen King.
Not even my favorite of his works, but the ending really genuinely disturbed me.
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Beneath the Underdog, actually. It was a deeply troubling look into Charles Mingus' deeply troubled mind.
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Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
Both are similar, I think, in that they're essentially travelogues depicting astounding violence and depravity as the basic and natural state of human interaction.
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Blindness was such a good book.
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2. The Turner Diaries
Hunter is pretty bad as well, though the almost orgasmic depictions of genocide in The Turner Diaries are deeply, deeply chilling. There is a particular scene where the main character pretty much starts skipping for joy because his neo-nazi terrorist army have just killed every black, hispanic, jewis, gay and liberal person in California. I think something like the Turner Diaries is always going to top a list like this for me, because an author deliberately trying to gross you out can never be as bad as an author that is basically just a fundamentally evil bastard.
In the more conventional sense, I think The Wasp Factory probably deserves a place.
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5. American Psycho
I'm reading it now... Damn, it's so brilliant! And I didn't known about the book being in first person, that came as a big surprise to me and it added to the awesomeness imho.
The book makes me laugh a lot but also get quiet scarred
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House of Leaves was the creepiest shit. Although by the middle of the book I didn't really care about the narrator anymore, I just wanted to know what was going down in the house...
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I'm finding Lolita pretty disturbing, personally, because the writing is so good and Humbert seems so affable that I can't help but like him even as I'm reading his (wonderfully written) depictions of how he's committing statutory rape and how he's abusing her to make sure she doesn't tell anyone.
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The ending of The Perfume wasn't disturbing per se but, I just wasn't sure how to feel about it actually.
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Only part of the way into Palahniuk's Pygmy, but I gotta say that reading about juvenile rape in Engrish was a bit off-putting.
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5. American Psycho
This book is fucked up.
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I tried reading about 3/4s of Twilight once but I suppose that's not the kind of disturbing we're talking about.
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I dunno. The books have imprinting. That got pretty weird when you have teenage shapeshifters grooming their mating partners from toddlerhood and a romantic attraction being explained away as an eventually sexual attraction to the main character's non-existent baby.
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Or the whole "If he removes the engine block from your car so you can't go see a friend he dislikes, he really loves you" part.
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BUT HE'S HAWWWT SO IT'S ALL RIGHT.
But srsly, that book is like torture to any strain of feminist.
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Won't lie was not a fan of Naked Lunch. I guess i didnt get it, but it was annoying to me. I just bought my girlfriend Snuff for her birthday(appropriate? I think not) Requiem for a Dream was an awesome movie so im sure the book would be great so need to put that on my list.
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But srsly, that book is like torture to any strain of feminist.
My mother actually read all four books of that series, and she was an active feminist in college (that was the late 70s, early 80s, before feminism was a word mostly used to cover up raging misandry). She didn't like them, but she couldn't stop reading them once she had started them.
I still need to check out Johnny Got His Gun again, I never even started it last time I checked it out.
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Night of the Living Dummy.
Pea Soup vomit is so nasty.
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[...]
I still need to check out Johnny Got His Gun again, I never even started it last time I checked it out.
[...]
For the full effect swing by the movie of the same title too.
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No book has ever disturbed me quite like Clockwork Orange. Reading it all in one sitting + the wonderful writing + the absolutely gut wrenching ideas, hurts.
In retrospect, Lolita is exceedingly disturbing. It's been my favourite book since I first read it a good few years ago though, so some of that seems to have faded for me.
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Seriously, are the books ahead of The Road actually creepier? I haven't read them, but the thought of a book more disturbing than The Road makes me want to induce concussions until I'm no longer literate.
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Books ahead of The Road? Do you mean McCarthy books made before The Road? Some of them, yeah. Blood Meridian's Judge is one of the more terrifying literary creations I've come across, and the book itself is darker and more brutal than The Road. There's also Anton Chighur from Old Country. McCarthy has a thing for unstoppable evil.
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Yeah, one chapter of the Judge is more terrifying than the total of The Road. The thing about the Judge isn't just that he's evil—it's that he's ingeniously, meticulously evil. There is nothing about him that is not exquisitely calculated and unremittingly ruthless.
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As an aside, if you've read Blood Meridian there's a lengthy lecture about the literary depth of the book and the biblical style in which it was written posted on Youtube by Yale University (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgyZ4ia25gg). Interesting, but spoilerific.
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House of Leaves scared the hell out of me, but it didn't really disturb me. I found Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk kind of disturbing but honestly, his writing doesn't capture me enough to have any kind of lasting affect.
That said, the first thing I thought of when I saw the title for this thread was A Clockwork Orange. It may not be as over the top gruesome as Haunted but it stuck with me a lot more - the characters are a lot more fleshed out and the writing is phenomenal.
And it's been a while since I've read Lolita but yeah, that was an incredibly disturbing book. It was beautifully written, but very, very hard to read just because it was so intense.
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I saw House of Leaves mentioned a few times on here. A friend of mine just showed me a quote from the book, and after a little research it sounds like something I might enjoy. I don't read much but is it worth picking up?
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As an aside, if you've read Blood Meridian there's a lengthy lecture about the literary depth of the book and the biblical style in which it was written posted on Youtube by Yale University (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgyZ4ia25gg). Interesting, but spoilerific.
Cool, I will have to check that out.
House of Leaves scared the hell out of me, but it didn't really disturb me.
House of Leaves strikes me as a very Lovecraftian story in the way that the house is simply beyond any kind of human explanation or comprehension.
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ENOUGH.
Okay. Seriously. Everyone stop with the stupid fucking always-putting-the-word-house-in-blue-text bit. I know that's how everyone can tell you're a fan of the book but it's really starting to irritate me. It makes you look like you're in a cult. A really, really annoying cult.
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Okay that was over-the-top but seriously you should all consider the possibility that you might have been massively sucked in by nothing more than a clever bit of marketing and now you look pretty foolish to everyone else.
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One of you doing it was funny but the rest of you are embarrassing me and yourselves.
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http://xkcd.com/472/
Sounds like a book I'd like, though. thanks, thread, for the suggestion.
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Or you could read Borges' Ficciones and Nabokov's Pale Fire instead.
I haven't read House of Leaves but from what I've read about it there isn't a whole lot of originality in the gimimicks.
On the other hand, anything that can get such a vitriolic overreaction from both JohnnyC and Inlander is pretty hilarious and should definitely be continued.16
16 Memes?? On my boards??? It's more common than you think!
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Okay that was over-the-top but seriously you should all consider the possibility that you might have been massively sucked in by nothing more than a clever bit of marketing and now you look pretty foolish to everyone else.
And you should consider the possibility we're just showing admiration for a book we like. God forbid!
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C'mon, the mom and dad angle here is kinda funny you've got to admit. If you kids don't stop coloring in that letter this instant we are turning this car around. Admit that this is making your life fuller.
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ENOUGH.
Okay. Seriously. Everyone stop with the stupid fucking always-putting-the-word-house-in-blue-text bit. I know that's how everyone can tell you're a fan of the book but it's really starting to irritate me. It makes you look like you're in a cult. A really, really annoying cult.
Harry lighten up! Gosh you're an old man.
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I have started something obscene.
I'm so proud :cry:
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No book has ever disturbed me quite like Clockwork Orange. Reading it all in one sitting + the wonderful writing + the absolutely gut wrenching ideas, hurts.
Loved the book, could not stomach the movie.
Creepiest book I have ever read is probably Pet Semetary, by Steven King. Started it more than five years ago, and I still cannot bring myself to finish it.
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The badly spelled edition?
There was a time when I read Stephen King and thought him disturbing. But that has long since gone. I generally think that horror works better in films than in books.
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ENOUGH.
Okay. Seriously. Everyone stop with the stupid fucking always-putting-the-word-house-in-blue-text bit. I know that's how everyone can tell you're a fan of the book but it's really starting to irritate me. It makes you look like you're in a cult. A really, really annoying cult.
Harry lighten up! Gosh you're an old man.
Can we refer to him as Harry forever? The blue colour matches his stars nicely.
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Seconded.
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The badly spelled edition?
Okay. I get it. Pet SemAtary. Happy? Fucking nit-pickers.
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Wait, now we're nit-picking about how to properly mis-spell a mis-spelled word?
Jesus.
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Yeah, seriously. That was my response too. People need to find some more important stuff to nit-pick about.
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Hands down, Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis. Great book. Like Hunter S. Thompson on meth.
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5. American Psycho
I will never forget reading that book. Couldn't have put it down if I'd wanted to. Although, honestly, I was more disturbed by the way it made me think about — and look at my own attitude to — consumerism than I was by the violence; I was in a funk for days after I finished reading. It was really powerful stuff.
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Battle Royale
"The rattling Ingram in Kiriyama's hand fire away a row of four holes that ran from her chest up to the middle of her head. Blood spilled out of Mitsuko's mouth. Mitsuko's face, once so beautiful, was torn up as if a strawberry pie had been flung into her face"
That's literature
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No, that's comedy. :P
Requiem for a Dream is the most depressing book I have ever read, I loved it but I am never reading it again or watching the film.
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I am mid-way through Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed. It's a fictional account of a husband and wife who work at Columbine during the shootings. They both survive, but the book tracks the emotional trauma that occurred, and how it effectively ruins both of their lives. I usually do not get too upset when I read, but when I read the section detailing the shootings, I was shaking so hard that I had to put the book down. Talk about an emotionally difficult read.
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I generally think that horror works better in films than in books.
Then you've been reading the wrong kind of horror. Try reading Peter Straub or Graham Masterton.
In that vein, Night Wars by Graham Masterton disturbed me on many different levels. Also, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood scared the pants off of me. I love dystopian tales.
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I love Margaret Atwood. Ever read Oryx and Crake?
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I stopped reading dystopic Atwood books after Handmaid's Tale in high school, but if you're looking for futurist books that will make you shed actual tears, I can't recommend Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (http://www.amazon.ca/Never-Let-Me-Kazuo-Ishiguro/dp/0676977103) strongly enough. Soon a movie with Kiera Knightley!
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Kat just checked out the sequel to "Oryx and Crake" called "The Year of the Flood". I'm quite interested in reading it once she's done.
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What pisses me off about Never Let Me Go is that I wrote a pretty alright short story about pretty much the same topic back in '03, but now I cannot show it to anyone without feeling even hackier then usual. Stupid Ishiguro just had to go and be more talented than me, the bastard.
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I hate it when people (see: everyone) do that.
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What pisses me off about Never Let Me Go is that I wrote a pretty alright short story about pretty much the same topic back in '03, but now I cannot show it to anyone without feeling even hackier then usual. Stupid Ishiguro just had to go and be more talented than me, the bastard.
I'm pretty sure the growing clone kids for parts thing has been done several times before and since by published authors so at least you're in good company. Oh yeah, why don't I have permissions for spoiler tags?
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Yeah, ideas have a way of getting farmed out and explored by many different people; we're all living in the same world, after all, so I'm not pretentious enough to really think I have any extraordinarily original ideas or anything. That said, I still find it somewhat intimidating when someone tackles the same subject as I have but does so with a far greater degree of success. His book essentially rendered any input I have on the subject superfluous, and it chafes me a bit. Ah well, there are worse crosses to bear than a mild case of artist envy.
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I love Margaret Atwood. Ever read Oryx and Crake?
I haven't, but I shall soon! There are perks to living within walking distance of a library.