Ok, this is a good one. What is the most disturbing book you have read?

For me it would be Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk, especially the stories: Cassandra-where he described human flesh decomposition so vividly; Guts-regarding an accident in a swimming pool and Civil Twilight-about a serial killer using bowling balls as weapon

When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs. Graphic novel in which friendly elderly couple attempt to cope with nuclear holocaust.

I'm not sure about most disturbing ever. For things I've read recently, Blindness by Jose Saramago was pretty disturbing, though. **Spoiler** The rape scene(s) was/were bad enough that I had to put the book down for a while and come back later.

And I'm getting all that bold redness for both touchstones.

for me the most disturbing book I've ever read was Borderlands 3 a collection of short stories. some were fun others interesting but quit a few were disturbing for me and it took me a long time to get through it, I'd have to stop after almost each story to let the affects ware off.

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. It's a recent read, relevant given events in various schools, and I'm a long-time educator wondering about kids who may have had me or others on the receiving end of "Kevinesque" behavior.

The Blue Book of the John Birch Society

Night Stalker by Clifford L. Linedecker. It's about serial killer Richard Ramirez. Truth is always scarier than fiction.

Whole book, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. The whole story just makes me shudder when I even think about it.

Either She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb, or A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. Both were well written, but left me feeling really unsettled.

I thought of Blindness as well, but I can't quite remember why. I just felt the whole book was so disgusting, I did not want to read further (I did finish it, though).

I thought Perfume was quite disturbing as well, but that was more just one madman, in blindness it was almost everyone.

The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum - a horrified pit in my stomach just thinking about this book

Edited to add: In the "truth is the scariest" vein, this was based on the true story of the death of Sylvia Likens in 1965.

I would agree with the poster who wrote: "Truth is always scarier than fiction." In that regard I'd have to go with "Helter Skelter", for its depiction of the details of how this group of unsuspecting people were tortured and killed by Charles Manson's followers.

I'd agree that Blindness is one of the more disturbing books I've read lately. I had a hard time sticking with it, everything about it was so messed up.

"Truth is scarier..." the only book I absolutely could not continue reading (besides poorly written books) was A Boy Called It -- I was horrified, and had to skip whole chapters and skim the ones I did read, and then go sit in my sons' room to watch them sleep peacefully and be thankful... went to the bookstore the minute they opened the next day to read the next books to find out how the author's life turned out

>15 TeacherDad:

Portions of that book have been rumored to be more fiction than fact. I've never read it myself, so I can't say for certain.

1984.

A fictional book I loved reading, but was made equally uncomfortable by, was The Republic of Trees. I'd certainly recommend it.

We Have to Talk About Kevin, hands down.

Probably Subliminal Seduction. Wilson Bryan Key has been dismissed as a crackpot and a conspiracy fetishist, and I have little patience with global conspiracies. But at the time I did find some of the types of things he was talking about in magazine ads. I have no idea how effective subliminal marketing is, but I was seriously disturbed - and angry - to find those ghost images in all sorts of places.

Arslan by M.J. Engh. Read it years ago (in the '90s) and found it both brutal and compelling. Check out the reviews (editorial as well as customer) at Amazon.

In movies and in books, I find realism much scarier than any science fiction or horror could ever be. That's why my vote goes to A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry.

Holocaust stories will give me nightmares too.

The book My Awakening by David Duke was racist and disturbing.

The touchstone gave the wrong book for My Awakening.

When Rabbit Howls By Truddi Chase. Another horrible story of child abuse. :o( In second place in a similar vein (terrible childhoods) is Running with Scissors--although in this memoir I was most disturbed by the utter lack of guidance and protection offered to a child's life run amuck as he's left to his own pitiful devices. And to try and portray it as humorous was also disturbing to me.

I'm trying to think of which horror novel bothered me most but I tend to shy away from gruesome for the heck of it type books.

As a child Knock Three Times had me completely terrified! Interestingly, I recently met someone else who had had the same reaction to it.

In more recent reading, I tend to agree about We Need to Talk About Kevin - I found the mother particularly disturbing.

For me it was The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks.

#24 thatbooksmell I have to agree with you on When Rabbit Howls. I just finished that a month ago and it just made me cringe picturing what that poor woman went through. Another one for non-fiction would have to be Hot House about the prisoners in Leavenworth.

For fiction, Suffer the Children was very eerie and just creepy. Kids eating human flesh and other grotesque things. Made me not want to have kids...LOL But I had 2 anyway.

In Cold Blood stuck with me for a long time. I found it absolutely terrifying. The little glimpses of kindness and humanity in Smith were nearly as troublesome and upsetting as the murders themselves. I shudder thinking about it.

I second The Handmaid's Tale and In Cold Blood. I haven't read The Wasp Factory but lots of people tell me it's flippin creepy.
Can I add Lord of the Flies, just because for a long time after reading it I couldn't look at mischievous boys in the same light?

(Touchstone trouble, sorry about that)

Definitely A People's History of the United States. The last 200+ years of American history should be taken to the ICC. If we had bothered to join it.

The Guns of August, about the big ol' cluster f*ck that was WWI is also really disturbing. Who let's soldiers march in machine gun fire and spends thousands of lives for a few yards of no-man's-land?

House of War is really messed up too. It's unbelievable how many times we've been a hairs breath away from nuking ourselves out of existence. This book contains a lot of "oh, my (insert deity who may or may not exist) listen to this.."

Wasn't shocked by Haunted, Lord of the Fliesor 1984. Probably because I poured over my mom's medical texts when I was little and was just fascinated by pictures of compound fractures and abnormal growths. And I grew up on Blade Runner and other totalitarian fiction.

But non-fiction will freak me out every time.

-the mistress

There have been quite a few, but a recent one is The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander ...specifically at a point in the book in which I figured out what the ending had to be.

Thatbooksmell I agree w/ you on Running With Scissors. While at times I was laughing and thinking this must be fiction, other times I was sickened by what went on in this boys life--it was just twisted and perverted.

Another book, although fiction, that disturbed me was Nineteen Minutes about a high school shooting. At times in that book I was in tears. I think because of what is reality in today's world and the fact that I have a daughter in high school now. Very disturbing!.

Rag and Bone Shop by Robert Cormier. It's about a young teen boy who is accused of killing a little girl.

!SPOILER ALERT!

He didn't do it, but by the end of the book he has been so damaged by interrogation that he confesses. Frightening!

Most disturbing book ever is a tough call. The most disturbing book I've read this year is probably A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beal. It is his memoir of his war experiences as a young boy in Sierra Leone. Disturbing and heartbreaking.

I was most disturbed reading American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis so much so that I didn't finish it. It was lent to me and I couldn't get past the vivid description of violence to understand any point he was trying to make. When I was discussing this with the person who lent me the book, she inadvertently let slip the ending and I gratefully stopped reading it. But it stayed in my mind for a long time and I still shudder sometimes if I think about it.

*shudder*

Around 12 or 13, I remember being troubled by Lord of the Flies, thinking about it for weeks after finishing it... and The Exorcist gave me nightmares, probably helped by reading it by flashlight under the covers so my parents wouldn't know (thought I was so mature... then I wanted my mommy!)

Oh easy; hands down Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Nothing else comes close.

Stranger Beside Me about serial killer (thankfully no longer with us) Ted Bundy. Geez, I didn't sleep for weeks after reading that book and will NEVER stop to help a guy wearing a cast with ANYTHING no matter how desperately he needed help! Eek!!

The Collector by John Fowles. Still makes me shudder to think about it.

Another book that really have me keeping the lights on at night and jumping at every little sound was Pet Semetary by Stephen King. I live in a state where there are Indian burial grounds all over the place so I'm kinda jumpy about it.

I pretty much stay away from anything that I might find too freakish or disturbing, which is kind of an odd statement considering I read mostly paranormal and urban fantasies. I guess you could say I'm more into the fantasy aspects than the horror ones.

I know people will think I'm crazy but the book I found the most disturbing of what I've read most recently is The Giver by Lois Lowry.

Read years ago,but for me it has got to be The Fog by James Herbert which was an awful book in the er,best sense of the word.

Sophie's Choice bothers me still even after 10 or so years.

I have to agree with posting above for (The Wasp Factory) by ((Iain Banks))

lita, try the brackets ... as in The Wasp Factory by Ian Banks

> 37

I think McCarthy's most disturbing book was Child of God. Not because of it's imagery, not because of it's subject matter, but because of the way it's written. The way it has most readers kind of relating to, and even quite liking, the main character despite his abhorrent habits. McCarthy seems to have tapped into elements of humanity that unite us all, whether it be in beauty or ugliness or a bit of both. I think the ending of that book was one of his most effective endings. The message it's trying to convey is unmistakeable and is that the connection we have with the main character cannot be dismissed, no matter how much we try to suppress it or drive it away. We need to acknowledge its presence, reconcile with it, and move forward.

Sorry first post and I used the wrong brackets. Still not sure if this automatically shows up so please pardon the test.

Barry Hannah wrote a short story collection called Bats out of Hell. The story which I believe was called "The Bats out of Hell Division", did not let me get to sleep that night. It was a particularly bloody, and disturbing Civil War tale.

lita: Welcome aboard - and yes, it does show up automatically.

> 47

I agree with Child of God by Cormac McCarthy. I had been reading a bunch of his books, but I had to take a break after that one. I am looking forward to the Coen Brothers' movie version of No Country for Old Men. I loved that book (also disturbing, but I liked the Sheriff's voice).

I've got to go with The Grizzly Maze by Nick Jans. Simply becuase even though I'd seen the documentary (and was already horrified, saddened and angry at Mr. Tradwell's folly), they'd gone to great pains to not use the audio discovered at the campsite.

In the book, the author describes the audio in technicolor detail - I actually had a nightmare that I believe represented a fairly accurate depiction of what happened to the two of them when the bears attacked.

In the end, still horrified, saddened and angry but with worse picutres in my head.

>47 Revenant:

John Hillcoat is also directing an adaptation of The Road. If you are familiar with Hillcoat's previous film "The Proposition" you'd see why the paring of him and McCarthy's work is perfect. If this is successful I hope he undertakes an adaptation of Blood Meridian. The books are always better of course but, I'd love to see McCarthy's other notable books reach a wider audience. All the Pretty Horses is all right but I don't consider it his best.

Can't say a whole book but Isaac Babel's collected short stories, when in the vengeful Cossack mode, show some of the depths of human nature. The sex scene in Hamsun's |Hunger will also give pause.

Some of the examples cited in earlier posts seem like wardrobe disfunction episodes in comparison.

I agree with you on The Giver. And as you, I try to stay away from those that would be too disturbing to me. Though as everyone knows you can't always tell what a book will hold until you get into it. I also agree with those that listed the Lord of the Flies, The Exocist, In Cold Bood, and this one that hasn't been mentioned yet This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti.

Out. Coudn't finish it.

Geek Love is one of my all-time favourite books. (My username is a tribute.) It is disturbing, tho.

#52 - Oh my stephmo I read that book. That was truly horrifying. I totally agree with your comments - definately still haunted by that whole affair.

I'm not sure what is meant by "disturbing" but I agree with Lord of the Flies.. I also found Dan Brown's Davici code and angels and demons graphically disturbing.

A lot of slavery-related books have disturbed me. What disturbed me most was that I was most able to give attention to the parts that graphically describe cruelty, such as descriptions the Middle Passage. I guess those parts are meant to get our attention, but it disturbed me to realize I would walk away from The Known World most clearly remembering a passage about someone's ear being cut off.

A lot of slavery-related books have disturbed me. What disturbed me most was that I was most able to give attention to the parts that graphically describe cruelty, such as descriptions the Middle Passage. I guess those parts are meant to get our attention, but it disturbed me to realize I would walk away from The Known World most clearly remembering a passage about someone's ear being cut off.

Not read recently, but I remember being quite shaken by The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy.

At the time I read it, I was still remembering the horrors of the Viet Nam War. The book made me consider how deeply "the military" secretly maintains control. It's a very frightening read...even today...I would guess. I know this was fiction, but it was based on the author's experiences of being a student within a military academy. To me, it was most amazing that he was not too frightened by "The Establishment" to publish this book.

Has anyone else here read it?

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I relished Geek Love, too! I think the author had an excellent point.

Toni Morrison's Beloved. I just had to stop, it crushed me to know there were lives out there like that, even knowing it was fiction.

she is a wonderful writer, excellent at her craft. just this one. i couldn't do it.

Beloved is disturbing, but also one so powerful I could not stop reading it -- it is one of the few books I could feel inside my entire body as my eyes read the words. does that make any sense?

I remember reading Lord of the Flies at a young enough age to be totally naive and arguing in disbelief with the book: that so could not happen! But after reading it, I was very wary of the other boys on the playground...

Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates. I had to put it in a different part of the house, where I couldn't see it, it upset me so much. Brilliant writing, though.

Oh yes, the visual impact of books... after reading one of Chuck Palahniuks I had to hide my whole collection of his books behind a philodendron -- yet I knew they were still there... lurking... waiting...watching???

I read "We Need to Talk about Kevin " a few years ago for a book discussion group. Very disturbing but interesting.

Mein Kempf by Adolph Hitler.

Love You forever... the picture book by Robert Munsch. This mother rocks her son and sings to him well into his 30's! CREEPY!

My mom hated that book. I don't know why though.

#59 sflax - I have to agree with you! The Known World was very disturbing for me. I kept thinking that these things actually happened to people, and it just makes me ill that people would treat other people so badly!

1. Rape a Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates
2. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
3. The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood

Disturbing yes, but all three also powerful and thought-provoking. The Handmaids Tale is a watershed book for me.

oh, yeah, anything about the Bush administration...:-)

Geek Love, The Collector, Perfume and Lord of the Flies are for sure up there on the disturbing shelf, but I enjoyed them all. Geek Love is a favorite, although I alternate between throwing it against the wall and hugging it close. The movie version of The Collector is fabulous, too.

Love You Forever is disturbing in the worst possible way. I don't like that book at all. True story... I was working in a bookstore and a man bought many copies of that book. I commented that I didn't like it very much, but some of Munsch's other stories, like Paper Bag Princess are fabulous. The guy asked why I didn't like it and I said it was creepy. He told me he is Munsch's brother. He was quite convincing. I kept my composure and said that it didn't matter, I still didn't like that book.

I agree with a few of you that Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk was, by far, the most disturbing book I've ever read. Palahniuk is cringe-worthy to begin with, but Haunted went above and beyond the bar of disturbance.

Got another one for the list... The Housekeeper by Melanie Wallace. Yikes... beautiful prose but very, very disturbing. One character, a teenage boy, commits hideous acts against his family and Wallace manages to describe it all in stark language that bares the brutality without an ounce of judgment. This has all the horror of Perfume, though the characters in The Housekeeper are even scarier than Grenouille in Perfume.

Message 72: Zmrzlina
Ha! Great story! I hope he was Munch's brother though, otherwise HE was pretty creepy.

"The Problem of Susan" by Neil Gaiman is pretty high up on my disturbing list. And several of the other stories found in Flights: Extreme Visions of fantasy.

My Idea of Fun by Will Self

The Mark of An Angel by Nancy Huston. Terrible, terrible thing happens near the end.

Books about the real world tend to disturb me much more than fiction. I just finished reading what is probably the scariest book I've ever read - Six Degrees by Mark Lynas, about global warming. The book desribes how things might change on earth with if the climate warms by one degree, two degrees etc. then discusses how likely different levels of warming are, what would cause them, and how we might avoid them.

Basically, the author says that there are a number of "tipping points" which, once triggered by rising temeratures, will cause the climate to heat up even more, regardless of anything we do, that we have already passed the first of those tipping points (a reduction in snow and ice - which reflects sunlight back into space, helping cool the earth), and that the sort of changes now necessary to avoid "runaway global warming" - ending in the extinction of almost all life on earth - will be impossible to carry out in time due to their being politically unacceptable.

Doubly disturbing because, firstly, I recently read The Revenge of Gaia for the second time, which says basically the same thing, and secondly, the news on the radio this morning was of govenment plans to build another runway at Heathrow Airport, because it sees increased air travel as vital for Britain's future economic growth. This a couple of days after Gordon Brown made a speech about how committed the government is to tackling climate change.

Anyway, I urge everyone to read Six Degrees. Forewarned is forearmed. Move to Canada now and avoid the rush!

#42 The Giver is creepy, I agree. And In Cold Blood has pretty much cured me of ever wanting to have a farm in the country. Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza with its description of ever-increasing murderous propagandizing on the radio before the terrible events occurred...and how the victims simply didn't believe it could really happen -- even though in their parents' lifetime it had happened before (although not as terribly).

I generally stay away from things I might find too disturbing, too. But there are exceptions, as above.

Well, this isn't a book, it is a short story, but it disturbed me nonetheless. It was called 'Llama', it was by Bentley Little, and it appears in The Collection by said author. A very gross, repulsive, senselessly violent story.

I started reading the Crucible series by Sara Douglass and for some reason it really got to me. I never finished the series and that, for me, is unusual. I do remember deciding to learn about the Inquisition as a college student. I can't remember what books I read (several from the library), but I had nightmares for weeks. I think my tendency to read mostly lighter (i.e. not "serious") " fiction may be an attempt to ameliorate overdoses of history. But perhaps that's an excuse and I'm just not an intellectual person -- have to laugh at self.

#82 Haven't you learned not to fall asleep whilst reading the Malleus Maleficarum lol...

The Long Hard Road Out of Hell by Marilyn Manson

Giraffe is based on the true story of the killing of 49 giraffes in a Czech zoo. Really good story -- but the scenes of killing the animals stay with me. (It's by J. M. Ledgard).

The one that comes to mind is Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo...I was a teenager when I read it, so maybe it wouldn't be as disturbing to me now, but I was absolutely horrified by it...especially one particular part involving rats. *shudder* *scream*

Hmm a bit weird but probably Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. I was ten when i read it and i think the sex scenes shocked me a little, maybe shocked more than disturbed.

I always mean to read it again, i'm sure it seems very tame now. I remember loving the book though.

I had to stop reading Snow Flower And The Secret Fan by Lisa See.

It has been estimated that approximately one BILLION Chinese women were tortured, deformed and crippled by foot binding over a period of nearly ONE THOUSAND years!

88 - tropics

I know what you mean - that part of the book is just awful.... But i'd encourage you to pick it upagain, I thought it was wonderful.

85: LynnB... yes, even though the reader knows what is coming in Giraffe, the shock is still quite intense. Also, the sleeping walking girl and that folktale with the water fairy made for a very disturbing read.

I agree She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb. That was hard book to read. But, what was harder to read and for completely different reasons, No Country for Old Men Holy @$*#-- This book was terribly graphic but, I couldn't put it down.

I know others have mentioned it but lord of the flies. Disturbing book, great argument for the idead of inheritant evil in humankind. Every time I see "Kid Nation" commercials I think of this book.

#7 -- it's even scarier when your uncle was one of the victims.

I vote for Brave New World. Of all the dystopian works I've read, it seems to capture the numbing current capitalistic world best (Brave New World Revisited is a great work of non-fiction in which Huxley compares his work with Orwell's).

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned The Hot Zoneby Richard Preston --VERY scary, true, and a page-turner, dealing with the Ebola virus. I think it's even more frightening than his novel Cobra Event, dealing with germ warfare, and that is almost a true story.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road was more disturbing than anything I have ever read. Not so much for what happens in the story (Stephen King & other horror authors have written much scarier stuff) but the whol premise of The Road, the underlying message, is that what happens in the novel COULD HAPPEN IN OUR LIFETIMES. Or the lifetimes of our children. That is the most disturbing idea of all & the reason why I will never look at a shopping cart in quite the same way again.

When I read them many years ago, I found Animal Farm and 1984 very disturbing.

I would agree with We Need to Talk About Kevin for fiction.

Non-fiction- Sins of the Father by Eileen Franklin
A little girl sees her father kill and rape her best friend at age 10, she later remembers this as an adult.

Any book written about the Lisa Steinberg case in New York.

I just put down The Almost Moon because I found it very disturbing.... but in the interest of full disclosure, I also put down The Lovely Bones back when it first came out and I tried to read it, and I know a lot of people really liked that. I just couldn't do it. So, maybe it's me...

I'm finding this book Everything She Ever Wanted pretty disturbing. Any woman that beats herself with pots and pans while her kids watch and then tells the police she was brutally attacked and raped is disturbed herself. Knowing that these people exist is disturbing.

The Nazi Doctors was page after page of the banality of evil. It was an up close and personal look at supposedly civilized people doing monstrous things. Almost as disturbing as the perpetrators were the experiences of the survivors. In one incident the doctors are trying out a new method for killing and being assisted by prisoners from the camp. Then the father of one of the prisoner helpers walks in to be killed. They know if they say anything they will both be killed. The father is killed and the son survives, no blame to the son. The father wanted the son to survive and they were living in the twisted reality of the death camps. The high suicide rate of the survivors is no surprise. I never finished the book.
The most disturbing fiction I recall is H. P. Lovecraft Tales published by Library of America. To evoke terror is Lovecraft's sole goal. He is effective. Image after image of horror and terror. Interestingly this volume was one of the bestsellers of the LOA volumes.

I've read some pretty disturbing books in the past so I'm not going to choose "the most disturbing book you have read". However, I feel compelled to mention the book I am currently reading.

This book, As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto, is the true story (which was once written as an award-winning Rolling Stone magazine article) about an 8-month-old child (the older boy in a set of twins) who had his penis accidently amputated during a botched circumcision and had his childhood/life terrorized and ruined by a famous Johns Hopkins psychiatrist/sexologist. It makes me wonder about some unscrupulous practitioners of psychiatry.

I'm only halfway through this book, but I feel so very sad for this child and his family who really knew very little about how to deal with the unfortunate situation in which they found themselves. :-(

Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed by Patricia Cornwell. I never knew the full brutal nature of his slaughter.

Lear by Edward Bond, and Blasted by Sarah Kane, two plays with such extreme violence in them that I can't even imagine seeing them staged.

Although the subject matter of Running with Scissors is tragic (unfortunately all to common for some portions of our society) I found the use of humor to be refreshing. Humor can be a great coping mechanism.

The End of Alice.

I'd like to add The long walk by
Richard bachman (aka Stephen King). Nice story involving children, walking in the summer breeze, in a little race, and oh yes, death for those who lose the race.

>101 SqueakyChu:... I remember that article -- very, very disturbing...

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The only good thing to the story (as far as I've gotten) is that *finally* someone is willing to stand up to challenge "The Establishment".

Geek Love -- me, too! This was the first one I thought of. When I put it down I felt so upset that I had read it, but I don't like to censor reading material, even for myself. It was disturbing on many levels, most of all why did the author write it.

Alone with the Devil by Markman, Ronald.The true stories of cases by a forensic psychiatrist.Every time I hit by elbow I think of some of the victims.Truth is scarier than fiction.

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I thought Geek Love was brilliant. I love the message it conveys.

I agree with whoever said The Giver. Also, In one of Robert McCammon's books- the short story one, there is a story called Pin (I think), and it's about a guy who sticks a pin directly into the pupil of his eye. God, that was actually painful to read.

Sula by Toni Morrison, probably because I read it so young. Night by Elie Weisel gave me nightmares when I first read it, but that might have been because of the age again. When I was 8 and 9, my mom would just give me money and let me get whatever I wanted from the bookstore. She never looked at what I was reading. That led to a lot of interesting picks that were probably a little heavy for me. I remember finding Sula horrifically disturbing then, and I don't think I could reread it now.

You guys are all going to think I'm a baby, but Harry Potter 7 actually disturbed me a bit. Not on the same level as the two books mentioned above, but still. I had to put it down several times and wait for like a week because it was hard to get through the string of horrible, depressing events.

On the Beach without a doubt

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka was so disturbuing and depressing because I identified with the roach.

Level 7 gave me nightmares.

114: weener... Have you read Kockroach? I have it in my reading queue but it will be a while before I get to it.

No, but looks interesting! Thanks for the heads up.

Hotel New Hamptshire by John Irving was flat out freakish. I love the guy, but holy crap--that was a strange one!

The Bandit Queen. Disturbing because it's a true account of how lower caste people were (are?) treated in India.

Farenheit 451 (the temperature at which books burn) by Ray Bradbury is one of those disturbing science-fiction-becoming-fact tales that is very worrying.

The most desterbing book I have ever read...I really didn't finish it. I can't remember the title off hand; but it was by Stephen King. And he wrote the book for his daughter.

Smeagle- Eyes of the Dragon, or something like that?

Most disturbing book?

A toss up between American Psycho and Money. I found so unpleasant I couldn't finish the latter.

Off-hand, I don't recall anything I've read to be as disturbing as Blackwater.

If no-one's mentioned it before.The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien is very disturbing indeed, in a mind-twisting way. The most disturbing book I've read in a repulsive detail sort of way is The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein. The cultish polyamory just made me raise my eyebrows a bit... but the ending made me sick to my stomach, as if Heinein were trying to shock his message into the reader.

Disturbing yet compelling, and not fiction: If this is a Man by Primo Levi. I don't know if I can pluck up the courage to read it again.

Ghost Girl by Torey Hayden. The child abuse in that book disturbed me greatly. There were times that I thought I might have to stop reading it. I managed to finish, but just thinking about it still creeps me out.

I forgot to mention The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski. It's a non-stop torture non-fun fest. Gripping, but you just want to wash your brain when you are done because the people in the book inflict so much needless hurt on others.

#127, now that you mention the child abuse, I have to throw in A Child Called It. I know the veracity of this book has been called in to question, but it is most definitely disturbing anyway. I was first introduced to this book, and its sequels, by a student. This was a boy in 7th grade who was always bouncing off the walls and could not sit still to save his life. One day he came in with this book and sat quietly reading all period. He continued to do so all week. On Friday, he laid the book on my desk and said, Miss, this book is just like my life. I read it that weekend and bawled when I thought of my student, and all children who have to go through that kind of life. I found out that he was in foster care while his parents were in prison for what they had done to him.

Lucky A memoir
The Road
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Come Back: A mother's and daughter's journey through hell and back
Any one of the dozens of true crime/mass murderer profiles I've read

I love Wallace Stegner, but I could not finish Big Rock Candy Mountain because of the father's abuse of the son who was "different."

I also remember being very disturbed by Misery by Stephen King. For awhile after I read it I swore off of his books because it felt like he was going for gruesome just for shock value and not because it made the story better. (I don't know if I'd still feel that way today, and he is one of my favorite authors...)

American Psycho terrified me when I read it first. I tried it again because I thought maybe I just wasn't mature enough. Nope. 15 years later and I still don't 'get' it.

"Helter Skelter" freaked me out a lot when I first read it in the late 1970s. I remember it being cool that it had photos so you could read about Manson and his gang and then look at their pictures and just feel terrified. Such a contrast between those photos and the one of the amazingly beautiful Sharon Tate and the horrors inflicted on her. Creepy stuff.

"In Cold Blood" always gets me.

"Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy has horrific violence on what seems like every page and the dancing bear scene toward the end of the novel will always stay with me. The outhouse scene with the older "kid" followed by the dancing judge is mystically beautiful and terrifying. One of the great books.

Recently I found HP and the half-blood prince disturbing.
*SPOILER

Near the end when Harry & Dumbledore are in the cave- and it's so dark that you can't see well, anything. And then Dumbledore drinks the potion (what was that anyway?) that makes him go crazy and there all the Inferi in the lake just waiting to grab you
*shudder
I also found the Dementors really disturbing when I first read about them- these are supposed to be "kid's" books right?

The Handmaid's Tale

It doesn't even come CLOSE to the title above, but I read My Lobotomy recently, and it was pretty unsettling.

>135 ijustgetbored:, elvisettey - I agree with you about My Lobotomy. I read it within the last month or so and I was just so saddened by it. The fact that it is a true story makes it even more disturbing.

>136 fannyprice:, fannyprice- The parents' attitudes, before and after the procedure, were horrific. And the fact that it was done to one so young makes it all the worse-- he sounds like any normal restless boy!

So I read Cell recently and the idea of my phone making me crazy is not fun to think of. Also the way the crazy people evolve is creepy. But it's so fantastic to read.

--> 138

I read Cell. It's *so* Stephen King!

I always think of this book whenever I leave work in the afternoon and see about half of the passers-by talking on cell phones. Little do they know what's in store for them. :-)

"The Innocent Man" by John Grisham . It is about more than one man caught up by a DA who cares little for the rules or fairness. True story.

#128 weener said: I forgot to mention The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski. It's a non-stop torture non-fun fest. Gripping, but you just want to wash your brain when you are done because the people in the book inflict so much needless hurt on others.

Oh My Gosh absolutely. The Painted Bird was the first to come to mind--I don't think I made it through 10 pages before literally THROWING it across the room in shock. It starts off calmly at a dinner table and then someone reaches over and performs an outright atrocity on another person. That did it.

A la Clinton, it depends on what the definition of 'disturbing' is--Kosinski freaked me out in a frightened disgusted way. Disturbing in a challenging way is a whole different topic. Beloved brought home the total helplessness of slavery in a way no other book had because of the incredibly personal viewpoint (particularly in the scene in the barn).

by the way Out: A novel was the ickiest book I've read in a while. I would have given up but it was for my online group.

Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning

I wonder how good, or evil, any of us can be?

In a disturbing because it could happen/is happening/dystopian way, I'd say It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, because I can completely see it happening.

In a visceral, cringe-inducing way, I'd second Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates, especially when you discover what the title refers to. Also would second (or third?) The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks.

I think We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch is a contender, but there are countless non-fiction accounts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass rape, etc. which are equally and infinitely horrifying.

I don't read many disturbing books (purposely), but I'd consider my most disturbing read to be Deliverance by James Dickey.

Although I have to say that I loved Out by Natsuo Kirino, but from what I read a couple people found it disturbing enough to not even finish. I wasn't very bothered, for some reason. I think the best answer I can come up with is that, in fiction, murder and dismemberment bother me less than rape.

I hope I don't cause any offense, but I'm reading the Bible for the first time and I'm finding it very disturbing. People made a religion from THIS!??! I'm almost done with Numbers and the god of the Old Testament is the nastiest entity I've ever come across. He just instructed the Israels to kill everyone of a tribe except the virgin girls. Sheesh.

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. ;) Its in Psalms. It's get better God's son, is a lot more socially broadminded.

on a serious side, remember most Christians are not strict literalists. Otherwise I've have to stone all those people wearing polyester blends. It's all God's word, just some parts are more inspired than others.

Though not the most disturbing aspect of the OT, what surprised me most was the enthusiasm for animal sacrifice, which in my ignorance I had always associated with pagans.

During WW2, Evelyn Waugh and another officer were sharing a tent with Randolph Churchill, Winston's son.

Churchill talked constantly, so, to shut him up, Waugh and the other officer paid him £10 to read the Bible silently from cover to cover. It didn't work though; every so often, Churchill would call out 'God, isn't God a shit!'

>149 joehutcheon: That made me chuckle. I'm constantly thinking (re God), "What an asshole!"

Two of a Kind : The Hillside Stranglers by Darcy O'Brien I read it almost twenty years ago and have not touched another true crime title since then.

At age 50 I am back in collage to finish my Degree and I have to say that the American History 1492-1869 text book rated very high for being disturbing.

Lewis's It Can't Happen Here almost did happen here except for some awsome incompitence.

lady gata already mentioned one of mine:

I know this Much is True by Wally Lamb, and A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. I find deliberate mutilation unacceptably unsettling.
Sophie's Choice. Children.Death.No.
The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond Of Matches by Gaetan Soucy Children and mutilation. Not really what I'm looking for in a book.

The Children's Blizzard was disturbing as was Blood of the Prophets

Suicide Blonde by Darcey Steinke, enjoyable, but disturbing and it's been at least 10 years.

That's really sad!!! I also read that book and I think you can agree with me when I say that its a unbelieveable book!!!!

For me there are two...............Lolita and The Keepsake.................

The Story of O by Pauline Reage totally left me with a horrible feeling and Alyx by Lolah Burford just horrific and miserable. Deathwatch by Robb White creeped me out.

Haunting is a book I could not read. I tried. Couldn't do it. I have a pretty tough hide but this one........couldn't do it.

I used to be a Christian until our church had a "challenge" to read the Bible through in a year. We were instructed to read part of the Old Testament and then part of the New Testament each day. Well that did it for me.

Following a course in U.S. History, I decided to pick up Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. It was very difficult for me to consider eating meat for some time afterwards... not to mention all of the horrific social and political aspects that Sinclair brings to light throughout the book.

I read The Other by Thomas Tryon when I was in Junior High (a long, long time ago). I still get the creeps thinking about it.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild were both very good books, but hard to read because of some of the content.

The winner for most disturbing, yet life-altering book, for me is Cadillac Desert: the American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner. It shapes most of my political decisions, and even the choice I made on where to live.

nineteen min. was a disturbing book but it taught me so much it is one of my favorites

the book Double Idenity was a disturbing on it messed with your head alot

I read a book about natzis called Natzie Hunters and it was very disturbing

Saw Ted Kennedy on the news last night which reminded me of Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates. A well told, but disturbing retelling of Chapaquitic events mainly from the young lady's perspective.

bookladykm reminded me of We Were the Mulvaneys also by Joyce Carol Oates. The way that family reacted to the rape of the daughter/sister was thoroughly disturbing.

Joyce Carol Oates's books are always disturbing on some level. (ETA: At least, all the ones I've read....)

I remember reading Capote's book IN COLD BLOOD
for my 12th Grade English Class and I did find it
very disturbing too. You know Peter Falk was in
the 1950s version of the Movie. Right now I am
reading The HandMaid's Tale. I haven't gotten too
far into the book yet. What about The Stepford
Wives and The Harrad Experiment?

Librarianwannabe

I haven't got a single book that was most disturbing but I get disturbed by authors who sometimes have what seems to be a recurring theme or gimmick.

Like most people, if I read a book that I enjoy I like to read the other books by the same author. I read a lot of horror and someone passed onto me a Richard Layman book.

It did what it was supposed to do, scary in places and entertaining enough so I bought and borrowed his other books. In every single book I had there was at least one rape and in some cases repeated sexual assaults.

It really put me off him because some of his stories would have been perfectly valid without these scenes. It felt like he has this really awful formular - pretty girl, crazy guy, murder, rape, murder, murder, rape, murder, vengence, end. He left me very disdurbed I've never read any more of his books.

Jonathan Carroll has been the same but his theme seems to be cruelty to animals. I liked his books and his imagination but he has too recurrent a habit with the animal abuse for my comfort.

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut. It made me feel icky.

>168 beatles1964: Librarianwannabe: I agree that In Cold Blood was incredible, and disturbing. But it was written in 1965, so the movie version with Robert Blake is the only one that was made.

Sorry about that MerryMary I got those two Actors
confused. But did you notice how similar Stephen
King's book THE STAND and IN COLD BLOOD are?
In THE STAND Poke and his Partner go on a Killing
Spree and laugh and Joke how they are going to Pokerize people. Poke gets Killed in Texas by a
Police Officer and his Partner is Captured and taken
to Prison and would've died in there if Randall Flagg
hadn't come along at the time to free him.

Librarianwannabe

I've thought about posting since I saw this thread b/c a book immediately came to mind. In college I had to read, I think for Brit Pop Culture The Collector by Fowles. I have to say it did creep me out. One of the very few books I didn't want to keep!

Let's see:

Dolores Claiborne
The Lovely Bones
Perfume (the movie was pretty rough, too)
1984 (unsettling, but I loved it)

Oh, forgot to add The Handmaid's Tale

I read this book called ende: a diary of world war three and it was the freakies, scariest book I ever read. Its about people living in Germany after the countries all destroy each other with nuclear warheads.

For me, there are several books that I find disturbing. Deerskin by Robin McKinley is one. I just about threw this one across the room due to the incest/rape that happens in the first 1/2 of the book. The short story from Stephen King "The Boogyman" (sp?) is one that still gets me when I think about it.

Pompeii by Robert Harris. I tossed the book when I came to the part where a Roman slave is tortured by being fed to flesh-eating eels. The eels are later served for dinner.

tropics, you've got me worried! My book club will be reading Imperium by Robert Harris in April!

American Psycho, I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels like this about this book. The other most disturbing book of my life was a collection of russian fairy tales which I read as a child of 8. I was afraid of Baba Jaga for months afterwards.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris was pretty disturbing to me.

I agree about American Psycho the odd thing is that eventhough it honestly made me wince I read thebook in 2 nights. Go figure!!!

Bret Easton Ellis seems to have a lot of appearances on this list. I'll add The Informers by him as well.
It just seems to take such a nonchalant view of violence and disorders, especially among kids, which is more disturbing than the violence itself. Part of me's glad I read it, though, just to see what he was all about.

im surprised no one has yet mentioned Crash By J.G. Ballard, that book was stomach churning for sure.

Naked Lunch by William Burroughs was quite repulsive too.

I agree: this was the most disturbing novel I have read in 20 years. Extraordinarily frightening. Also, because much of it is really so real....

AAhhh... My message is about the comment on Red Dragon.... Terrible ghastly realistically frightening book....
..............m

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris - it rubs the lotion on it's skin ...
Pig (Short story) by Roald Dahl was pretty damn creepy

The Wanderers - This book went around my high school as something our parents wouldn't let us read so naturally we all were reading it (Just like Go Ask Allice) It was about a gang in 1960s NY. They made a watered down version of it into a movie. There was a passage in it that still makes me shudder to this day (which is many years later) ...about a knife, a womans private parts and a piece of Wonder Bread.

Several people have mentioned Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and I would agree, but I think Oryx and Crake was even more disturbing, possibly the most disturbing book I have ever read.

I just finished The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, and I found it very realistic (and thus, very disturbing).

It was as if Shirley Jackson's The Lottery had been made into a novella...

Now, I'm trying to decide what to read next:
American Psycho
The Secret History
Choke

The Secret History by Donna Tartt (if that's the one you mean) is amazing. I really enjoyed it.

Hi, Lynn!

Thanks so much for replying! I decided on Choke last night, and am about 3/4 done. Pretty sick stuff! I LOVE IT!!

I have Beyond the Chocolate War coming tomorrow, and I'll probably read that, and then The Secret History.

I can't wait. The description sounds amazing!

Without a doubt mine was The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. That book actually gave me nightmares, I woke up with a scream dreaming I was in the house. Also the narrator's insanity was too convincing for me. I started to feel like I was going insane myself.

In terms of inspiring nightmares, I'd have to say Thomas Ligotti can do it pretty consistently. I re-read My Work Here is Not Yet Done recently and had some nightmares where I knew an evil thing was just out of sight manipulating everything happening. Even the graphic novel adaptation The Nightmare Factory, which has its problems, inspired some freaky dreams.

I couldn't get past the crucifixion scene in Stephen King's The Stand.

For me it was Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry, an extremely chilling description of self-destructive alcoholism.

Dark places by Kate Grenville, Grenville traps the reader inside the mind of a psychopath, it is utterly convincing, horrible and fascinating at the same time.
If this is a man, because it is still unbelievable that this actually happened.
Pet cemetary, couldn't finish it because of the nightmares it gave me when I was 15, and still haven't found the courage to pick it up again.

I am such a disturbing-book-junkie - they are my favorite kind!

I think the three most disturbing books I've read (and enjoyed) are:
Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell
CRUDDY by Lynda Barry
The End of Alice by A.M. Homes

I have avoided books about Antartica and by Beryl Bainbridge since I read The Birthday Boys several years ago.

Robert

By far the most disturbing: The Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. First published in France in 1928, this book makes Sade blush. Susan Sontag called it the "most accomplished artistically of all pornographic prose I've read." And Sartre said of the book, "Bataille denudes himself, exposes himself, his exhibitionism aims at destroying all literature." Having made it to the end of the book, I know I'll never look at eggs or eyes in quiet the same way.

I recently finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy and I was depressed for days afterward.

One more I thought of the other day was The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer.

Another one to add for me:

American Psycho


I still have about 70 pages to go, but jeezalou!!! This might top Girl Next Door as the most disturbing book for me (isn't AP based on real events as well?)

uuuuhh...I seriously have the heebie jeebies.

The movie was so tame compared to this!

You guys keep reminding me of things I really couldn't stomach. I put Bastard out of Carolina aside after the first child molesting scene. I just couldn't go on.

Just doing a bit of compiling. . .

And the winners for the most disturbing book are (roughly in order of number of times mentioned, with many 'ties'):

We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
American Psycho, by Bret Ellis
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
Blindness by Jose Saramago
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
1984 by George Orwell
and more than a few runners-up.

Author Winners of the Most Disturbing Book (which means their 'votes' were divided between several of their titles):
Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Chuck Palahniuk, and Cormac McCarthy (very distant runners up might be Alice Sebold, and Thomas Harris).

It would've been interesting if we could've surveyed the most cited reason for a book disturbing us, but we all didn't mention a reason.

The most disturbing true crime biography I've ever read was The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer. There are also some videos of his interviews on youtube, but they don't even touch the gruesomeness and the cold calculating ways of the Iceman.

my sweet audrina by v.c andrews. so so so so bad. horribly written. i can't believe this has been published!!!

There aren't really any books today that disturb me too much.
But I remember as a kid all the books by Gudrun Pausewang gave me nightmares, especially Die letzten Kinder von Schewenborn. To me it was very realistic and therefore disturbing. The graphic images haunted me forever.

207. I watched a documentary on the Iceman. WOW he was the stuff of nightmares. The book must have been something else.

>210 cal8769:, you have to read it, I couldn't even put it down and then I gave it to my husband to read and he was horrified and stunned. We talked about hte various crimes for at least a week. There are at least 2 books out, but the really well written is Iceman by Philip Carlo.

1984, Perfume and Wuthering Heights.

...also Dracula. Both Dracula and Perume are disturbing in a good way though (erotic).

Wow! Only just discovered this thread. So pleased to note I'm not the only one who loves being 'disturbed' - most of my family think I'm a bit weird. I think all my favourites have been mentioned - The Collector, We Need to Talk About Kevin (which, although I also loved Jody Picoult's Nineteen Minutes, makes that one look like a fairy tale), Lord of the Flies, The Wasp Factory, Sophie's Choice. Just to add a couple more (I hope non-fiction counts) there's also Cries Unheard by Gitta Sereny, then back to fiction, Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord by Louis de Bernieres, Under the Skin by Michel Faber, deadkidsongs by Toby Litt and The Bad Seed by William March. Mostly, though, just wanted to say thanks for all those wonderful suggestions from everyone else - now I can go away and be disturbed to my heart's content!

The one book that disturbed me the most was It by Stephen King. I read it many years ago and when I talk about it now I can still feel those icy fingers of fear moving up my spine. Probably because I've always had an irrational fear of clowns and dolls.

So what's irrational about that? I hated circuses as a kid because of the clowns and, when much older, found that my daughter had inherited my fear of them (I think that was before she read It, though there could be a connection - certainly mine came from back when Mr King was but a twinkle . . . as soon as I picked up It I knew he had done a brilliant thing in picking a clown as the villain of the piece). So what I want to know is - is there anyone who actually LIKES the evil twisted piece of sub-humanity that is a clown? And why do people insist on inflicting them on innocent kids? Sick, sick, sick! (Apologies to any clowns who are LT members.)

To be honest I suppose it's not irrational, both dolls and clowns are hiding the real them behind painted faces, I don't particularly like mime's either thinking about it, plus my mother collected those china dolls and one of my sisters collected clowns, I was surrounded by them from a very early age.

Trips to the circus for me were completely out unless the family wanted a tantrum, with screaming and stamping of feet and crying because the clowns were "bad men".

Hands down, American Psycho was the most disturbing book I've ever read. When I read it, I was working on a degree in forensic science, so I could perfectly picture everything happening and imagine working up the crime scene later, plus I'm a woman so some of the scenes were just WAY WAY too disturbing for me. To top it off, Christian Bale has been my celeb crush since I was 12 years old and I'd seen the movie version before reading the book so of course, it was his face the whole time.

I also used to read quite a few non-fics about WWII and there was one about the (I think) the Dutch Resistance that was just too real and too well-written to even finish. To this day, I can't read WWII non-fic.

217 'Trips to the circus for me were completely out unless the family wanted a tantrum, with screaming and stamping of feet and crying because the clowns were "bad men".

Good for you Imp! All sensible peole should act the same way then the world might be rid of these abberations!

my daughter and husband were in that movie. i wouldn't let her watch it until she was 12. very disturbing!!

In it? WOW.

Fish: a Memoir by T.J. Parsell is by far the most disturbing because it was true.

Booksloth: I've heard, but don't have anything back it up, that clowns are the number 1 fear of adults and children. So that always makes me wonder...why are they still around??? I completely agree with you on his choice of villain, and for years after seeing the movie (which I first saw when I was 4 or 5) every time I had to take a shower I would stand as far away from the shower as possible, reach way way out, barely touch the shower curtain, and yank it back, because I was positive that there was a clown hiding in the drain! This went on well into my teen years.

Cletis: sweet! What kind of roles did they have, if you don't mind sharing?

I'd have to say American Psycho. I think B. E. Ellis is very good, and I liked Lunar Park quite a lot, but AP was too much for me...

I was wondering if someone would mention Silence of the Lambs! I just read Boy by R D and will now look for Pig.

The Silence of the Lambs absolutely. I can read lots of strange stuff and be okay, but for some readon Hannibal Lechter gives me the willies. Every time I see another book by Thomas Harris I say "I don't think so."

Clowns are very creepy. My mother-in-law gave me a painting of clowns for my daughter's bedroom. My daughter didn't mind, but I always hated looking at them. I was very glad when she outgrew the clowns and I could give the picture away.

I always thought Red Dragon was a lot creepier than Lambs. The bit where you suddenly realise how he is finding his victims is decidedly chilling.

I just finished A Child Called "It" and I'm sick to my stomach.

Booksloth: I've never read it, and don't plan to, but for curiosity's sake, could you tell me how he's finding his victims?

Are you serious? I couldn't possibly tell you here but I'll send you a private message if you really want to know. Are you sure you're never going to read it?

Can I nominate a playscript? The Designated Mourner by Wallace Shawn.

Booksloth: yeah, I meant in a private message, I don't want to spoil it for people who want to read it. But I'm serious about not reading it. I heard that Jodie Foster refused to play Clarice again after reading the book.

No, that was Hannibal . Clarice isn't in Red Dragon. It's the prequil.

That's right, I got the two confused. Either way, the *main* character is the same, so I'm assuming I won't enjoy the book. The movie Silence of the Lambs was gross enough (cannibalism is one of those subjects I just can't deal with), so I'm avoiding any thing else in the series.

I have to agree with #180... Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. It disturbed me so much that I could not finish it. In fact, I had to physically remove the book from my house. Pretty bad! I read Silence of the Lambs and although it was quite scary, it did not affect me in nearly the same way. Red Dragon took my mind to places that I definitely did not wish to go.

Also, Into the Forest by Jean Hegland disturbed me but is also one of my favorite books. Same kind of thing with The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

#52 stephmo: I know you did your post awhile back, but I agree that The Grizzly Maze was very upsetting in its visual nature. I've met Nick Jans; he's nice, a brilliant writer, but a different kind of guy. Alaska, through and through.

I have been watching this thread ever since I joined Library Thing.

My entry is post 142.

I decided it would be absolutely fascinating to see what a library of only the books from "this is a good one. What is the most disturbing book you have read?" would be, so I created a dummy profile and added every book in the thread.
I am finished to date (7 March), and it is really interesting! People were disturbed by many different styles of books, and the entire library is disturbing!
If the book was mentioned in this thread, it's in the MostDisturbingBooks library, with the following exceptions--mentioned in side conversations:

>53 Revenant: All the Pretty Horses is all right but I don't consider it his best.
>178 LynnB: My book club will be reading Imperium by Robert Harris in April!
>149 joehutcheon: The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh (The source of Winston Churchill's quote).
>223 AngelaB86: No, that was Hannibal . Clarice isn't in Red Dragon. It's the prequil.

I researched a few that were unclear or short stories in compilations. Some conclusions are my own assumptions:

>11 wester: -Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" by Patrick Suskind
>112 Malrose01: -Blue World by Robert McCammon
>120 Smeagle_Monkey: -The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King
>158 Ladybugsplendor: -Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
>164 Tay11: -Nazi Hunters by Charles Ashman
>169 QueenOfDenmark: -Island by Richard Laymon, White Apples by Jonathan Carroll
>176 SLHobbs: -Night Shift by Stephen King
>179 DeusXMachina: -Russian Fairy Tales by Aleksandr Afanasev
>186 ironmonkey: -Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl
>218 kaelirenee: -Things We Couldn't Say by Diet Eman

I am not intending to maintain this profile, my work schedule is too unpredictable.
If someone wants the keys, I'll give them to the lucky person with too much spare time to waste.

I gotta agree with LindsayG... What the heck was that book about anyway? I got lost (like I was actually in the house), but I continued reading out of obsession.

For N-F I would add Night by Elie Wiesel. The descriptions of babies being thrown into pits full of fire I still can't quite shake. That Wiesel witnessed this as a boy disturbs me deeply as well.

For Fiction I'd add The Royal Family by William T. Vollmann, an understandably little read novel comprised of brutally blunt descriptions of prostitution in SFs Tenderloin District.

I just finished Thomas Tryon's The Other which I thought was wonderfully written and quite disturbing. I also found Perfume:the story of a murderer by Patrick Suskind to be weirdly upsetting.

#237 MostDisturbingBooks: What a great idea! Thanks for starting it!

Exquisite Corpse, really there is just this one scene that utterly freaks me out.

Amityville Horror I actually don't know if the touchstone goes to the correct book. The one I am thinking of is the original, I know there have been lots of movies and remakes, but that book is terrifying - I could not finish it. Perhaps b/c it is supposed to be a true story...

Also, to add a short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Gilman. The reason honestly being this one particular line "I always lock the door when I creep by daylight." It doesn't sound that bad until you read the whole thing. I was going to post a link to it online, but I couldn't get it to work.

Mine was I Know My First Name Is Steven, totally freaked me out

#242 Definitely with you on The Yellow Wallpaper - a little gem.

Must add my congrats to the person who thought up this thread. It is the one that provides the biggest additions to my wishlist - can't resist being freaked out!

I just thought of the most disturbing book I read before I read Ordinary Men.

It was The Turner Diaries by Andrew Macdonald.

ArmyAngel1986 has graciously offered to take over maintenance of MostDisturbingBooks.

Thank you so much, Angel!

Thanks, Angel!!

Maintenance? Please someone explain.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Arc d'X by Steve Erickson
The Dollmaker by Harriet Arnow

>249 Booksloth: Maintenance? Please someone explain.

The books in post 250 are not in the library. I have stretches of weeks at a time where I work 60-70 hours a week, so LibraryThing gets bumped to a low priority. Last week was not one of these weeks, so I had time to blow and I created the library. I can not promise to keep it updated.

I maintain, install and fix battery backups for a living, so I go from not-busy to swamped to not-busy
(...Abby, Tim, if you're reading and you have one of our units at your facility or co-lo, tell Chuck Wearne "Hi." If Chuck isn't your guy, I can fix you up with the best in Power Protection available. Is this spam or a TOS vio????)

I think there are many different defintions of disturbing being used here, and I could mention many non-fiction (i.e. true crime) books that tell about very disturbing incidents. But the work of fiction that most disturbed me was Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. If anyone can think of a more horrifyng situation than the one the main character found himself in, I'd be surprised. And the novel has a very effective anti-war message. A powerful read.

And The Band Played On : Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts

Greed, venality, hatred, timidity, squeamishness, self-interest, and lust for power created one unconscionable act after another leading to staggering levels of suffering and death.

Alrighty, the catalog has been updated with the latest suggestions, keep 'em coming! Some time this weekend I'm hoping to make a list on Lists of Bests of these books, that way people who are so inclined can see how many they've read, and work on reading more. I would also like, at some point, to tag the books according to what makes them disturbing, but that will be a longer project I think. This week is busy for me, but once it's over the rest of the semester should roll by smoothly.

I love the new profile! It made me think of one extremely disturbing book which I have not yet mentioned: Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald, which is a science fiction book in the form of the diary of a military employee whose job is to sit in a room in a bunker thousands of feet beneath the surface of the earth, waiting for the order to push a button that will unleash a nuclear holocaust upon the earth.

Seeing the Dr. Seuss book in there made me think, "Huh?" but also made me realize that I was very bothered as a kid by Hop on Pop, especially the part about the guy whose sadistic bed is too short and won't let him be comfortable. If he pulls his feet onto the bed, his head sticks off the end of the bed, if he pulls his head in, his feet hang off.

Also, Great children's stories, Volland Collection. Has classics like 3 Billy Goats Gruff, Goldilocks, Chicken Little, but some more obscure and horrifying tales like Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse, and The Lambikin, with some of the creepiest drawings around.

#252 - I will second Johnny Got his Gun. Images from that book stuck with me for months. I also found it interesting that, as mentioned in the introduction of my 1980s version (I think), it had never been in print during wartime. Hmm.

Since I haven't read most of the books in the MDB library, I was thinking about starting a Most Disturbing Books group where people who had suggested a book could comment about why they suggested it. This would make it easier for me to tag and possibly put together comments on the books. Would y'all participate? Yay or nay?

Yay.

Yay yay!

Most Disturbing Books group, open for business (I obviously didn't need a lot of prodding, lol).

Sure thing. Will be there tomorrow - off to bed now.

Quick note: anyone who had favorited the MDB library got an invite already.

That explains it. I did mark it interesting. I got the invitation right after I marked the group to watch it. Now I have to spend the weekend deciding whether to join; so much for going skiing or swimming.

Robert

lol rd, I know, LT groups are all consuming, that's why I made the group and sent out invitations even though I'm still at work. :)

I didn't even read Johnny Got His Gun someone else did and told me about it and that was bad enough. A couple of more in the theme of how awful people can be, Lord of the Flies and The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956; an experiment in literary investigation

Definitely The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. I read it several years ago and I still randomly think about it and shudder!

Just finishing up Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Brite, which is already noted. Wow. Finding out that I'm really quite a prude! Much more disturbing to me than American Psycho or Zombie...the necrophilia aspects are troubling to me, however, I'm managing to get through it. If nothing else, it's a fast read.

Hmmmm, just came on here to thank whoever it was who'd recommended The Killer Inside Me which arrived in this morning's book parcel, and now I can't find any mention of it. Maybe I'm just not looking carefully as I thought several people on this thread had been talking about it, or maybe I dreamt the whole thing! Anyway, if anyone did - thanks, I'm really looking forward to reading it.

Re N/F disturbing books, when I was a Psych first-year, the most disturbing things I ever read were all the Psychology books that mentioned the experiments of either Philip Zimbardo or Millgram (forget his 1st name) - the prison one and the electric shock one. The ease with which otherwise good people could be persuaded to do something they would never have thought possible really gave me the chills. I have now just bought Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil and am looking forward to being freaked out all over again!

Booksloth, Killer Inside Me wasn't in the catalog before you mentioned it, maybe you're remembering it from a different thread? Thanks for the two new books!

268 > Let me know what you think about The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil. I read it already, and I was very excited about it, but I found it to be extremely political. That would have been fine if I'd known it would be that way, but I really felt blindsided by the author. I wrote a review on it if you want to check it out .

#269 You're right - it must have been a different thread but I'm sure the talk was about how disturbing it was. I hope so anyway, as that's why I bought it! Will let you all know if it drives me over the edge.

By the way - I really do mean to posts details of my nominated books sooner or later but it won't be for a week or so now - good luck with that, though!

Thankee Booksloth! There's no rush, it will be May before I can seriously get to work on the catalog.

i just really like the book

I read Yalo by Elias Khoury and reviewed it on my blog. I don't know if it was the most disturbing I've ever read, but it was the first to jump into my mind. You're reading about someone who has been tortured in a Lebanese prison, and who is now a serial rapist - and he's the protagonist! Very hard to side with him, but it is brilliantly written. I had to set it down and do something else at points, just so I wasn't too drawn into the darkness of it.

#268 Well, I read The Killer Inside Me and it didn't really do it for me. I guess I can see how many people might find it disturbing but maybe I've just read too much of this kind of thing (protagonist as murderer - that's not a spoiler, btw, it's made clear right from the outset). To its credit, though, it is a short book and a quick read, so at least I don't feel I've wasted too much of my life over it. (Actually, that's bit unfair, as it wasn't a waste of time at all and was, in fact, quite a satisfactory read - just didn't do my head in as I had hoped.)

Ooh! Just remembered another one. Factual books about the holocaust rarely fail to disturb me but the one I had to get rid of after the first few chapters because it was genuinely giving me nightmares was Hitler's Willing Executioners.

I have to add The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek to my short list, which previously consisted of only Lolita. it was disturbing for the same reason. It was so well written that I could not tolerate the pain. Exquisite writing, but just too much for me.

#278:

I had to abandon Snow Flower And The Secret Fan by Lisa See for the same reason. For approximately ONE THOUSAND YEARS, countless women in China were subjected to (and subjected themselves to) foot binding.

The most recent book that seriously disturbed me was The Man in the Basement by Walter Mosley. Probably a weird pick for most, but it reminded me of how all too often "normal" people can be turned into something they are really not.

Just about any book on the Jewish Holocaust in Nazi Germany seriously disturbs me for much the same reason.

i have read BACK ROADS and CRUDDY...and found neither of them Disturbing in the least...if i had had a teenage daughter i would have given her a copy of CRUDDY...as a sort of anti-guidebook...but a damned good story

i agree with this nomination wholeheartedly

I don't think anyone thinks a disturbing book is necessarily a bad book (unless it happens to be both). Sometimes the fact that it is disturbing is what makes it good; not all stories are meant to be warm and fuzzy, and some situations people shouldn't feel comfortable reading about.

note: I haven't read most of the books on the list, I was just chiming in with my opinion.

>283 AngelaB86:, Angel, I agree completely. For example, I thought American Psycho was a great book, but it was incredibly disturbing. But if it was a warm fuzzy story or if the violence and gore was toned down, I don't think it would have had such an impact on me or other readers. The movie scaled down the violence, but some things are missing from Patrick Bateman's psyche because of it (granted-I really DON'T want to see what was written about, especially since Christian Bale was the actor who played him and I've had a crush on him since I was 12 LOL).

I vote for Lord of the Flies - I found this very disturbing (and still feel disturbed 25 odd years later). The thought that normal and civilised people could turn into such monsters at the drop of a hat chills me to the bone.

>253 NativeRoses:, I thought And the Band Played on was an excellent study in epidemiology. Great book.

I second The Lord of the Flies. What makes the book so disturbing is the truth that civilized humans are only one step from amoral barbarians. We look at Nazi Germany as a glaring example but we don't have to look that far. How is it that in contemporary America we have an ongoing debate about what forms of torture are acceptable in fighting the war on terror.
It is the fact that Lord of the Flies is horrible and true that makes it so disturbing to me.

I just got disturbed again. This time it was As If I Am Not There - aka S: A Novel About the Balkans. Nothing more disturbing than the things human beings do to each other.

#62 You wrote: Toni Morrison's Beloved. I just had to stop, it crushed me to know there were lives out there like that, even knowing it was fiction.

Are you not aware that Morrison based the book on a true incident in history?

#37 I would agree that Blood Meridian is the most disturbing of those I've read. Child of God is on Mt. TBR with No Country for Old Men.

The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck. I kept looking at the author photo wondering who could write this and survive it.

The Picture of Dorian Gray
A Clockwork Orange
As I Lay Dying

Final Truth: The Autobiography of Mass Murderer/Serial Killer Donald 'Pee Wee' Gaskins by Pee Wee Gaskins

Without a doubt mine is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Never read such an immersive story about an ungraspable nightmare. A good second is At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft. A book that sucks you into an alien world and leaves you there stranded with no points of reference.

And Sophie's Choice. Did I already mention Sophie's Choice? How could anything be more disturbing than that? Everything else I've nominated has been enjoyably disturbing but this one just tears me to shreds.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein.
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, by Susan Faludi.
Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live In It, by Thomas De Zengotita (this one screwed with my head for weeks afterward).
The short story "The Veldt," by Ray Bradbury.
And I second the vote for Deerskin by Robin McKinley.

John Saul is pretty good at disturbing:

Suffer the Children and The Manhattan Hunt Club, especially.

Only one touchstone is working.

I love this thread for recommendations! Mediated has definitely gone on the list.

I would say Art & Science by Dr. Leonard Shlain.

It was the textbook in a course I took of the same name in Berkeley at their community college. I found it very disturbing that a book that was so poorly concieved had a glowing review from the New York Times and the author was being treated as a visionary genius in so many places. The man is not informed on anything he writes about and I found that I could find logical flaws in nearly every assertion he puts forth in the book. I find it very scary that such a travesty of reason should be allowed to exist with barely a complaint from anyone. His book "The Alphabet Versus The Goddess" is just as terrible, on different subjects. It however was a critical dissapointment.

What is special about Shlain is that he has no formal education in the areas he chooses to write about and he writes across disciplines. Which means he tries to tie various subjects from academia together in his ingenius imagination. What he has produced is a pile of muck. He is a leftist politically. He most recently wrote articles on the Huffington Post where he made character attacks on George Bush's brain based on his theories about left and right brain function that call on his proffesional expertise as a brain surgeon. He tries to prove George Bush is some sort of miscreant because his smirk shows a sinister fault in his character. Pandering to people's political differences obscures the idiocy of his theory, I suppose. I dissapprove of Bush, he says his brain is disordered, he makes a good point.

Ah me droogies...A Clockwork Orange is disturbing but still a classic...need to add it to my library list.

When I was 13 I read It by Stephen King. I really wish I had not done that, because it seriously messsed me up every step of the way, but still I kept on reading it.

Red Dragon disturbing but still a good book. American Psycho disturbing and still a bad book.

Most disturbing book I ever read Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt. The banality of evil. How an entire nation decided to go psychotic altogether at the same time. Everyone was disturbing, the Germans, the Israelis, the Mossad, and especially Eichmann.

Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

most of Cormac McCarthy's work would fall under this list. Especially The Road which I just re-read, and Blood Meridian, mentioned above.

American Psycho was a terrible book, a complete waste of the paper it was printed on.

A recent read, 1491 by Charles C. Mann detailed how horrifying the encounter with Europeans was for the Native Americans, with over 90% of the entire NA population being decimated by imported diseases, completely depopulating vast areas of N and S America. That must have been horrifying.

So good to see this great thread up and jumpin' again! And I'm now reminded of a jolly disturbing book I read quite recently - Monster Love by Carol Topolski - a kind of We Need to Talk About Kevin but on the subject of child abuse. The cover I have makes it look a bit like a remainder-bin misery-lit but it's actually well-written and very scary indeed.

I'd put "American Psycho" high on the list. I remember reading it on an airplane and being nervous about my neighbor seeing what was on the page. The only time I've actually been self-conscious about what I was reading in a public place.

Never Let Me Go - read it some months ago, and I can still reproduce the feeling of uneasiness as I consider what will happen to the protagonist after the end of the book, once she ceases to be a caregiver.

Great book! Great author!!!

I'd echo whoever suggested Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning how a bunch of not particularly Nazi policemen started out revolted by the Final Solution and mostly ended up as enthusiastic participants, not in the Death Camps but in the shootings which occurred behind the advancing German lines. Also his book on the implementation of the Final Solution - not as an efficient implementation of a long-planned action but as an escalating muddle of ruthless men each trying to out-ruthless each other in the solution of problems they had entirely created themselves.

Also We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families a day to day history of the massacre in Rwanda.

but if by disturbing you mean scary (or rather) terrifying, I offer The Collected Ghost Stories by M R James. Little Victorian slices of absolute terror that made me unwilling to get out of bed - in case there was something under it. I was 35 at the time.

Shake hands with the devil by Roméo Dallaire. Also about the Rwandan Genocide, but from the point of view of the commander of the UNAMIR unit sent to Rwanda as peacekeepers during the failed peace process in late 1993. Dallaire writes about the development of the genocide, its historical roots and the way he and his men tried to cope with what was going on and trying to help, despite the major let-down by UN headquarters. The first non-fiction book that made me cry.

I'll affirm We Need To Talk About Kevin ... both Kevin and Mom, incredibly disturbing humans. Took a while to shake this one. Pretty well written though.

Also, Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis ... also gets my vote for one of the worst novels of my adult life (that I actually finished). Same old sophmoric junk from this author, but brutal/hatchet Hollywood stuff.

Will also affirm Geek Love by Katherine Dunn ... read it years ago, but recall it quite vividly based on how disturbing it is. This one too was well written.

One fairly recent one is Pandemic by Gary Ridenour. He self-published and self-marketed this little book.

Another that springs to mind is Dying to Get Married by Ellen Francis Harris. I finally had to force myslef to get rid of this because I dept re-reading it and obsessing over it. Unlike a lot of true crime cases, this one had only one book written about it as far as I know, and no TV movie or anything. I suspect that it got covered more in Missouri where it took place. I read a lot of true crime, so I read a lot of disturbing stuff.

All of the Hannibal Lector books
Tami Hoag's Ashes to Ashes

I have found the book The Ruins to be very disturbing to me even though I haven't finished it yet.

Beatles1964

I have to agree on The Lord of the Flies and how rules and morality can just die when outside of "society".

On a similar note Blindness which was also mentioned earlier is disturbing. During the pivotal scene I actually started crying and was so angry and disgusted that I wanted to rip out the pages and throw the book across the room to not read on. Thankfully I did and the book has stayed with me ever since and I have recommended it to so many. One of my friends has gone so far as to call it the "perfect book". Truly gripping.

A recent read (as in finished it last night) that I found gripping and rather disturbing at parts was Fires on the Plain by Shohei Ooka. It is another story about humans being left to themselves to survive. Images of cannibalism are never pleasant, I'll just say.

One book that I had to stop reading was Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911 to 1945 by Barbara Tuchman. When I read that about one-third of the Chinese Army would die each year from total lack of medical treatment, malnutrition and malnourishment because the Chinese Officers were stealing and selling the soldier's food I had to quit. Maybe its just me.
Bastard out of Carolina also was horrific.

There is a web-site that is called www.everything2.com that has a section called 'Books that will Induce a Mindfuck'. Some of the authors most likely to cause this are: Margaret Atwood, Hakim Bey, Lewis Carroll, Adolfo B. Casares,
Julio Cortazar, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Umberto Eco, Greg Egan, Franz Kafka, J. Gregory Keyes, Mark Leyner, E. A. Poe, Thomas Pynchon and many others. This list is worth reviewing.

Also check out all the book related sites on http://book.populair.eu/.

I almost forgot. Does it matter if the author is Criminally Insane? About forty years ago I read 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis De Sade. If you want disturbing, just try finishing it, even though about half of the book is just an outline of the mutilation torture that he intended to elaborate upon at a later time. I believe that this is called 'Psychopathic Literature'. This is not for those with weak stomachs. Ladies should avoid even attempting to skim it, even though he is equally vicious to the boys as he is toward the girls. All his victims were listed as fourteen or fifteen years of age.

Offhand, I would say Robert Cormier's I am the Cheese. However, I Remember Nothing More, a Holocaust memoir by Adina Blady-Szwajgier, and Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure is also pretty hair-raising.

Disturbing, haunting, depressing ... The Road is my pick.

Check out my blog:
http://barneysbookblog.blogspot.com/

In addition to The Giver (my post 42), I discovered another really distrubing story in Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite. I'm afraid to read anything else by her.

Sometimes I'll just be sitting and zoneing and a scene from the book will pop in my head and make me feel a little ill. I didn't hate the book, but it really did disturb me.

I found World War Z by Max Brooks to be a very disturbing book. I mean, the scene with the people stuck on boats with the infected still makes me shiver...

I vote for Dean Koontz writing of The Bad Place.

Survivor by J.F. Gonzalez is the sickest, most disturbing book I've ever read. Women are raped and cut to pieces and even a baby is raped and cut to pieces. It was so sick I could hardly finish it.

The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum would have to be a close 2nd, but not nearly as disturbing as Survivor was.

The Giver; recently The Underneath. Both kids books, both read when I was an adult. Makes me wonder what kids make of them...

Life of Pi; it appalls me that such a dreadful philosophy finds such popular acclaim. My reaction is similar to Bertrand Russell's to William James's Will to Believe; take that path and it leads to many, many bad things ... ( ... trying to avoid Godwin's Law).

Was it scary because you thought we might someday actually get there, or because you realize that we are already there?

This is an interesting thread that I've only just discovered. I didn't see The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra mentioned at all. I read it a few years ago and still shudder when I think of it.

#322

If that question was for #321, the North Koreans are there already (collective willful denial); I sometimes wonder where the rest of us are headed.

#321 Must admit I ruffled a bit at Life of Pi 'cos I just adore that book, but it did make me wonder in general (because, just because I love it, doesn't mean I agree with it) - is it necessary to share a book's philosophy in order to enjoy the story and the writing? I'm also nuts about what are probably the two most misogynistic writers (well, practically) ever to have walked this earth - John Steinbeck and D H Lawrence - simply because they both wrote beautifully and I get lost in the stories they tell - but I certainly don't agree with all (or even most of) their attitudes or philosophies of life. Just wondered how other people feel about that? Then again, I did feel that way about The Shack and anything by (hisssssss) Paolo Coelho (no touchstones - won't give the guy the publicity). What about the rest of you?

And here's another 'most disturbing' - Do They Hear You When You Cry?. A must for anyone who thinks 'these things' only go on in third world countries and kept me having 'flashbacks' for weeks.

Off the top of my head, I'd have to say The Rape of Nanking, by Iris Shun-Ru Chang, The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova (the end of every chapter lead me which this horrid unsettled feeling, only resolved by starting the next chapter), Shake Hands With The Devil, by Romeo Dallaire and Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo.

#326 - I had that same unsettled feeling with The Historian. Only resolved by me hurling it across the room with great force.

"Disturbing" or "scary"? When I was 18 I read "House On The Borderland" by William Hope Hodgson, but that was scary rather than *disturbing* as such.

@ #327 It had me awake at 3am in a cold sweat more than once -- and many more times than "scarier" books have managed! I can't even explain why, as it's not as scary book as such.

I started leaving off halfway through the chapter to avoid that feeling. LOL I'm hoping there's more to come from her -- it was a really captivating book.

The most disturbing book I've read has to be The Mark of the Angel by Nancy Huston.

At work, we have to travel a lot, so we have a tradition of sharing books. I haven't shared this one because I thought it might disturb others as much as it did me. I did share We Need to Talk About Kevin, by way of comparison.

I dont find much fiction to be very disturbing, but then I havent read quite a few mentioned here. Roald Dahl disturbing, I'm not sure about that!
I dont much like Anne Sebolds The lovely bones, I guess it was disturbing and I wont be reading anymore of her works.

My mum seems to enjoy reading about "True Crimes". I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. The media reports of the crimes themselves are enough for me, let alone mum's potted reviews of the most chillling aspects *cringe*.
But if your interested in some non-fiction disturbing Australian crimes there's Joanne Lees’ book No Turning Back: My Story and Someone Else's Daughter: The Life and Death of Anita Cobby by Julia Sheppard.
The first is not only disturbing because of the crime committed but also because of the alledged treatment of Joanne by the NT police and also because of the "trial by media" she experienced. The horrific nature of the murder of Anita Cobby and the murderers' background is chilling.
There is probably also book about The Lindy Chamberline case.

ETA the link to the Joanne Lees book is to Amazon, the touchstone wouldn't work here.

KimB- I hated The Lovely Bones but Lucky is a good book. (So to speak) It is about her own rape at eighteen. It is disturbing but it shows her triumph.

#332 Thanks for the recommendation, but probably not one for me, too many other books I'm interested in :-)
Like I say I'm not into "True Crime", but I'll let mum know. I suspect she has already read Lucky. She gave me The Lovely Bones as a christmas/birthday present a few years back. A choice of gift which I found disturbing in itself! *grin*

I'm really glad I'm not the only one who hated The Lovely Bones

I cringe when I hear people talk about The Lovely Bones in a positive light. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I listened to the audiobook Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain. I am sure there are books with more gore, but what really bothered me was the sick relationship between the main character, a police detective, and the psychopathic killer that tortured him and terrorized him and others. Yes, it did keep me on the edge of my seat, but I just couldn't stomach the relationship between the two characters.

#325 "is it necessary to share a book's philosophy in order to enjoy the story and the writing?"

I would say no; Atlas Shrugged is one of my favorite books, but I certainly wouldn't agree with Objectivism as a philosophy.

Samuel Beckett, The Unnameable.

"...I don't know, perhaps it's a dream, all a dream, that would surprise me, I'll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again, it will be I, or dream, dream again, dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs, I don't know, that's all words, never wake, all words, there's nothing else, you must go on, that's all I know, they're going to stop, I know that well, I can feel it, they're going to abandon me, it will be the silence, for a moment, a good few moments, or it will be mine, the lasting one, that didn't last, that still lasts, it will be I, you must go on, I can't go on, you must go on, I'll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."

Dexter by Design, Jeff Lindsay - I read the first book in the series and though it was violent it worked in the context and it did't really bother me, but I gave up on this one after the first chapter. It wasn't so much the gore as the weird psychological stuff that was going on. All I can say is that chainsaws and legs don't mix... urgh.

I'm a happy person. And could definitely be considered a 'bleeding heart'. Therefore, I try to be careful about my selections. I don't want to read anything that is going to freak me out. Anyhoo.....

This may sound silly, but I was quite disturbed by The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Also, I started the first "Prey" book by John Sanford a few years ago and couldn't do it, the rape scenes were too much. But, it has been a LONG time and I have thought about trying it again.

There was also a scene in the Nora Roberts book Sanctuary that disturbed me thoroughly. That was the first and last one of her books I read.

I also have "the Child Called It" (and following books), but I honestly don't think I will ever have the nerve to read them.

777Penny, that's funny that you read the same as your personality. I too am a happy person, perky to the point of annoying people (especially in the morning) and very much a bleeding heart but I read a lot of true crime, paranormal, serial killing, disturbing books. My husband and friends can't figure it out. I think that it's my dark side showing.

*rubs hands together manically*

cal8769,
How interesting.
Serial killing (fiction) I can handle, as well as paranormal (it's completely fiction, therefore doesn't bother me in the slightest).
True crime, well, that would scare the excrement right out of me. :-)
Also, anything about animals. Old Yeller was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. Other books like Marley and Me, I won't touch with a 10-foot pole. Not because there are disturbing, but because 5 years later I can just THINK about the stupid book and cry hysterically.

>334 cal8769: I cringe when I hear people talk about The Lovely Bones in a positive light.

It's possible to speak of a book in a positive light, but not its central idea. I thought Lovely Bones had redemptive qualities, and I enjoyed (mostly) reading it, and it stayed with me long after I'd finished - there aren't so many books that do that for me.

--> 332

I so agree with you. I disliked The Lovely Bones so much that I couldn't finish it (boring), while I became throroughly engrossed in reading the *highly disturbing* book Lucky also by Alice Sebold. That was to the extent that I immediately gave Lucky to my then college-age daughter and told her she *must* read it (which she did, although now she often won't read what I suggest!).

All of the textbooks in college that I opened for the first time the night before finals.

---> 334

LOL
Definitely disturbing.

344 - that's truly disturbing! Too funny.

#36 TeacherDad, That is funny, when The Exorcistcame out I was about the same age. I was reading anything I could get my hands on. My choice of books were not what my mother would have chosen for me. I liked horror stories. She never told me that I couldn't read anything, until The Exorcist came out. I suppose it had to do with her strict Catholic upbringing. Soon after that I went to out of town to spend the week with my Aunt and as soon as I got to a book store, I bought it. I had never read a book so fast. I finished it on the bus ride home. When I got home, my Mom asked me how I enjoyed the book. My Aunt had figured out what I was up to and told on me. That was the only time she told me what I couldn't read.

Recently read Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Brite. Yikes! Not sure I'd be brave enough to tell anyone outside this group that I read it.

Too lazy to scroll up, but I'd be surprised if Naked Lunch hasn't been mentioned 20+ times. It's literally the only book I've ever had to walk away from, even though it engaged me so much (you can almost FEEL the paranoia and confusion rawly coming out of the author himself).

The opening post mentions Haunted by Palahniuk... Honestly, and probably I'm jaded here, but it didn't do anything for me. Neither did Bret Easton Ellis. Palahniuk has far more humor and talent than the latter, but at the same time, it's like they're both one-trick monkeys - HEY GUYS! I'M WRITING ABOUT VIOLENCE AND SEX! AND HOW SUCKY EVERYTHING IS! SOOO ICONOCLASTIC, MAN.

It gets tired and almost like puking for puke's sake. It feels lazy. I loved Fight Club and have read all of P's novels, but for every consecutive one I'm getting more and more irritated by this lazy, shallow, iconoclast attitude. I get it. It was great. The first 40 times he did it. Ya know?

#348 - The overall subject matter of Exquisite Corpse is bad enough - no book about serial killers is going to be light reading, but there are just a couple of really vivid scenes that puts it over the edge for me.

I can't actually remember the title of the book that I found most disturbing. I read it back in 1997 or '98' when I was still in high school. it was a true crime book about a serial rapist. What disturbed me most of all was that I actually enjoyed the book; even with rape being one of my all time biggest fears.

I finally remembered the title for this book. Unfinished Murder by James Neff.

Ooh, wait, has anyone mentioned Lolita yet? Its brilliance comes precisely from the way it forces you to spend time and even sympathize with a sociopathic paedophile. The disturbing effect this had on me as a reader was incredibly powerful.

In a similar vein "Never Let Me Go" by Ishiguro left me very, very disturbed - I guess you could say that book was sad more than anything, but it was such an unsettling kind of sadness.

I'm actually finding Ursula K LeGuin's The Word for World is Forest disturbing. It takes an amazing author to make you spend the book hoping your own species is eradicated (humans are not portrayed in a good way).

For me it would be Lolita. Being in that man's head was disturbing to say the least. It felt like I was watching a horror movie and I kept on wanting to call out "get out of the house".

#349, I totally agree about Pahlaniuk. His whole mission seems to be to see just how far he can take it over the top. "Look at me, I'm disgusting." His last book, Snuff, was enough for me and I quit about 40 pages in. Since he does seem to be going further and further each time, I think it's safe to say that I am done with him.

emaestra:

Exactly! And it's not even about taking it further, but the simple fact that he can't seem to develop as a writer beyond making the gross even more visual with every book. It wasn't the Ick Factor that made him a breakthrough, it was the harsh and sarcastic look at social conceptions of value and worth.

But if in contrast to that, he still can't present a more nuanced picture of SOMETHING being worth SOMETHING, it's just stuck at the level of postmodern wanking. Yes, our entire civilization is based on ridiculous ideas, but most of those have some actual function and purpose. Tear something down without offering anything positive in its place, and you have nothing but imbecile anarchy.

And there is only so many times one can find imbecile anarchy of any entertainment value.

Without a doubt Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. I couldn't get past page 55. I can close my eyes and still see that mare. I know there are far worse atrocities committed in novels, but this one just did me in.

creepiest book would be The Hotzone

I LOVED both Crime and Punishment and The Hot Zone.

I didn't find the latter very scary or creepy. Although, if anyone asks to stuff a bunch of dead monkeys into the trunk of my car, I'd probably now feel a little uncomfortable about it....

I'm currently getting pretty disturbed by Joyce Carol Oates's My Sister, My Love. In fact, come to think of it, she's a pretty disturbing lady - Rape; A Love Story gave me the willies too.

The most disturbing Joyce Carol Oates book, in my opinion, has to be We Were the Mulvaneys.

#362 That did it for me too! I never realised until now what a very disturbing person JCO is.

Anyone remember that short story JCO did in Where Have You Been where a serial killer visits a girl alone at home, clad as a teenager, and the closer she comes to him the more it seems his face is slipping away? And then the out-of-touch slang from last year. Yuck yuck yuck. Gave me the deep-to-the-gut kind of creeps.

I lost quite a lot of sleep after reading Radioactive Boyscout. That dude is still free. It's mortifying. Even just reading his wikipedia page gives me the willies.

I just read Wetlands which is disturbing in a much lighter manner. It's highly explicit and written to shock. (And it's fiction, so not so terrifying.) Anyway, I think there were at least five pages on the topic of smegma. The main character (age 18) trades used tampons with a friend. She confesses to having three hobbies: ****ing, growing avocado trees from pits (with which she *ahem*), and spreading bacteria. The main plot is that she gets an anal fissure from shaving and has a surgery.

#365 - Oh spare me! Thanks for the warning--Wetlands will never appear on my TBR list!

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

I was profoundly disturbed by the ending of this book.

Night by Elie Wiesel. I had to read it for school last year. I needed to keep my English mark above 90% for a scholarship so I had to read. I wasn't taking my meds like a good like girl so I was very emotional at the time. I cried all the way through it and threw up twice while I was reading it. I would recommend it if you have a stomach for it.

Out and Girls both gave me nightmares.

Has anyone read any Angela Carter? I recently read The Magical Toyshop, and haven't been able to get it out of my mind. It's a beautiful short story, but really quite creepy. I don't want to give away the ending, but it's one of those endings you can't quite figure out.

Mailer's The Executioner's Song was so disturbing -- the theme -- and everything that I finally just didn't read it. (And I admire Mailer.)

But to get to books I did read: the 1st one that comes to mind is the seemingly innocuous History of Greece by John Bagnall Bury It was far too pro-Macedonian, and as a new classicist at the time, I was just developing a conventional attitude of "the endo of the Greek City States and the beginning of the Macedonian-dominated Hellenistic era was a tragedy."

A book by Daniel Mannix on the Roman gladiatorial shows which I read (or scanned) in 1960 was extremely depressing. I was too quick to apply it to current U.S. society. I realize now that a long of things are the same, and a lot more aren't. It was an attempt at popularization of history, which I havenothing against in principle. (an unsuccessful one to my mind). The movie Apocalypse Now had a similar effect on me, though by the time I heard of it, I was in my 50s. I treated it as I treated The Executioner's Song noted above, and passed it up.

Now rolandperkins has raised the subject of Greece, one of the most disturbing books I have ever read has to be Eleni, by Nicholas Gage, the stpry of his mother who was tortured and killed by the Greek communists in the Greek civil war. Incredibly moving, at times breathtakingly exciting and ultimately shattering - it's a book I've read a few times now but 'enjoy' isn't really the word for it.

Several people have already mentioned Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. Way back in the 60s I worked in a junior college library and there was a closet behind the desk with a number of books hidden there. Most were abut sex, of course, but I picked up this one and read it when I had no patrons in the evening. I still have nightmares about it.

Recently I started reading Sara Douglass's Crucible series. I was very interested at first, but at some point -- I think in the second book -- I put it down and didn't go back. I've spent a lifetime reading history (and what we humans do to each other is "disturbing") and a lot of fantasy with nasty people and things happening, but that day I just couldn't take this one. I think I felt that it was wallowing in sadism without advancing the plot at all. I've never gone back and read her other books.

For me, The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner, and Them by Joyce Carol Oates. Both authors got under my skin in a way I didn't like and wouldn't want to repeat.

The Phone Book - it's deeply depressing to realize that I live in such an overcrowded part of the world.

The Road. I know it's a cliché, but there you have it.

I finally read Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk and I'm going to add myself to the group of people who find that book seriously disturbing.

Burmese Days by George Orwell is, to me, not the most depressing book ever, but IS more depressing than his 1984. This is because of his depressing view of Buddhism as it really operates in a real country. Iʻm a Christian, but I donʻt like to see any world religion downgraded as southeast Asian Buddhism is. As to a lesser extent, Christianity, especially in its Catholic form is derided in Joyceʻs Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, and as Islam is in Rushdieʻs The Satanic Verses.

The Orwell of Burmese Days (if you compare his stance to theirs), however, would make Joyce look like just another feisty Catholic of critical temperament, Rushdie like a diplomat.

The villain of Burmese days is a Burmese judge, a devout Buddhist, all of whose bad actions are condoned by the religion, as Orwell sees it. The judge does things like: accepting bribes from BOTH sides in an approaching case, and then deciding in favor of the one who gave the larger bribe. He takes rebirth, of course, for granted. He is satisfied, for religious reasons, with the prospect of being born again in a "lower" status, but is confident he will not be reborn as an animal or as a human female: He has endowed many pagodas!

In Joyce, Christians are misled; in Rushdie, Muslims are misled. But they are not evil BECAUSE OF being Christians or Muslims, as the judge is evil, we are told, because of being a Buddhist.

>378 rolandperkins: rolandperkins - I find that fascinating. I've never read Burmese Days. It's unusual to have a Buddhist, relying on his interpretation of Buddhist principles, as the villain. Craving bribes normally wouldn't fit those principles, but the human ability to rationalize is seemingly unlimited. Acceptance of a lower status as long as it's not as an animal or a human female also is odd, and the latter, of course, offensive, although it may ring true for this character.

Some terrific suggestions on this thread - the wishlist is getting longer and longer.

I'd like to mention The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea byYukio Mishima. Mishima was a very weird man who wrote brilliant yet disturbing novels. He committed ritual harakari at the height of his popularity.

The circumstances under which Yukio Mishima committed suicide are, to me, the most depressing thing about his career. (His view of the way people act can be depressing, but usually I get the idea that heʻs "telling it like it is" , not "like it SHOULD be".)

He ended his life as a hostage taker, having taken several high ranking Japanese Army officers hostage. The "ransom" he demanded was for the Japanese government to change its long-standing anti-nuclear policy. The harakiri, I suppose was his response to his failure to convince the government.

I would have to go with Battle Royale It was just a very tense book and it was very graphic when discribing the students.

After looking over the list, I think Shirley Jackson is being woefully overlooked. Just the short story The Lottery could fit the bill, but I'd really give the crown to We Have Always Lived in the Castle. My copy had a blurb on the back that said something like, "If Shirley Jackson is ever tried for witchcraft, this book will serve as exhibit A" and I laughed and thought, "Oh, what a silly blurb." After I read the book, I thought, "Well, I don't think they try people posthomously for witchcraft, so Ms. Jackson is probably safe."

What makes the book so effectively disturbing (without getting too much into spoiler territory) is the narration by Merrikat Blackwood, who happens to be a fascinating and compelling character who is also seriously messed up. The effect is one of feeling a little complicit in the things that Merrikat does or causes to happen. By the end of the novel, I was feeling like, "What kind of a messed up person can write a book like this?"

Sophie's Choice, hands down. I read this book in the 80's and it is still the most disturbing for me. In my early 20's, I loved WWII stories, fiction and non-fiction, but after I read Sophie, I completely gave up those works. Last year I read the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society and Suite Francais which I think are the first 2 I read in the genre in years.

I was very confused there for a moment. I thought "how can an absorbing mystery story that tells the history of western philosophy be disturbing?". I think I must have been thinking of Sophie's World! I haven't read Sophie's Choice after all.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis *shudder* I read it in high school and it made me very upset. When the movie came out I cringed. I blocked out as much as I could, but the one thing that stuck with me was burning the $100 in front of the homeless man. ugh!

Oh that was one great movie! I normally avoid horror but there was a lot to think about, much satire, in that one.

'A child called "it" ' was the most disturbing book I've ever read..

message 388 ashkeyckrr:

Yes I agree A Child Called It was really disturbing, and a very good book. Unforgettable really.

BarkingMatt: who wrote 'the Phone Book'? I looked it up, but several books came up.

We're up to 337: 256 fiction, 128 non-fiction, and 1 undecided because I've been looking on LT and Amazon, and can't figure out whether Pandemic is fiction or not.

Naked Lunch by Burroughs, by far. I apparently have a weak stomach because it made me nauseous on a few occasions. I did finish it though.

> 390: I was kidding - to some extent - but yes, population density here in Holland worries me.

Anyway, a book I really did found deeply disturbing was Let's Go Play at the Adams' - seemingly ordinary kids resorting to real atrocities. (Not going into details to avoid spoilers, but it's really bad).

#392 Hmmm, sounds fun - I'm off to check that one out!

ETA - Just found a used copy for 1p (plus postage) so how could I resist. Matt, you're a bad influence.

Ah well, for 1p & postage you can't go far wrong.

p.s.: being a bad influence is one of my goals in life

I've always wanted to serve as a breath-takingly bad example!

I would say that Boy Toy by Barry Lyga and Night by Elie Wiesel were the two most disturbing books that I can think of off the top of my head. The way that they're so real and devistating is horrorfying. The things that the main characters of the books go through are hard to read and it's not something done easily without crying!

#394/395 Well congratulations! I consider the whole of LT to be about the worst influence I've ever had. At least it's a comfort to know I get my own back here too by being an evil influence on others.

ETA - Though, to be honest, and in view of the current news stories over here, it may be a while before I can stomach this one. All very well when it's fiction and you really believe children aren't capable of such things. Less funny when it gets a bit too close to real life.

Their Darkest Hour is pretty extreme. Whatever about reading fiction, there is something terrible, ghastly, downright disturbing to the soul, reading about the horrors man inflicts upon his fellow man during war. I'll never forget the openly admitted confession (during an interview for the book) of the Japanese soldier Masayo Enomoto, and his encounter with a Japanese speaking Chinese woman during the war in Manchuria. His response to her attempts at friendship, communication (she did speak Japanese after all) was to rape her, shoot her and then eat her.

There are also stories of the shooting of prisoners, the plaintive excuses of (still believing) Nazis and collaborators, the self-delusional justification of the servants of terrible regimes (both Stalinist, Imperial Japanese and Nazi).

This is not a book to be read lightly. But it is an important and eye-opening book. If you want to confront, if not understand, the worst of the human condition, then this is a book you should consider. Laurence Rees is the author of several important works dealing with WWII and its horrors; perhaps the most famous is The Nazis - A Warning from History.

Cathedral of the Sea is a book I found to be pretty disturbing. So much so that I've put it away. Nohing good ever happens it seems, only horrible, horrible things, one after the other. Finally I just had have enough.

For me, one of the more disturbing fictional books I have read was by Terry Goodkind I can't remember if it was Wizard's First Rule or another from the Sword of Truth series but there is a very graphic description of the murder of a small boy with part of his body used as part of a ritual and consumed by the murderer.
For non-fiction, I found The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls to be disturbing. What made it more so than some of the other books I've read, is that it took place in a developed country with a stable government. There are supposed to be checks and protection for children in that kind of situation in developed countries.

1984 just creeped me out. It didn't scare me that badly, but once or twice I had to look around my bedroom to check that big brother wasn't watching ME.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and Under the Skin by
Michel Faber are my 2 most disturbing books.

Although I read them both years ago, they still often pop into my mind.

Very unsettling themes.

Under the Skin was Michel Faber's first book and a little rough around the edges in spots. However, the meat of the book (pun intended) and the parallel to our society is what has stayed with me all these years.

Sorry, touchstones are not working for Michel Faber

Definitely Perfume by Patrick Suskind. I really wish that I had not read this book!

The torture scenes in The Wind-up bird chronicle are the only occasion I've ever found it hard to continue reading a book. I eventually got through it, but by that point I'd lost my enthusiasm for the book.

#401-1984 creeped me out too because that was the year I graduated from high school so it was a must read back then!

There are many books already mentioned that I would agree with. I'd also like to add Uncle Tom's Cabin to the list, and for non-fiction Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith.

I've just started Let's Go Play at the Adams's. If I have a nervous breakdown I'll know who to blame.

"Girl in a swing" by Richard Adams - read it some years ago and in the end gave it away. Kind of a supernatural theme, and the build up of tension in this to a 'moment of truth' scene which was freaky, stuck with me. Curiously my scientist very intelligent not easily disturbed father borrowed this book - and agreed with my reaction when he'd finished.

> 407: Just avoid children and you'll probably be alright. ;-)

#409 I try to do that anyway!

#408 That's one Ricahrd Adams book I never read (Girl in a Swing - added for touchstones). Now you've started me wondering if I should give it a try.

ETA - Just how worrying is it that I probably get more 'recommendations' from this thread than any other?

I started to read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown - a history of the American West and I just could not get farther than a couple of chapters. The systematic cruelty of a few early settlers in USA to the indiginous people just tore my heart - and I have read many books over half a century. This is the first which I have been unable to complete.

Genocide, Termination Policies, Relocation Policies, assimilation - keep at it Wooly, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a very disturbing, very significant book.

Sybil. I should NOT have read this in the 4th grade. Some images are STILL stuck in my mind from those decades ago and they are not pleasant. Child abuse, including child sexual type sadistic stuff. YUCK!

The Moor by Salman Rushdi. I felt ill towards the end of it, and I was never able to finish it! Rushdi has a taste for depraved people, and he knows how to make them come alive and disturbingly close to the reader. Some day I'll try to read the last bit of it.

I thought Martin Amis's House of Meetings was upsetting, as the whole Gulag time period was. After I read it I picked up The Gulag Archipelago to do further research and after that I didn't want to read anything more disturbing than a candy wrapper.

Night by Elie Wiesel was also terrifying and painful, similar in some ways to City of Thieves for pure, graphic pain.

I thought A Fine Balance was heart-breaking and disturbing in equal measure.
The Sari Shop upset me with its social injustice.
The scene in The Inheritance of Loss where he beats his wife for squatting on the toilet disturbed me in an unexpected way.
And the attitude to rape and race in The Secret River shocks me still...

The Revelation by Bentley Little

It is a twist on the Bible, Revelation Chapter 20, verses 14 and 15.

It basically talks about how those not born to god belong to the devil, and so Stillborn children become evil, and you have little dead babies acting as devils.

Even worse, it features a woman in her 80s becoming pregnant, giving birth to a stillborn, and moments later, the baby can't be found, and there are bloody little baby footprints on the floor out the door.

I enjoy horror even though Thrillers are my favorite, but that one was a little over the top. If you want to read Bentley Little, The Association is his best one, The Store is a close second, and The Ignored is so realistic that it could actually happen, and that's what makes that creepier than anything else. Otherwise, it's basically a book about a group of people looking to get their 15 minutes of fame.

I agree with Never Let Me Go which I read very recently. The subtlety with which Ishiguro builds his story, and the simplicity with which it is told are masterful. He makes a horrific world into something ordinary. One of the best, and most disturbing, books I've read.

Ooh, good thought, Sharondingle, with A Fine Balance. Sad and disturbing, albeit beautifully written.

Well I admit that I haven't read it, but this looks REALLY disturbing: Going Rogue

OK. I admit it; I'm a coward - I generally stay away from anything "disturbing." But a few months ago I found myself on a "true crime" kick and read Aphrodite Jones' Red Zone about the famous (infamous) dog mauling in San Francisco. Too brutal! The experienced cops, paramedics, etc. who responded to the scene (the attack was so vicious, when they found the victim all of her clothes had been torn off) were so traumatized they needed therapy. That's the most disturbing book I've read.

Running with Scissors was child's play compared to A Wolf at the Table.

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski; absolutely horrifying, though of course there is much dispute to the validity of this being classified as a "memoir", however i think that that is entirely outside of the point.

For true absolute depravity in the most visceral manner i have ever encountered, the prize goes to Cows by British author Matthew Stockoe. The book is so obscure and hard to find that it is not even listed on this website and sells for big bucks (upwards of 60 dollars) on Amazon. However it remains one of the most memorable novels I have ever read, and was the only book that ever made me gag, and I've read everything from Palahniuk to Sade. Its quite in the vein of The Wasp Factory, the book has an actual warning label the back cover it that tells you anything.

Filth by Irvine Welsh

#423 rosalindaseyes

I must be ill because after reading the reviews of Cows (touchstone wrong), I just added it to my wishlist at Amazon. If I ever get it i'll be sure to post my impressions here. It sounds sick, but for some reason intriguing.

Not really all that bad but there was this book called Snow Pony with this really cute pic of a pony running through the snow. It was in the childrens part of Borders so I pick it up and flip though it and was (being nine at the time) quite horrified to read a rather vivid description of someone hanging themselves with the cord of a vacuum!
And when my mom goes to talk to the lady at the desk I was once again upset when she said that that was what kids my age read!

I was like 50 or so pages into Off Season by Jack Ketchum and I quit it.

@ annie1378
Oh, yes that book is quite disgusting. Left me feeling like i needed a shower.

#425 Worrying, isn't it? I probably get more recommendations from this thread than any other on LT. Not sure that was the original purpose!

I am a librarian and we are against censorship, but I'm afraid I was very tempted to pull American Psycho after I read it. Most disturbing book I've ever read, and I've read a bunch. I was interested by the comment about Wind-up Bird Chronicle which I would vote the most boring book I've ever read. I don't remember there being torture in it!!! How could it have been so boring if there was torture?

Shows you how much readers can differ. To me The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is a terrific book, amazingly well-written. I can't imagine being bored by it.

The torture of Chinese prisoners is repeatedly referred to in it.

I read Sybil and The Color Purple in high school and they both really disturbed me.

James Ellroy's Black Dahlia freaked me out for a couple of days after I read it in my 20s, but now I think I'm so jaded it would take a lot more than that to affect me.

What a question! Susan Hill's 'the Woman in Black' - famous for freaking people out certainly disturbed me, as did Sebastian Faulk's 'Engleby'. But both of these were extremely well written and def worth reading; just rather chilling. Another one more recently was Sarah Waters' the Little Stranger, which I've reviewed and commented on. But it's a big question. I mean, Flaubert's Madame Bouvery disturbed me, but for different reasons. . .just why could she not be happy with the life she led and the husband who, okay, loved her, even if he was not perfect?. . .so it could go on. . .

Darn! This thread is dangerous as it may make you add to your TBR pile!!! It has made mine bigger by a few....lol

Thanks ScarlettOHara...I've just added The Woman in Black to my wishlist. I'll probably pick it up at the library this week...lol

Everything's been added to the library, and I just wanted to leave a reminder for book suggesters: if a work isn't touchstoned, it's chances of being added to the catalog drop a little. If it isn't touchstoned, and the author's name isn't mentioned, then it definitely won't be added, because it's very difficult to track down a specific work amongst the millions of titles out there, especially when you you're trying to work around the weird way LT search engines work.

Echoing American Psycho; that was one disturbing read!

I think Naked Lunch by Burroughs is the most disturbing. What always fascinated me is that it is considered a classic by many. It is imaginative and hermetic in a way, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a literary classic.

#435

I put in message 417, which I Touchstoned, The Revelation by Bentley Little. Didn't know if you wanted to add it to the library, noticed it wasn't there.

Thriller: Sorry, I was having trouble adding some of Little's books, it's in the catalog now.

For me, the most disturbing book I've read is either Needful Things or Duma Key. Either way, Stephen King wins that award from me.

I had almost forgotten about Subliminal Seduction, but I agree with you. It's had to dismiss what they do in advertising for the sake of the almighty dollar.
The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon about a 15 year old boy who sets himself on fire and the aftermath. Very disturbing. The Glass Castle REALLY bothered me because it felt like the author made light of the horrible mental and physical cruelty she suffered. What's up wth that?

The most disturbing book I have ever read is Night by Elie Wisel. I read it awhile ago and it still stayed with me.

My money is on J. Eric Miller's Animal Rights and Pornography.

>442 Mariah7:

Same book with me. It haunts me.

edited for misspelling. Wrote gook instead of book.

>443 poetontheone:

From reading the reviews on Amazon, I wouldn't read it. I will read erotica and mild pornography. Where is the border between erotic and porn? I think D.H. Lawrence, whose "Lady Chatterly's Lover" was banned in the US, gave a good definition. He said: "You can always recognize pornography by the insult it offers sexuality".

Oooo that's a great quote there bookmonk8888. That's one to remember!

I'd say it speaks the ugly and animalistic aspects of humanity and has distinct literary qualities.. It's not Penthouse. It IS disturbing, however!

Yeval by C. W. Schultz. It's very violent, the most violent thing I've ever read (more violent than American Psycho). But what I find disurbing about Yeval is that it cracks me up too. Why I love the book is because it's brilliant, deep and has a terrific moral-theme.

I find that the books that disturbed me the most, were ones I read when I was younger. Dracula gave me nightmares and The Giver stayed with me for a long time and took a few readings for me to understand fully what was happening.

I think the most disturbing though was Robert Cormier's Fade. It's marketed as a YA book but dealt with some incredibly mature themes. The main character's grey morality and the frank references to sexuality, including incest, rocked my pre-teen mind.

I'm amazed no-one has mentioned Ian McEwan's earliest stuff, such as the short stories 'First Love, Last Rights' or 'In Between The Sheets'.

Also Aidan Lord's 'Bleeding The Orchid', that's just total bloody weirdness!

Alone in Berlin just gave me a pretty disturbing few days.

Definitely American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and I see i'm not alone! Lots of mentions of it.

Over the weekend, I was reading In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut, which is up for the Man Booker Prize.... The first novella, "The Follower," slowly got under my skin; it's disturbing but in a subtle way. The narrator's travels in Lesotho, under the spell of a German stranger, leave him feeling displaced and stripped of identity.... My full review can be read at www.the-reading-list.com

How about The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kenned? The more you read it (me -4 times) the less you understand. On the other hand, if you consider it a work of fiction I'd have to say the prose is turgid.

So good to see this thread up and running again. I've found more recommendations here than anywhere else.

Anything by Daniel Quinn or Derrick Jensen

I must be weird. I never get disturbed by a novel, at least I think so, maybe some veiled depression sets in. I do dream of many novels I read. (I'm possibly disturbed by my own unpublished ones! Because of the difficulty of getting a publisher.) Non-fiction yes. About Bin Laden and his ilk for instance. Or the man's inhumanity issues worldwide that Nicholas Kristof reports on in the NY Times.

The Thing at the Threshold (Call of Cthulhu). But then, I was only 14 when I read that, late at night, in bed.

How could dear Cthulhu possibly cause any apprehension?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HSD4jS9Kx4

Sorry it was the cursed Cthulhu that made me double-post!

I must not read real disturbing books because the only one that I started and was a bit disturbing was The Heart Shaped Box.
I guess it lost my interest more than it was disturbing.

Fall on your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald. It was beautifully written but so dark and dysfunctional that I just couldn't take it anymore. I got such a pit in my stomach every time I picked it up to read it that I left it unfinished with only 50 or so pages left.

For me, it's 1984 by George Orwell. It is a prophetic novel about intrusive government control over its citizens, and coined the term 'double speak,' as well as others. When I was in school, it was required reading. I find it disturbing that now so few people have even heard of it. While you're at it, you might want to read Animal Farm by the same author. It's a great parody about politicians.

#465 Interesting - I don't think I've ever met anyone who hasn't at least heard of Nineteen Eighty Four. I do hope it's just that you're mixing with the wrong people;-) Not to worry, those days are over now you've joined LT - welcome to the site!

Booksloth, my niece (then in high school) didn't know why the TV show "Big Brother" was so named. So, I bought Nineteen Eighty Four for her.

Work a week in a bookstore when parents are shopping for their kids' required reading. You'd be shocked at what people have never heard of...

"Do you have Black House by Dickens?"
"This is a play. Do you have The Crucible in book form?"
"Have you ever heard of a book called Uncle Tom's Cabin?"

Sadly, I am not making this stuff up. There are dozens more. And this is the parents asking.

Franz Kafka lends nightmares to even the toughest readers of anguished characters. In worlds without an obvious or even comprehendable logic to follow, gross events and violence burst forth as each character is only a frustrated echo searching for some kind of understanding of his world and a way to believe in his own existance. A close tie between The Penal Colony and The Trial. The Penal Colony, for now, is the most disturbing especially if you know anything of the author. His own story is disturbing...

In The Penal Colony an officer demonstrates his devotion to duty by subjecting himself to his own device of torture, clinically descriptive in the design of the machine and the punishment.

What is the most disturbing is the devise itself. Think of excessively deep tatoos displaying the crime of the accused. I know of no such apparatus. Nor would I want to know the mind of the designer, KAFKA! Yet I still keep lurking. If you are searching for even a hint of goodness in your disturbing books as I do, please share if you find any in this read.

#468 retropelocin

That is exactly why I joined Library Thing. I have always been a lone reader, absorbing my reads and not sharing...Once I started to discuss reads in my reg circles, I was shocked and, more so, disappointed in the overall lack of interest and/or knowledge of even a few classics. Or worse, the folks who read only a certain kind of literature banning others for "righteous" reasons. I am an at risk reader who tends to pick an author and wear him out (and his life too). Looking forward to reading others reviews on my reads and expanding outside my usual...

#470 Another newbie - welcome!

#468 etc. It's terrifying, isn't it? Admittedly, quite a few books crop up here that I've never heard of but I don't think many of them would count as 'classics' (which isn't to say I've read them all or even that I plan to read them all). I like to think that I move among fairly literate people - at least many of them are people who read something but I was always surprised to find how many of those same people didn't read much. It was when I first joined LT that I realsied how good it is to be able to mention something you've read and, instead of being met with a blank stare, have people clamouring to say what they thought of it too. You're never alone with a LibraryThing membership.

The first chapter of The Pack by C. W. Schultz is very disturbing. The reader is kind of in the dark and doesn't know what to expect. It gets much more violent, but even being warned ahead of time, The Pack will shock you right from the get-go.

OMG! I can not believe Exquisite Corpse was not mention. Has to be "Thee" Most disturbing book ever. About two serial killers like Jeffery Dahmer falling in love. Although that would most likely never happen. I have been reading most of the books referred here We need to talk about Kevin,The Road, The Girl Next Door, The Last Victim etc. Poppie Z. Brite has got the market cornered on Dis-TUrb-INg!! (In my opinion)

If you want to read something disturbing, try '120 DAYS OF SODOM' by the Marquis de Sade. I tried to read it one time (copies are hard to find) and discovered that it is actually a numbered outline of ideas that he found to be pleasing. It eventually dissolves into a litany of sexual mutilations that is implied to be survivable but are obviously fatal. Interestingly, the victims that he prefers are adolescent boys and girls about fourteen of fifteen years old. At first he tries all possible combinations of sexual activities before mutilating the victims to death. It actually becomes more tedious than horrifying after a while, and the fact that it has no plot does not add interest. "Totally Psychotic".
Like Adolf Hitler's MEIN KAMPF, I have difficulty believing that anyone has ever finished reading the whole thing.

I find that books like The Wasp Factory are more disgusting than disturbing. Two books that really did leave me with a profound sense of unease were 1984 and Christie's And Then There Were None. I couldn't explain what about them bothered me as much as it did; maybe it was because both are so grim and I read them at an early age when happy endings where the norm, or at least some sort of safe but troubled resolution.

(I also always hated Where the Wild Thins Are and still won't give it as a child's gift.)

>474 JimThomson:
Scholars must "finish reading the whole thing". Even a non-scholar who seeks to understand Nazism must read Mein Kampf.

I agree, Perfume was disturbing. But I think it was worth the read! I thought the way the author crafted the main character was really fantastic and the idea really innovative. I would definitely see the movie, even if I'll be peering at the screen through slits between my fingers.

#477 I would definitely see the movie, even if I'll be peering at the screen through slits between my fingers.

Make sure you leave enough room to poke yourself in the eye every now and then. Although I enjoyed the book I've tried to watch the movie twice now and fallen asleep both times ;-)

Room by Emma Donoghue (who was my mentor is a writing programme a couple years ago) is definitely disturbing, but surprisingly uplifting as well! It's about a child born in captivity to a sex slave. I fell in love with his unique perspective and striking observations about the world..... My full review can be read at www.the-reading-list.com

I totally agree, i have just finished reading (room) myself and i was torn in my emotions. On reading the book you enjoy Jack's experiences and views on the world and i often found myself laughing at his thoughts. But step back and from an adult perspective its such a powerful and disturbing read. Glad you enjoyed it and i look forward to reading your review.

For disturbing things I've read knowing what I was getting into- non-fiction regarding the Holocaust, for fiction, perhaps Beloved. I intentionally will not read books containing child or animal abuse if I know that about them. In fact, I just now put So Long, See You tomorrow down in total disgust that the author is asking for sympathy for a character who beats his dog, and strikes his son. Sorry, wrong reader. I feel little sympathy for that character, even if the setting was decades ago.

I finally got around to reading Lolita by Nabokov and was deeply disturbed by the main character's narrative. The pedophilia made me feel dirty just from reading... Yikes!

Cow's. Personally I thought it was superbly written.

I have tagged two books "WTF". The Wasp Factory, while reading I felt as though I was rubber necking a car crash. So well written but so disturbing. Most recently I read The Library at Mount Char. Strangely inventive and extremely violent.

I read Let's Go Play at the Adams' last year and it still haunts.

Gary Jennings comes to mind. In each of his historical fiction novels he springs at least one truly awful scene on you, maybe it was in his contract.

I feel like I should read The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert at some point, I'm just not sure if I want to.

>468 retropelocin:, I'd be more shocked if my local (relatively small) bookstore stocked any of those. If it's not a bestseller or published in the last decade, they probably don't have it.

Definitely The Mark of the Angel by Nancy Huston. The scene on the train haunts me to this day....

I have flagged >488 RoderickEdotcom: because it is the author pushing his own book, in violation of the TOS.

Three books that made me want to take a shower & I needed to GET RID OF IMMEDIATELY:

Like so many others, American Psycho & Lord of the Flies, and also as someone has said, Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea.

A book that haunted me throughout my childhood & still upsets me: Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who? “We are here! We are here! We are here!” And nobody listening.

And, outside of fiction, every letter of every word of Anne Frank’s Diary was achingly hard.

So glad this thread was revived!

We Need to Talk About Kevin is without a doubt the most disturbing book I’ve ever read. As soon as I finished the last sentence I jumped up and threw it into the wastepaper basket at a house where I was visiting. It was immediately retrieved by the owner who after reading it, told me it was the most disturbing book she’d ever read.

>491 kjuliff: I agree that it was so disturbing, especially the ending!

For me it would be a three way tie

Tombstone, Slavery by Another Name, and The Rape of Nanking. It took me awhile to get through each of these. I found I could only take so much and then I had to put the book aside for awhile before resuming the read.

It was a great book, but being a cyclist too, I simply could not read the chapter when he went through chemotherapy - that was just too disturbing.

Fail-safe had me looking up worried at the sound of a plane for a long time.

Right up there with disturbing books for me was The Forsaken Army: A Novel of the Battle of Stalingrad by Heinrich Gerlach, one of the survivors. Reminded me that Hitler’s horrors were also visited on his own people. An unforgettable read.

>496 Lightfantastic: Ah, yes- "Die verratene Armee". Hitler didn't like losers.

Without a doubt I would have to say anything by Marquis DeSade particularly 120 Days of Sodom. That is a book that has a spot reserved in a locked box in my library. The are others such as Eyes of The War which chronicles, very graphically, events of WWII. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess is pretty unsettling as well.

>23 xenchu: Being from Louisiana I have to say that there are not too many individuals on two feet that conjure up the image of pure EVIL as much as that man. Just the mention of his name causes fog to roll out from under the doors of unlit rooms. As bad as the media harps on current politics...they have no idea how bad it would be if that man employed any amount of authority in modern society.

>498 Joligula: I agree about A Clockwork Orange!

I guess the winner has to be a non-fiction book about the Holocaust that made my teenage self feel physically ill. I had to put it away lest I threw up my dinner. I believe it was called something like "The Death Machine", but searching for that doesn't bring up anything that seems to be it.

Can't think of any fiction that's affected me similarly.

*TRIGGER WARNINGS*
Okay, so I am a teen, so I have not read many super deep/traumatizing books yet, but I think the worst would be Fighting Words by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. It has many themes that I was not very educated in, including SH and SA. I was very shocked when I read it, but it truly changed my views on so many things on so many levels. It is a YA book though, so keep that in mind.

Hands down, Krieg dem Kriege. There is this gruesome photography included. We read it at school when I was about 14 (so, more than 50 years ago), and I have never been able to get those images out of my head.

Lord Foul’s Bane, book one of the Thomas Covenant series, by Stephen Donaldson. I didn’t read past the rape. Anytime a book starts with a whipping or another act of brutality (there were a couple more, I stop reading. I’m all for a good murder thought.

We Need to Talk about Kevin - it made me feel physically ill.

"In The Miso Soup" by Ryu Murakami was horrific to the point I had to skip at least a page or two at a time. Gratuitous violence for the sake of it, extremely gory with no real purpose.

I don't remember every book I've read, but the first one that came to mind for this was The Discomfort of Evening.

I have to update anything I might have said before. My old choices still stand firm. But I have to add The WoodWitch and The Cormorant by Stephen Gregory to the list. It seems Mr. Gregory has a penchant for including young and VERY young people in situations they should not be in. And since it is repeated in more than one of his works...I dare say an issue might abound. Other than that the books are well written and the stories are as advertised (WEIRD FICTION). I recall another book called Reds. Memoirs from Vietnam Veterans. It was beyond graphic and the humanity or lack of in whatever case is soul crushing.

>405 susiesharp: Yes, everyone wanted to read 1984 during that year. I requested it from my county library in January, did not get to read 1984 until the following year.

>162 Tay11: If you mean Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, it is one of hers I have not read - yet. But, those I did read were quite disturbing. I think that's probably what makes her a best selling author.

Gonna have to toss F. Paul Wilson and his Adversary Cycle stories in the mix. Not uber disturbing but will still get your hackles in a bunch.

If you're interested, Booktuber Eric Karl Anderson made a recent video about books he found disturbing (influenced by the latest from Joyce Carol Oates)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNbnzf9T-w8