Ask Lemmy

The Bible series, but things really jumped the shark with the Book of Mormon.

American Psycho contained scenes so graphic that I’d have to pause and stare out the window briefly before I could go on.

Aside from the occasional designed-to-offend ones, probably The Road. Only book I've ever read that haunted me

Anytjing that marquis de sade wrote. Dont read it. Its the work of someone who pretended to "pose interesting questions" while write the worst rape fanfiction with his dick in his hand.

Trigger warning: just straight up awful assault

!There is a scene in which a father is forced to raped his underaged daughter and then gets shot while cumming inside her. The daughter of course gets spared. Oh wait no. She gets raped a gun point, mutilated and then rape killed again. Repeat this fof roughly 400 pages. Oh wow, so challenging and insightful! I truly believe that de Sade was horrified by this! Fuck off. !<

If you've come across the short story Guts at some point, it's apparently part of the book Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. I haven't read the whole book so not sure what the other stories are like but this story is really trying to be both gross and fucked up.

Naked Lunch by Christopher Burroughs

The Trial by Franz Kafka. Anything by Kafka is pretty mental.

Was just talking about this yesterday because of the "would you pick the man or the bear" question going around. The novel Bear by Marian Engel is quite literally about a woman who falls in love with and tries to have sex with a large bear. It won the Governor General's award in Canada.

Also The Wasp Factory is seriously fucked up.

I can't remember the name of the book now, but in high school we read a 'true' story of child abuse. I'm sure it was edited to both tone down and turn up certain elements, but it was pretty much a brutal shock to people who are mostly from decent families that love them. Whether the kids were rich, poor, or middle class in my school, just about everyone there could at least return home to parents that didn't commit those horrors.

I remember the diapers, the exposure to the elements, and the way the other children were pitted against the abused kid, and honestly? It was the emotional abuse that was the worst to read.

The Wasp Factory and We Need to Talk about Kevin (both have scenes of an older child abusing the trust of a younger sibling, which really bothered me at the time).

The Reckoning by Grisham.

Death in Her Hands by Moshfegh.

The Long Walk by King.

The Children of Hurin by Tolkien.

Angela's Ashes by McCourt.

Already mentioned but The Road, definitely.

Probably not as fucked up as other entries, but I read Geek Love in grade school. The original meaning of geek, which was someone who bit the head off a chicken. Bunch of weird shit about a messed up carnie family. Not a terrible read I guess but holy shit was I not prepared.

So honestly the train in IT was pretty fucked up and I probably shouldn't have read it as young as I was. 100 years of solitude has its own fucked-up-ness and God of small things is also fucked up at the end, but all very different types of fucked up...

"Mangez le si vous voulez" (Eat him of you wish)

A book relating events that happened in 1870 in a French village. From a misunderstanding one guy is beaten, released, tortured and ultimately burned alive with people bridging toast to collect the fat that was dripping from the fire.

All the events happened in a single day that goes from mundane to horror.

Blood Meridian by Cormac Mccarthy.

It's kinda hard to describe. I recon it's a parable about American colonization and the genocide of the native people. Like a map of how a project like that gets done and who benefits from it.

It's like a melodrama in that it's light on plot, and character motivation, but without the extreme circumstances unless you count the pervasive, persistent, and senseless violence. (that the characters themselves barely seem to notice) Not exactly a supernatural tale, but filled with dream logic, oh and the literal Christian Devil is one of the main characters.

This is the only book Ive ever read twice, back to back. I got to the end and was like WTF, turned to the first page and started again.

The Area X series (Southern Reach Trilogy) is fucked up!

Ok let me give you a couple reasons if you haven't read it

There's this place, and it seems to be growing that has a weird effect on reality and the longer you stay there the stronger the effect. It centers around a lighthouse in a rural area. The government runs experiments but it's hush hush and nobody knows anything about it. BTW it's getting bigger.

People that leave the area x, might be doppelganger or so changed, it's the same to outside observation.

It's seriously a really good stuff and absolutely fucked up

The Silence Of The Lambs, arguably more disturbing than the film as you know more of what the characters are thinking.

Reading Spectrum 7th grade math workbook was the first time I considered ending it all

On the Beach by Nevil Schute. Read it as a kid and didn't realize what I was getting into. Kept waiting for the ending to have some kind of silver lining. Something. Then the last of humanity fucking dies and the last character commits suicide.

I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest when I was eleven. Some of the nonsense rhyme still comes back to me when I'm tired - she's a good fisherman, catches hens, puts em inna pens / wire, briar, limber lock, three geese inna flock.

I also read She's Come Undone and I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb when I was in high school. Both are extremely fucked when it comes to talking about mental health and hospitalizations.

I really wish I could remember the name of it, but it's about a lawyer who effectively puts the devil on trial, except it's really messed up in parts. There's this entire sequence involving a girl, a young child, who over time seduces the main character who describes in great detail the experience of screwing this child, only for it to be revealed that the girl was the devil/a demon of some sort whose sole purpose is to corrupt the main character. The majority of the book was great, but that particular sequence was well into distasteful and disturbing.

I think it was called Son of the Endless Night, but I'm not certain if that's correct.

Firefly by Piers Anthony (the writer of the Xanth fantasy series).

There's way too much talk of erections around dead bodies, but by far the worst part is the long section with a woman describing in way too much detail how much she enjoyed being raped as a five year old, acting it out and everything. Anthony is a messed up dude.

I think it was called "Welcome to Night Vale". After painfully reading page after page of absurd drivel that was probably "written" by a drunk AI, I finally gave up. It really reads like the output of a low-quality Markov chain. My daughter insists it isn't, but then they managed to simulate that very, very well (I have worked with Markov chains before, so I have a bit of experience how that looks like).

It is very rare that I give up on a book, maybe one in several thousands. But this one was a perfect waste of paper and ink, worse than some books we had to read in school, which is probably the harshest criticism I can offer.

I'm currently rereading A Clockwork Orange and yep, it's pretty fucked up.

Don't know if a VN counts as a book, but Song of Saya

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

It's so creepy because you read the repeated sexual abuse of a minor through the eyes of the perpetrator who continuously justifies his acts and misrepresents Lolita's reactions. He's a very unreliable narrator. First he even becomes her stepdad to have better access to her. Then her mother dies, through a car accident just before she can call the police on him. Again this is recounted through Humberts eyes, so I'm thinking it was actually murder.

I haven't finished the book yet, it's kind of hard to read. It's been a few years, and I should be somewhere in the middle IIRC.