The Bible series, but things really jumped the shark with the Book of Mormon.
The Bible did fuck me up as a kid.
But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.
Matthew 5:28-5:29
Reading this as a super religious + horny 12 year old was terrifying. I felt extreme guilt for not maiming myself for a few years before I finally realized religion was bullshit.
That one is crazy how the main character does shitty things like wiping out civilizations just out of spite, then he impregnates a teenage girl and the baby grows up and is all nice and loving but says he is actually his dad and he/his dad love everyone. So much gaslighting.
Indeed, among the religious books I have read, the Book of Mormon takes the top position on the loony pile. What kind of indoctrination and drugs do you need to believe that?
American Psycho contained scenes so graphic that I’d have to pause and stare out the window briefly before I could go on.
I used to sell books and this elderly couple came up to the counter saying they were buying it as a Christmas present.
So I told them “Hey, it’s not my place to say what is or is not a good Christmas present, but before I sell it to you, could I get you to just flip the pages, randomly stick your finger in, and start reading?”
They thought I was kidding, but they did it…
“OH MY GOD!”
“Yeah…”
“OH MY GOD!”
Better they find out then than AFTER I sold it to them!
That’s a pretty interesting encounter. Glad you helped them know what they were about to do.
I entered this post to say exactly that.
There comes a point in the book when the constant one-upping the last scene just makes me need two or more sessions to get through the chapter. The last “Girls” chapters are specially gruelling.
It was the hamster that finally got me. Was sitting outside at my school’s union, between classes, and just couldn’t believe what I was reading.
Gore
For me it was the scene wher Pat like grabs the vocal cords of one of the women after drilling a hole through the mouth and then rips them out of the mouth.
At first I thought the book was really boring with all of the brands and clothes descriptions that took half of the chapters. After that the senseless killings and brutality got to me in the end.
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. !<
it is horrific - but you’re missing some of the context.
De Sade partly wrote it as a fuck-you to the establishment in and of itself
Partly as a satire of the aristocracy - and you can’t understate exactly how much he hated them - which is why he casts them as rapist pedophiles that prefer young boys
And partly as an attempt to catalog horrors of abuse and mental illness and the suffering of the common man at the hands of those in power
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.
That’s one of my favourite books. If you take it in the sort of gory comedy horror genre (thinking evil dead), it’s actually pretty great and has more depth to it than just horror stories.
Some of his later books get much worse, more gory, and far less interesting. He’s really just going for shock value in a lot of them. I stopped reading after the pink sock in Pygmy (couldn’t even finish the book).
I looked it up again when writing this comment and even though most reviews are negative they do make it sound pretty interesting. I’ve put it in a maaaybe list.
If you want to start with another less horrifying book by him (that isn’t fight club), I’d highly recommend Rant or invisible monsters
