Discussion Favorite fucked up books?

[uncat_]

I love books that make me feel absolutely disgusting after reading, or make me feel unconsoleably alone and apathetic.
My top 2 for this "genre" is Earthlings by Sayaka Murata and Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca, im looking for more like these.

what books have you read that gave you this feeling?

 

[tiger b]

Maribou Stork Nightmares and The Torture Garden...and the first time I read 1984.

 

[AloeGarten]

the writing style is quite weird and old fashioned but i like H.P Lovecrafts books, its like cosmic horror, existential type stuff. my favs are call of cthulu and the whisperer in darkness

 

[EvisceratedJester]

While I don't think it's that fucked up, I really love The Wasp Factory. I first read it in grade 9 and I would still consider it to be one of my favourite books, along with The Nest by Kenneth Oppel.

 

[edu0z]

"Unworthy of being Human" by Osamu Dazai

 

[𝑪𝒉𝒐𝒄𝒐𝒉𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒄]

a little life
13 reasons why
(i dont speak english so forgive me for not being able to list the names of the authors)

 

[neverwashere]

"Unworthy of being Human" by Osamu Dazai

im not even surprised someone on this website would have read and enjoyed that book (same dude, same)
does junji ito count as fucked up? i like anything written by junju ito :3

 

[psp3000]

I had high expectations for Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke since the author compared himself to Dennis Cooper and another well known transgressive and disturbing author

I really want to read more of the Splatterlunk genre but I haven't heard about any other authors besides Aaron Beauregard

I recently read the book The Sluts by Dennis Cooper it was disturbing and a bit funny because it captures the atmosphere of how unmoderated the internet was back then very well

another that I read but unfortunately didn't get to finish is the well known Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite along with Crash by J.G. Ballard also The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade


some transgressive and disturbing books that I plan on reading in the future are:
Cows by Matthew Stokoe
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
Frisk by Dennis Cooper
Gone to See The Riverman by Kristopher Triana
Hogg by Samuel R. Delany (may not even read this one due to the many warnings, and unreadability due to it's very graphic and descriptive disturbing scenes)
The Necrophiliac by Gabrielle Wittkop

I often frequent this channel for transgressive novel recommendations and reviews along with extreme horror

 

[WAITING TO DIE]

I like " choke " , by chuck palahunik. and " intensity " by dean koontz, also " Hellraiser " by Clive barker.

 

[jar-baby]

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk will always be my number one answer to this question. Also seconding Choke. and also Invisible Monsters. Honestly, I'm pretty sure anything by Palahniuk qualifies.

"The cerebral cortex, the cerebellum," she said, "that's where your problem is."
If she could just get down to using only her brain stem, she'd be cured.
This would be somewhere beyond happiness and sadness.
You don't see fish agonized by wild mood swings.
Sponges never have a bad day.

 

[noname223]

Brief Interviews with hideous men - by David Foster Wallace

 

[tiger b]

I like " choke " , by chuck palahunik. and " intensity " by dean koontz, also " Hellraiser " by Clive barker.

I'm sure I've read some Koontz but really can't recall what...going to annoy me now.

Getting serious 'must read' vibes towards Palaho-Papanew-Pa...Chuck, thanks to this thread.

 

[WAITING TO DIE]

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk will always be my number one answer to this question. Also seconding Choke. and also Invisible Monsters. Honestly, I'm pretty sure anything by Palahniuk qualifies.

I've always meant to read " haunted " but never got round to it.
Thanks for reminding me.

 

[cryvinglightning]

"the whisperer", by donato carrisi. the original title is "il suggeritore". it's a really good thriller book from a famous italian writer.
i also like "i kill" ("io uccido") by giorgio faletti.

 

[Ashu]

"the whisperer", by donato carrisi. the original title is "il suggeritore". it's a really good thriller book from a famous italian writer.
i also like "i kill" ("io uccido") by giorgio faletti.

Li cercherò

"the whisperer", by donato carrisi. the original title is "il suggeritore". it's a really good thriller book from a famous italian writer.
i also like "i kill" ("io uccido") by giorgio faletti.

My favorote suicide-related Italian novel, and one of my favorite novels generally, is Il giocatore invisibile by Giuseppe Pontiggia. Oh and of course L' airone of Giorgio Bassani.

 

[SleepySept]

im not even surprised someone on this website would have read and enjoyed that book (same dude, same)
does junji ito count as fucked up? i like anything written by junju ito :3

"Unworthy of being Human" by Osamu Dazai

Yooo same! No Longer Human (other TL of the novel) was so frightening to me. After reading it I was genuinely scared of looking at my family since I realized how little I knew of them. I was 15 when I read it and a month away from my biggest suicide attempt and it stuck pretty deeply with me during that time.

Despite how Dazai presented himself (with the title), he actually described everything in such a fucking human way that its scary. His level of self awareness was incredible and so down to earth. The level of his acknowledgment to how deep and ugly human nature can be, especially for himself. Yet despite how monstrous he presented himself his level of empathy surprisingly showed well. It was amazing how much self hatred he presented but how much he wrote understanding others.

 

[兎の耳]

the writing style is quite weird and old fashioned but i like H.P Lovecrafts books, its like cosmic horror, existential type stuff. my favs are call of cthulu and the whisperer in darkness

I'm a huge H.P. Lovecraft fan. I think my favorite is The Colour out of Space.

 

[neverwashere]

Yooo same! No Longer Human (other TL of the novel) was so frightening to me. After reading it I was genuinely scared of looking at my family since I realized how little I knew of them. I was 15 when I read it and a month away from my biggest suicide attempt and it stuck pretty deeply with me during that time.

Despite how Dazai presented himself (with the title), he actually described everything in such a fucking human way that its scary. His level of self awareness was incredible and so down to earth. The level of his acknowledgment to how deep and ugly human nature can be, especially for himself. Yet despite how monstrous he presented himself his level of empathy surprisingly showed well. It was amazing how much self hatred he presented but how much he wrote understanding others.

No Longer Human genuinely shook me to my core when I read it for the first time when I was around 15 as well, and thinking back on it now, it still makes me t h i n k.
Its ironic how a book titled "No Longer Human" provides so much insight into how horrifying and painful the human condition can be and/or is once you realize it's full implications. As horrible as his life was (and as horrible and mysoginistic he was as a person) I think that to an extent, there's something so painfully relatable about the way he sees both himself and life. I feel like that level of self awarness that he had is something that a lot of people on this forum have, which is interesting to me bc it raises the question of are they here *because* of this self awareness, or is it something you develop after you get to the point where you don't want to live anymore?

 

[Undertow Mermaid]

Poppy Z. Brite -- Lost Souls

Lost Souls is a fucked up vampires with incest story. Mostly just a book for shock value, but the vampire lore is interesting.

Julie Anne Peters -- By The Time You Read This I'll Be Dead

By The Time You Read This I'll Be Dead is a book I got in high school. I like how it ends with you not knowing if the main character will ctb or not, it's left up to you to decide how she ends her "final" day. I also hold a lot of empathy for the main character and a lot of my situations growing up were like her's. I reread it often.

 

[AloeGarten]

I'm a huge H.P. Lovecraft fan. I think my favorite is The Colour out of Space.

oo thats next on my list, im reading (well, listening) to at the mountains of madness atm. good taste, its rare i find anyone whos read lovecraft

 

[iamalreadydead]

The secret diary of Laura Palmer

The secret diary of Laura Palmer

Oh and My year of Rest and Relaxation by ottesha moshfegh, and Imperial Bedrooms by Brett Easton Ellis. Kinda dislike the last two authors because they're sort of.. idk. i guess full of themselves but it works in their favor for the type of art they create

 

[Hikikomori1]

These are my favorite books that are fucked up.

They are both stories about pedophiles falling in love with and grooming a minor.

 

[Aburach]

Knut Hamsun - Hunger
Solzhenitsyn - A Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich

 

[une vie grotesque]

The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Gaétan Soucy (and the amazing english translation by Sheila Fischman): "Two children grow up alone with their authoritarian father on an isolated estate, speaking a language and inhabiting a surreal universe of their own creation that has been shaped by their reading of tales of chivalry and philosophy, until the death of their father brings them into contact with the outside world and reveals the dark truth of their existence."

it's written amazingly well in the pov of one of the children, you really get immersed in the story. honestly, i've never been so immersed reading a book before. after every reading session I felt my brain unaccustomed to the outside world, almost like when you play a game for too long. reading this book felt like cleaning decades old dirt, layer by layer, until all is clear. very beautiful but also very distressing.

 

[onewho]

Honestly, I'm pretty sure anything by Palahniuk qualifies.

Can confirm! Although if one has seen Fight Club the movie, then the original book is weirdly different... but his others are just as stellar as his "claim to fame" one, if not in plenty of cases subtly even more so.

 

[DarkRange55]

Just off the top of my head if you count these, I would probably say the Lovecraft novels

 

[RollingGiant]

The Labyrinth by Simon Stålenhag is this post-apocalyptic book about two people and a kid spending time at a research station on the surface of the earth after humanity was driven underground. It's kinda like an artbook with short bits of story between the pictures. It's manages to feel fucked up in a very real way, at least to me, even though it's also so surreal. It's hard to talk about the story much without spoiling it, but here's a video that reviews it without doing that:


A really dark non-fiction book I've read is The Conspiracy against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti. It's basically a collection of essays about how life and the world are irredeemably horrible, and there's no hope for humanity. It's not a dry read either; there are some really colourful sections.

 

[BlessedBeTheFlame]

I have no idea by what to measure the fucked upness, but some that come to mind:
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
The Brother Karazamov (Crime and Punishment too)- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Setting Sun - Osamu Dazai
The War of the End of the World - Mario Llosa Vargas
The Stranger - Albert Camus

Also, I remember some Karen on Goodreads writing a long review on One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, that boiled down to "I didn't understand anything, it wasn't cool like Hunger Games and some parts felt disturbing.", so I guess that one too. Unnerving and offending people is an absolute art. Lolita is the best example. It's purposefully written from the perspective of a psychopath to illustrate how easy it is to manipulate people or lull yourself into doing horrible things. The fact people misunderstand and ban it only shows how good of a writer Nabokov is