What book have you read that wasn’t subjectively “bad” but you regrets reading all the same?
For me, Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter. The book was engaging and it kept me on my toes, but I just with I hadn’t “poisoned my head” with all the graphic gore that was in there. I years later i still think about this and how I really wish I had never read it.
Question inspired by a comment /u/PrincessOfWales made in another thread :)
Precious
On a different track, I read a lot of Orson Scott Card when I was younger, and now regret having given any money to that man.
I re-read the entire Tolkien trilogy as a college freshman. Great books obviously, but I should have been reading my school books first.
Were you expelled or something? Otherwise I See no problem with reading fiction while at college.
it’s ok. you had to cope 😂
The Road. If you know, you know.
I tried watching the movie a few years after I read the book. Nope. It’s just so bloody grim.
If you can’t handle the road steer clear of Blood Meridian lol
The thing about The Road was the sense of dread that colors the whole book. The violence was unpleasant, but the dread is what really got me.
Everyone always talks about how violent it is.
Haunted is gruesome/violent in a way you can’t forget. I literally had to put the book down before I could finish it. I can’t forget Blood Meridian either, but it’s not the same. What got me was everything else.
Regardless The Road is better. I literally felt guilty for having food while reading it.
Can you provide a spoiler free synopsis so I know what it is about?
I hear the book was published during a time when the “wild west cowboys and Indians” genre was very popular in the U.S., and directly contradicted all the white washed romanticism portrayed in books and movies.
Violence. That would be the best way to describe it without a spoiler but it’s about a boy who runs away from home and doesn’t just join a band of bad guys he joins a band of pure villains. Some of the most vile and evil characters I’ve seen in a book and some of the most violent set pieces I’ve read. You’ll have a few moments that will leave you feeling sick and grimy and when it’s all done you’ll walk away from it still thinking about it. Another person on here did make the point that if you have children The Road is more disturbing but if you’re looking for a good read either of them are incredible books.
Damnnnn! Just looked it up on Libby. 6-week wait for first available copy on Kindle, lol
It’s a good one as an audiobook. I have heard the actual book lacks a lot of punctuation
The book was horrifying. I don’t regret reading it but damn, not going to reread it either.
Blood Meridian gets better with each reading.
When you know what’s coming the second time around the book is infinitely better and you get the philosophical aspect more. The first time you focus on just the violence, the second time more the story and characters. Give it time, years even but I think you should definitely reread it. But yeah it’s real deal, not for the faint of heart.
Both were so captivating, I remember them so vividly. They make excellent audiobooks as well.
Richard Poe did Blood Meridian and Suttree and Tom Stechschulte did No Country For Old Men and The Road. Both are incredible narrators who I often look for, I currently have East of Eden in my wishlist just because Richard Poe narrated it. (and it’s also a classic)
This this this this. It was great and I never ever want to re-read it. Never.
I haven’t been brave enough to open it since 2007…. Damn. The baby.
I read The Road but I don’t know what you’re talking about. What part?
I’ll put 100 bucks on the people in the cellar… the only McCarthy I’ll never reread.
Read it in grad school. I’d just had a baby – I was maybe 4 months postpartum. I had to get up and leave when the discussion got to that part.
Same here! I wish I could erase it from my memory ala Eternal Sunshine
Where Rainbows End by Cecelia Ahern. The first half is good but then it goes on and on, and then I regretted picking it up. I still finished it because it was back in the days when I thought books are sacred and that it’ll be sacrilegious to drop something I’m no longer enjoying.
It’s very spoiler-sensitive but Brothers by Yu Hua infuriated me to no end, which isn’t a dig at the book because it’s what the author wanted. Even made a post venting about it.
I really like this question! Natasha Pulley, The Half Life of Valery K. Well written, well plotted (although it gets a little fantastic at the end), so well researched, but… it has one of the most horrific gang rape/murder scenes ever, because of what it leaves to your imagination instead of what it says, it was so upsetting b/c it was pages of lead up and you knew what was coming, just so hard to read. And then what happens to some of the people with the radiation… I’ve read a lot about Chernobyl, but this novel… Anyway, I’m really sorry I read it. It lives rent-free in my head and I wish it didn’t.
I always feel like it was because my friend say “it’s just a book, it’s just fiction, they’re not real people,” but honestly if I felt that way I probably wouldn’t read so many novels!
The Road, Cormac McCarthy. After I was done, I thought to myself, how can the book keep me reading but leave me feeling so empty and unsatisfied at the end? I ruminated on this feeling for a couple of weeks - why did I read that but not regretting I read it?
I’ve started and stopped it countless time just a few pages in. It feels so dark
Try Blood Meridian next. Omg. Cormac McCarthy had a gift for describing the most graphic and brutal scenes of depravity with utter beauty
My brother was never a reader but he decided to pick that book up. He stayed up all night reading it. I was shocked
Had to read thus for high school English class. Thought I’d pick out a random book from the pile. Now that I think about it, he probably put it in there with no approval from any higher ups cause I had no business reading that at 15!
👀
I think you feeling that way was exactly what Cormac had in mind. Spoiler for anyone so stop reading, but when his wife kills herself it was depressing but so accurate because be honest if the world ended tomorrow the people who initially survived would start offing themselves within a year. People would start resorting to cannibalism and murder almost immediately. It’s a true apocalypse book that holds no punches and I appreciate it tremendously.
No! The road is devastating yes, but it’s beautiful. The horror is the medium not the point. It’s about the devotion and courage and strength It’s about the father’s love for his son.
I read The Road for a class at the beginning of a depressive episode. I then had to read a semesters worth of Cormac McCarthy books, including Blood Meridian and Outer Dark. I really appreciate his skill as an author but my god the last thing I needed to do at that time was deeply read and analyze those books for hours on end. I want to finish the Border Trilogy but it’s been 12 years and this lady still needs a break from that level of bleakness.
Omg. That sounds absolutely horrible. I’m so glad you were able to find your way out and through that. What a resilient being you are!
I had that experience with James Ellroy. Incredible writer but bleak and misanthropic world view. And I understand that McCarthy is several notches beyond that so I’m probably never gonna read that guy.
Bless The Child by Cathy Cash Spellman, it absolutely terrified me. I was sleeping with the light on for weeks. The film had nothing in common with the book apart from the title. I passed it on to a relative and he binned it halfway through because he didn’t even want it in the house. The weird thing is that the author used to write family saga type romances.
You definitely wouldn’t be a fan of American Psycho.
That being said, despite the gore it is a brilliantly written satire. And if you “get it”…the book is hilarious.
American Psycho was excellent! My kind of unhinged humor, although I admit I prefer the movie to the book.
There must be something wrong with me, because I found Pretty Girls to be fairly tame. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it, but everyone said it was deeply disturbing.
I agree to preferring the movie over the book! I feel that it does a better job of making you question if Bateman is actually committing brutal murders or if it’s all in his head. I do love the line in the book, “well it’s been a bad week. I started drinking my own piss.”
Yes, exactly! There are some good lines in the book, but the movie plays the ambiguity better. I also think the tone comes across better in the movie: the business card scene and the Hip to be Square scene are standouts.
Have you read Glamorama? It’s also by Bret Easton Ellis and is the unofficial book that Zoolander is based on. It’s not as good, in my opinion, but it has its moments.
But why male models?
Yeah, the tone and humor plays better in the movie. The business card scene is still funny in the book, but something about hearing the inner monolog as Bateman sweats over fonts takes it up a notch. And how they handled the Huey Lewis and The News scene was much better .
I have not read Glamorama, I’ll have to check it out!
I got bored with the gore (which I guess was the point) and just wanted him to get caught already.
You can skip the gore in this book and still get the satire and humor.
One of my all time favorite books and I’m truly blown away by how many people missed the point completely.
And I say that as someone who doesn’t particularly like Bret Easton Ellis: every now and then he writes something brilliant like American Psycho but he also wrote Rules of Attraction which was such a chore to get through.
To me the movie did not accurately capture the theme nearly as well as the book. Christian Bale was amazing in it but the movie stripped a bit too much out of what made the book really work.
One the most well written books I read but damn did it hinge on the dangers of social perfection and predatory encounters in between.
That and Snuff are the only 2 books I’ve ever had to stop reading at points. Literally wanted to put them in time out.
Came here to say American Psycho. I’d seen the film first and loved it so assumed the same about the book… I did not. I definitely read it at too young an age (I’d guess about 15/16?) but many years later I am still freaked out by the violence
I was about that age too, and was on a small holiday with my family, reading this book in a small caravan, I felt gross lol
At one point I had to jump to read the end, my anxiety level was too high, and I thought, knowing the end would give me a bit of ease. It were things like (iirc, it was over 20y ago) >!the drilling machine, the grabbing of blood vessels from inside the throat and the vivid description of the smell from the head(s?) he stored in his refrigerator.!< Idk if I would’ve the same reaction, if I would read it now.
It’s so long ago that I don’t remember an awful lot of it, but for me the scene that stands out was where he, putting it mildly, chomps down on a lady where no person should chomp. Also the rats. I do also wonder though, how would I feel now if I read it? But the general dread of having to go through that scene and all the others that lurk slightly out of sight in my memory… no, thank you
Falling by Christopher Pike.
The book itself was fine. The ending I didn’t like. It still haunts me. I just can’t read it since. Maybe because I share the name of one of the characters and two of my fears is being >!being left to die!< and the other is !>falling of a cliff like she does!kid is left to suffer in the hospital by the mom!< if I ever stumble over it again, I know I’m not reading it.
Fall Into Darkness you mean?
I think the comment with the link to it got caught in the filters.
Anyways, Christopher Pike did a few books for adults. One was called Falling and it was a cop plus crazy woman psychological thiller type. He wrote it some time after Fall Into Darkness. One of the characters in Falling is named Amy.
Bored of the Rings. It was pretty funny but it messed with my love of LOTR for a while.
Dildo Draggins? Gooddgulp the Wizard?
TIL, never heard of this. I feel my love of the LOTR world is pretty unwavering, despite/including its flaws. I’m prolly going to seek this out regardless, but I am curious more about your opinion.
Circe by Madeline Miller.
There is a scene that put me in a full panic attack because of ptsd.
Spoiler/trigger warning
It’s the gang rape scene obviously.
Same. Great book tho
Cujo. I don’t need to believe in God but I need to believe in dogs.
I couldn’t even read it. I started it and I was nope.
Oh, dude. So I was a kid that was always reading way above my grade level. Obviously kids like that get into all sorts of weird adult books, right? And often life experience doesn’t catch up to reading level quick enough for us… so my mom had a big book wall (don’t we all though???) and I swiped Cujo and stuck it under my mattress around age 10 and would read it when I was I’m private. Dude. Blew my frickin mind, some of the shit in there. I haven’t gone back to read it for almost 20 years now. Nope. And I’ve read other stuff like that since then, but the fact THATS the specific book that I read at 10 that freaked me out so much, I just…haven’t lol
I had a similar reaction to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I was nine when I read it, the same age as Maya Angelou when she was raped, and reading such a graphic account told in the first person by a girl my own age really scarred me.
At that age I nicked Nightshift from my mum’s shelf to read secretively, scarred for life
Luckily I was 12ish before I got my first King scarring.
It was Rage, though, followed by The Long Walk, which might have been worse since the protags were closer to my own age?
Cujo was a good boy, he just got sick :(
Exactly! I’m always defending Cujo.
That’s totes fine; I’m a cat person myself.
Well, cats are actually more likely to contract rabies than dogs, so…
…now I’m writing Catjo.
Notice, Heather Lewis
Multiple rapes (including the rape by the police officers who should help the MC), false imprisonement, mental institution. To be honest, idk what is the point of this book. The author committed suicide after writing this. Very disturbing.
I regret having read Bien innocent by Gerald di Pego and Bernahardt J. Hurwood. It has the same things you said: rapes, imprisonment, just a lot of injustice. I hate it, and I read two of the saga