Best fucked up books

[skjora]

"Starfish" by Peter Watts is probably one of the more disturbing one's I've read. It's the first book in a hard sci-fi series about a bunch of people living in a deep sea station tasked with maintaining sea floor geothermal power plants. Apparently, only people who are particularly fucked up in the head can psychologically function for long periods down there, so every character is some brand of freak or sick bastard. Absolute isolation and despair are big themes and everything and everyone is just awful. Great book though.

 

[Angry Mug]

Another one for Naked Lunch here.

Been a while I've read anything by Burroughs, so I may have to go shopping for some of his other work. I do need to up my controversial book count, to be honest.

 

[glass_houses]

I've started reading 'Relations' by Caroline Slaughter. I thought that reading Anne Rice as a tween rendered me more or less unshockable on certain subjects, but I'm only on page twenty and I've just been treated to a graphic sex scene between a ten and twelve year old sibling couple.

I think this one might prove a little difficult to finish.

 

[admiral]

Anything by Clive Barker, especially from Books of Blood. Nasty gross stuff, but I still read it so I guess that reflects poorly on me.

The Wasp Room is pretty fucked up in its own way, we had to study it for A Level English. It's more or less about a sick little pervert who does gross experiments while his family life crashes around him, and it's got a good twist ending. My English teacher recommended I read The Cement Garden around the same time, because it was similar, (traumatised children and incestuous themes) and I must say that is one fucked up book, and an only slightly less fucked up movie.


One of my favourite books is The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas. The book itself isn't super fucked up plot wise, it's just a story about a vampire, but I had something of an epiphany the other day while sleep deprived and now it's fucking with my head.

In the book, the vampire is a guy named Dr Weyland. He's an anthropology professor, lean and grizzled with wiry grey hair and striking features. He's got a 'grave, attentive face', he's very opinionated about psychology and morality and and what I'm saying is that he reminds me of Jordan Peterson, right down to the way he talks in the book. It's uncanny, and the freakiest thing is that the book is from 1980, so the author can't have done it on purpose.

 

[skjora]

Anything by Clive Barker, especially from Books of Blood. Nasty gross stuff, but I still read it so I guess that reflects poorly on me.

Books of Blood is pretty gory, but I don't think they're really all that hard-hitting. "In the Hills, the Cities" in particular is very strong in "the minds eye" so to speak, but they're more fascinating than truly making you feel uncomfortable I think.

 

[Shroom King]

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

The book starts with the well-to-do intellectuals actively cheering on Napoleon's war in the West, and it is all fun and games until Napoleon decided that Russia needed some French influence too. Tsar Alexander is portrayed as a boy-king and an emperor with no clothes, and it is ominous foreshadowing for what would befall Russia in 1917. Tolstoy's original manuscripts perished in the fires caused by the Bolshevik riots peaceful transfer of power. Sound familiar?

Tolstoy fought in the Crimean War, so he was based and he knew the difference between a war of aggression and the cocksucking of foreigners that his "betters" did while Moscow burned to the fucking ground.

I wonder if there is a large country today that is undergoing the same bullshit; where foreigners are treated as saviors and patriots are treated like garbage... nope, can't think of any.

 

[AnOminous]

Another one for Naked Lunch here.

Been a while I've read anything by Burroughs, so I may have to go shopping for some of his other work. I do need to up my controversial book count, to be honest.

I've never read anything bad by Burroughs. I strongly recommend Junky and Queer. These are both early novels, with Junky's first publication being in one of those weird and largely forgotten "double novel" formats, where you had two short novels in the same paperback, and would flip it over to read the other book.

In other words, it was printed in the literary equivalent of a urinal. Those originals are priceless now.

What I like about both of these is they are actually written straight (lmao). Burroughs demonstrates incredible competence at normal narrative while focusing on the deviant lifestyle material that was his bread and butter later. Despite this, the characters are identifiable as human beings with actual personalities, and Burroughs' own charm shines through.

With a lot of alternative types, like artists who do non-representative art and writers who do stream-of-consciousness that resembles gibberish, you realize fairly quickly that they do this shit because they are completely incapable of doing anything competent, so they mask their incompetence in a sheen of supposedly avant-garde bullshit.

If you read Burroughs' early work, you realize he had a very solid grasp of narrative and conventional writing. When he deviated from the "rules" of literature, much as he deviated from the rules of normal society, he actually knew those rules, and what he was trying to accomplish by flouting them.

Also they're just really good reads.

 

[admiral]

If you want proper gross and fucked up shit, go on the kindle unlimited store. 1000s of pages of tacky erotica, poorly disguised slashfics, and fucked up gore porn which no real publisher would touch . It can be a good place to find indie horror and support some small time authors, but I can count on one hand the amount of timesI found something that was actually worth reading. It can be quite fun just scrolling through and laughing at the bad titles and covers, but if you're really looking for something to read it can be frustrating.

Anyway for something a bit more legitimate, possibly Solaris by Stanisław Lem. It's not gross or gory, but it's intensely moving. I'd only read his more lighthearted novels before this one, so it was definitely a change of pace. The film is good too (not the American one), although apparently Lem didn't like either of them.

Also Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. I'd seen the film before, but even though I knew what was coming I still cringed during the ball scene.

Lastly, I'd probably have to say Husk: A Novel by Corey Redekop. It's about a guy who becomes a zombie and then gets hired for a bunch of movie roles. The plot is him navigating fame while trying to maintain his body as it gradually rots and falls apart, and then at the end there's some bizzaro shit. It's more body horror throughout the bulk of the book, but at the end it gets psychological.

Nothing super gory here (except the last one), but tbh I think reading all the gore I could get my hands on as a teenager kinda desensitised me to it.

 

[trailcamwhore]

Been a while I've read anything by Burroughs, so I may have to go shopping for some of his other work.

None of his other work is very like Naked Lunch. The "Nova trilogy" that follows it is more textually experimental and non-narrative, like a 500-page modernist sci-fi poem. His "final trilogy" (Cities of the Red Night, etc.) is formally similar to NL but instead of being over-the-top satirical it's sad and nostalgic. His early work is normal fiction about drugs and faggotry, his late work is diaristic, and his essays and manifestoes are only interesting to Burroughs maniacs.

Nobody ever recommends his most NL-like thing, because it falls in a crack between his major works: The Wild Boys. You'd probably like that one, maybe also its quasi-sequels Port Of Saints and Ah Pook Is Here, and probably his shorts collections (Tornado Alley, Exterminator!, Interzone, etc.).

 

[AnOminous]

His early work is normal fiction about drugs and faggotry, his late work is diaristic, and his essays and manifestoes are only interesting to Burroughs maniacs.

That's what I like about his early works. They aren't remotely academic or artistic. It's just, hey, here's a book about being a junkie. It's called Junkie! Here's a book about being a queer. It's called Queer!

I love the straightforward approach of Burroughs. Also if you wanted to try to fuck with him, odds are good he was carrying a sawed-off shotgun under his coat.

 

[CaseyTatumm]

Just received House of Leaves. I have no idea what to expect other than "good fucked up". It's the "Remastered Full-color Edition", whatever that means.

Edit: still getting through it but what the fuck.

Edit 2: what the fuck. It's definitely a mindfuck.

I see this book mentioned a lot on Reddit when people ask for disturbing books, is it worth the read?

 

[Dante Alighieri]

I see this book mentioned a lot on Reddit when people ask for disturbing books, is it worth the read?

I enjoyed it. It's pleasantly disturbing.

 

[eternal dog mongler]

I see this book mentioned a lot on Reddit when people ask for disturbing books, is it worth the read?

It's a bit gimmicky but it's a worthwhile read. One of the best horror novels since Stephen King got back on the wagon.

 

[LoveLonghairedCats]

Okay everyone can start laughing as I call Stephen King's IT. But there's a part in the book that's grossing me out and that's when Henry I believe puts a cat in a fridge and keeps it locked up. don't remember if the cat/dog whatever could escape but I can't handle animal abuse.

 

[Varg Did Nothing Wrong]

In "Ivan Denisovich" Dostoevsky makes the gulag seem almost like an unheated men's club, with a bunch of cool dudes hanging out and being bros, but Shalamov's gulag is...not like that.

Dostoevsky, huh?

 

[Marika]

'Salem's Lot by Stephen King. Although the book itself isn't that out there, the chapters with the teen mother abusing her baby, while brief, made me feel sick and have stuck with me since I read them.

 

[Overly Serious]

"Starfish" by Peter Watts is probably one of the more disturbing one's I've read. It's the first book in a hard sci-fi series about a bunch of people living in a deep sea station tasked with maintaining sea floor geothermal power plants. Apparently, only people who are particularly fucked up in the head can psychologically function for long periods down there, so every character is some brand of freak or sick bastard. Absolute isolation and despair are big themes and everything and everyone is just awful. Great book though.

I can second Starfish. I read it years ago. Helps that the author is himself a marine biologist and he sells the science behind the book very well. The other work I read by him was the novella Blindsight and was in fact the first thing I read by him. I strongly recommend that anyone who wants to read these go in without any context of synopses whatsoever. He's one of the few authors genuinely hard to predict without it being forced. There are some scenes I still remember vividly to this day.

The Wasp Room is pretty fucked up in its own way, we had to study it for A Level English. It's more or less about a sick little pervert who does gross experiments while his family life crashes around him, and it's got a good twist ending. My English teacher recommended I read The Cement Garden around the same time, because it was similar, (traumatised children and incestuous themes) and I must say that is one fucked up book, and an only slightly less fucked up movie.

I read this as a kid and it didn't make as strong an impression on me as some of the author's other works (both with and without the M.). I think it was because I didn't really get the horror of what the kid was doing. Maybe I was just keyed to a greater degree of trauma as a child that this didn't register. I also have to wonder, without spoilers, just how well that twist would go down today, all things considered.

One of my favourite books is The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas. The book itself isn't super fucked up plot wise, it's just a story about a vampire, but I had something of an epiphany the other day while sleep deprived and now it's fucking with my head.

In the book, the vampire is a guy named Dr Weyland. He's an anthropology professor, lean and grizzled with wiry grey hair and striking features. He's got a 'grave, attentive face', he's very opinionated about psychology and morality and and what I'm saying is that he reminds me of Jordan Peterson, right down to the way he talks in the book. It's uncanny, and the freakiest thing is that the book is from 1980, so the author can't have done it on purpose.

Wow! This is a blast from the past. I don't think I've ever come across any discussion of this before. I read it in an old anthology forever ago and it must have been good because I still remember it very well today. His comments on women vs. men, his grip on the armrest, the conversation at the party about leopards and the circumstances that set up the book at the beginning. And the ending as well.

Jordan Peterson as Weyland? That's alternately fantastic and horrifying. I still have the story. I think I might read it again, tonight.

 

[AnOminous]

'Salem's Lot by Stephen King. Although the book itself isn't that out there, the chapters with the teen mother abusing her baby, while brief, made me feel sick and have stuck with me since I read them.

It's not the book but the miniseries from 1979, but the Nosferatu-like vampires from that scared the living shit out of me and made me insist on always having full curtains in rooms because I was afraid as a kid of looking out the window (on the second floor) and seeing a face. This was directed by Tobe Hooper, the same dude as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I miss Hooper. Even his bad films were good.

 

[skjora]

I can second Starfish. I read it years ago. Helps that the author is himself a marine biologist and he sells the science behind the book very well. The other work I read by him was the novella Blindsight and was in fact the first thing I read by him. I strongly recommend that anyone who wants to read these go in without any context of synopses whatsoever. He's one of the few authors genuinely hard to predict without it being forced. There are some scenes I still remember vividly to this day.

Glad to hear from someone else who likes the author! Blindsight is fucking awesome. It's the kind of book that can really shift the way you think about things, more so than Starfish though it's less "fucked up" . For anyone interested, they're both available to read for free on the author's website. Agreed on them being much better without spoilers, especially for Starfish due to how it develops towards the end.

 

[Overly Serious]

Glad to hear from someone else who likes the author! Blindsight is fucking awesome. It's the kind of book that can really shift the way you think about things, more so than Starfish though it's less "fucked up" . For anyone interested, they're both available to read for free on the author's website. Agreed on them being much better without spoilers, especially for Starfish due to how it develops towards the end.

Blindsight did what few books did and really made me think very deeply about the subject matter. I was mulling it over for weeks afterwards and even today the ending of Blindsight is brought to mind from time to time. Perhaps especially today (you know what I mean).

Gonna say this again: to anyone who is even thinking about looking it up on Wikipedia or anything else to see if it is "worth reading", don't! I have rarely ever enjoyed so much the way a story reveals itself.

And by enjoy, I of course mean horrified.