# Books too good to put down but too depressing to read **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 5, 2008, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860 "2008-08-05T00:12:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/1 "2008-08-05T00:12:59Z")
I’m reading _The Road_ by Cormac McCarthy. So far it is relentlessly depressing, but so brilliantly written that I can’t stop reading it for long. I read it until I can’t stand it any longer, then put it down, but it calls to me and I end up picking it up again. Have you got any books like that? ---
**Author:** ![schnuckiputzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecb155/32.png) [@schnuckiputzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/schnuckiputzi)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/2 "2008-08-05T00:15:17Z")
There are books that have ended so depressingly that even though they were a great read, I’ll never read them again (and I reread books millions of times): Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz, and A Prayer for Owen Meany. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/3 "2008-08-05T00:19:53Z")
1. ---
**Author:** ![DellieM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@DellieM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DellieM)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/4 "2008-08-05T00:21:43Z")
What Came Before He Shot Her by Elizabth George is brilliantly written, but I bookmarked it 18 months ago, and can’t find the heart to pick it up again. ---
**Author:** ![descamisado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@descamisado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/descamisado)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/5 "2008-08-05T00:29:08Z")
_American Psycho_, Bret Easton Ellis _Mysteries_, Knut Hamsun _Suttree_, another McCarthy downer ---
**Author:** ![Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harriet_the_Spry)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/6 "2008-08-05T01:02:36Z")
_Fortunate Son,_ Walter Mosley. ---
**Author:** ![paffinity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ec9cab/32.png) [@paffinity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paffinity)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/7 "2008-08-05T01:05:09Z")
_All Quiet On The Western Front_ ; I think this one speaks for itself. I always consider picking it up again but everything about it is so tragic. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/8 "2008-08-05T01:13:31Z")
Boys and Girls Together by William Goldman (author of The Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). He has a nasty trick of writing sympathetic, funny characters and then doing terrible things to them. ---
**Author:** ![Savannah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Savannah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Savannah)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/9 "2008-08-05T02:51:10Z")
[QUOTE=DellieM] What Came Before He Shot Her by Elizabeth George is brilliantly written, but I bookmarked it 18 months ago, and can’t find the heart to pick it up again. [/QUOTE] Hang in there. It’s not my favourite of the series, but worth reading. Then you can start **Careless in Red**. ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/10 "2008-08-05T03:02:27Z")
_The Virgin Suicides_ by Jeffrey Eugenides It took me a few days to get through it, because of real-life obligations, but that whole time I was so wrapped up in it, and bothered by it, that I barely spoke to my husband, and I was just _depressed_. Had it been a longer book, he may have had me committed (and I’m only slightly exaggerating… his dad is a psychiatrist, and my husband threatened to make me call him!) I had to read some Terry Pratchett, I think, to get me out of that horrible funk. It was a great book, but I don’t know that I’d recommend it to anyone just to spare them the grief. ---
**Author:** ![melodyharmonius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/melodyharmonius/32/21310_2.png) [@melodyharmonius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/melodyharmonius)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/11 "2008-08-05T03:08:26Z")
_I Know This Much Is True_ by Wally Lamb The whole time I was reading it, I felt this whole oppressive heaviness in the air - but I kept pushing to the end, hoping to find some sort of resolution. The co-worker who lent it to me said, “It’s an Oprah book - all her picks are like that.” Haven’t read an Oprah choice since. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/12 "2008-08-05T03:57:25Z")
[Black Lamb, Grey Falcon by Rebecca West](http://www.amazon.com/Black-Lamb-Falcon-Penguin-Classics/dp/014310490X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217908326&sr=8-1) It’s a narrative of the author’s trip through Yugoslavia prior to WWII. A look at the Kingdom that was, and the hope and grief she saw for the people there. All of which was lost under the traumas of WWII, and what followed. Before I read this book, I used to think that the Russians were the Poor, Damned Bastards of History, because they’d get so close to getting things put together into a rational manner, then someone would come around to knock down the whole deck of cards. Now I believe that it’s the Balkans peoples. I’ve also just started Charlie Wilson’s War. And the knowledge of what comes after the book is gnawing at me. (Not 9/11 - the ten years of civil war in Afghanistan following the Soviet pull out, and the mess that’s there today. 9/11 is just one small fraction of that.) ---
**Author:** ![FlyingRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/59ef9b/32.png) [@FlyingRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlyingRat)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/13 "2008-08-05T04:14:45Z")
_A Canticle for Leibowitz_ by Walter Miller. Amazing book, but I never want to read it again-- it was like a punch to the gut. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/14 "2008-08-05T04:25:27Z")
_Flanders_ by Patricia Anthony. I’m pretty sure a Doper recommended it – **koeeoaddi** , maybe? It’s one of those books that you’d like to recommend but you hesitate, because it’s such a downer. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/15 "2008-08-05T04:27:56Z")
McCarthy’s _Blood Meridian_ was like that for me – relentlessly grim, nihilistic, desolate and brilliant. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Batman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/22d042/32.png) [@The\_Batman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Batman)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/16 "2008-08-05T05:15:52Z")
All Quiet On The Western Front - The quintessential Anti-War Story. Things Fall Apart - This one is sadder on the second read. ---
**Author:** ![Illuminatiprimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/illuminatiprimus/32/11520_2.png) [@Illuminatiprimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Illuminatiprimus)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/17 "2008-08-05T09:14:46Z")
_Was_ by Geoff Ryman. Take a well known and loved story (the Wizard of Oz) and make it turn out to be about a girl who was molested over the course of many years by Uncle Henry and rejected by Aunt Em out of guilt for not intervening. Throw in some suicide, time in an asylum and AIDS and you’ve got yourself one big laugh-a-minute. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/18 "2008-08-05T12:05:12Z")
_Johnny Got His Gun_. From Wiki: > [@](#): > > Joe Bonham, a young soldier serving in World War I, awakes in a hospital bed after being hit by a mortar shell. He gradually realizes that he has lost all of his mobility and his senses except for touch — his arms, legs, eyes, nose, ears, tongue, both jaws and all of his face have been blown off — but that his mind functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body. He tries to die by suffocating himself but he has been given a tracheostomy, which he cannot remove or control. He attempts to communicate with his doctors by banging his head on his pillow in Morse code. His wish is that he may be put in a glass tube and tour the country, to show people the true horrors of war. His wish to die is never granted, however, and it is implied that he will live the rest of his natural life in this condition. > > As he drifts between reality and fantasy, he remembers his old life with his family and girlfriend, and reflects upon the myths and realities of war. He also forms a bond, of sorts, with a young nurse who senses his plight. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/19 "2008-08-05T12:11:17Z")
[QUOTE=schnuckiputzi] There are books that have ended so depressingly that even though they were a great read, I’ll never read them again (and I reread books millions of times): Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz, and A Prayer for Owen Meany. ☹ [/QUOTE] Anything by John Irving. The man is a good writer, but his plots are pure insanity. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2008, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860/20 "2008-08-05T12:22:15Z")
Len Deighton’s _SS-GB_. An absolutely brilliant story about Britain under Nazi occupation, having lost the Battle of Britain and been unable to fend off Operation Sealion. It’s unputdownable but also depressing and frightening at the same time- it’s scarily real and I spent the entire novel thinking “My God, this really could have happened… what did we so narrowly avoid?” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-too-good-to-put-down-but-too-depressing-to-read/458860.md?page=2)