Books you read when you were young that absolutely shocked/disturbed you

Well, I’m closer to childhood than some of the people in here, actually very close. I’ve read disturbing books and sad books. But some of the most disturbing ones were, “The Giver” by Louis Lowry, which was just unsettling for some reason or another. Then there was “1984” by Orwell which I read for AP English this year. I did think though that it had a rather dark humorous ending…

what I mean is that the ending can be interpreted two different ways. 1)that Big Brother got him or 2)Winston was the classic example of the tough cookie. He just wanted Big Brother to think that he had won…Perhaps a hidden message from Orwell? No matter how bad it gets, you’re always free in your own mind…
Those books were unsettling to me. Two depressing books were Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”, and Stephen King’s “Hearts in Atlantis”. And if you want to read a book that plays mind games on you, but you can still laugh hilariously at, I would reccommend Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five”. That book is odd, to say the least…:rolleyes:

DarkPrince , you read John Bellairs too? He still kind of scares me…

On the reading shelf in my 7th grade classroom (which was stocked by a psycho) were:
Nineteen Eighty-Four (yes, another mention)
Animal Farm
Brave New World
The Female Eunuch

Being a readaholic, I read all of them. I’m not sure that I ever recovered…

When I was a teenager and still a devout Catholic, I came across James Blish’s story “Faust Aleph-Null” which originally appeared as a serial in a sci-fi magazine. (It was renamed “Black Easter” when published as a novel.)

At the time, it scared the hell out of me. The reason was the very end of the story (spoiler, highlight to read):

The final battle between good and evil occurs. Satan wins! His final words: “God is dead!”

Re: John Bellairs

One of my all-time favorite books is his Face in the Frost.

Just thought I’d throw that out, since I’ve never met anybody else who’s read it.
RR

Okay, so already mentioned: The Fall of the House of Usher I read it when I was about 11 (and I read in in French) and it freaked me out. But one of the only stories that really freaked me out was Stephen King’s The Jaunt. I think it was in The Skeleton Crew anthology, I’m not sure.

As I was reading the sotry I kept thinking to myself “Gee, if I was that character I just know that I would do such-and-such.” THAT is exactly how the story ended. Brrrrrrrr!

I used to really enjoy ghost stories and the like as a kid. Very little scares me or seriously creeps me out.

Recently, I was reading a Latin American anthology. There was a tale that kind of creeped me out. The general idea was that this very, very old man owned about a gazillion clocks. All of them had a different time. He used this to cheat death because no “time of death” could ever be established. Therefore he would live forever.

my first experience with the idea that the good guys can die was ‘the last battle’, the last narnia book, when i was five or so.

i have such a vivid memory of the shock and pain i felt when the good animals died at war.

i reread the narnia books every year til i was 18 or so and i never read 'the last battle* ever again, til i forced myself to in my mid-twenties.

another vote for that john christopher trilogy. the tripods, the cap, ooohh that was scary.

im very surprised no one’s mentioned ‘i have no mouth but i must scream’ by harlan ellison. jesus god that’s a creepy story.

finally, ‘pet sematary’ scared the everlivin shit outta me as an adult.

when I was in grade school in the late 70’s our school library had crates full of new books from a (British?) publ. firm called “Usborne” that had a little red hot-air ballon as its printer’s mark. Lots of brightly coloured illustrations and callouts and sidebars and different kinds of formatting etc. Come to think of it, very 90’s in their layout, lots of jumpcuts and “islands of content”.
They had craft activity books and history and how to’s and how-does-it-work type stuff, standard pre-teen fodder. We had so many of them in the library I can only assume that the school got some sort of a bulk deal.

They ALSO had a mittful of “factual” books on ghosts, monsters, legends, vampires etc. Some of these had fairly grotesque illustrations (which 20 years on I can still see vividly) and graphic tales reported as thogh they were all perfectly true. The ghost photo image in one of the earlier posts was also in one of these books. In hindsight a number of the stories were rehashings of urban legends or plain old fabricated rip-offs (one of the illustrations, I realised later, was just a face shot of Lon Chaney in the original Phantom of the Opera.)

The authoritative nature of these books, and the fact that they were in the non-fiction section of the library, used to creep the hell out of me. I was totally a believer! However, I used to repeatedly check them out, read them all (during daylight hours when the contents couldn’t hurt me), suffer about 3 weeks worth of utterly disrupted and terrified sleep, and forget about it just enough to check them all out again! and no, I wasn’t in “special class”…

Anyone else have experiences like this with “fact” books in their school library? Seems like we had tons of 'em, not the greatest thing for the mental development of the wee 'un, hm? :rolleyes:

oooh, ooh, and I just remembered another one (gradeschool level book):

“The Red Room Riddle” by Scott Corbett(?) Two boys in the 20’s exploring an empty house with some hidden secrets. Twists, turns, and tension!! Again, I read it over and over again, scared myself witless, forgot the fear, and read it again!

Sheesh. What a dopey kid.

The only John Bellairs I ever read as a kid was “the house with a clock in its walls” I did not know he had written more. Are they the same characters (Lewis and uncle whatever and mrs whoozerface?)

Why was she asked to change the date?

To those who said the movie The Birds scared you as a child, read the story. At least, I think the movie has a happy(sort of happy) ending. The story ends ina depressing mode.

A farmer and his family appear to be the only people alive in the area(and probably the rest of the country, UK). They are trapped in their home, facing an uncertain future.

There was this book i read which i thought was called farenhieght 51- about these aliens that come to the planet and take over the children and stop th adults from ever being able to have children again so the human race would die out, which was slighty freaky-but then it describes the eyes growing a green fuzz
ewwwwwwwwwww

Deadly Nightshade writes:

> There was this book i read which i thought was called
> farenhieght 51- about these aliens that come to the planet and
> take over the children and stop th adults from ever being able
> to have children again so the human race would die out, which
> was slighty freaky-but then it describes the eyes growing a
> green fuzz

Boy, you’re really confused. Fahrenheit 451 is a novel by Ray Bradbury. You’re thinking of the 1950 short story “Green Patches” by Isaac Asimov, which was called “Misbegotten Missionary” in some of its appearances. Here’s a website where you can find all the appearances in anthologies of this story:

http://www.sfsite.com/isfdb-bin/exact_author.cgi?Isaac_Asimov

Page down to Short Fiction. The stories are listed in chronological order. It has a separate page for the two different titles for this story.

There is one title that truly addresses the Original Poster Question.

When I was in the 7th grade, the book Go Ask Alice was out. It was given to us to read in English Class.

The level of upset was so profound that for more than a month- and I remember this very clearly- I would sneak downstairs after I was supposed to go to bed, and stand at the top of the basement stairs. Looking at my father. Unable to ask him if things like that really happen to girls. To ANYONE.

I couldn’t speak to him. I’d stand there. Then, go back up and lay in bed, unable to sleep out of fear. Out of feeling so sickened by it. By the idea of any of it.

I was so badly frightened by her life, and her experiences. In many ways, it molded my feelings towards girls and how to treat them. I was so horrified at it…and still am. I can’t even imagine re-reading it now.

It was not appropriate fare for 12 year olds.

Cartooniverse

To make it more immediate, I would suppose. She doesn’t explain their reasoning, just the fact that she was happy to sell a story.
Cyn

Can someone give me a synopsis of Go Ask Alice , since it seems to have disturbed some of you, and it does not appear to be a horror story?

Whoa guess it wasn’t farenheight 451- But I don’t recall it being by asimov either- I am on my way to look it up- The title Yesterdays children comes to mind- The book I read was at least 150 pages long-maybe longer- ormaybe it wasn’t. LOL- all i remember for sure was the green furry eyes that started growing on mice and then to their children at the end of the book, In the mean time I am going to check out that link you posted, thanks

Sorry, but you’re still confused. Yesterday’s Children is a novel by David Gerrold. It’s a sort of alternate Star Trek novel. It started as a Star Trek script that was rejected, so Gerrold rewrote it to be the first novel in his own series set on a ship called the Star Wolf. Here’s the only webpage I can find that describes it:

http://www.anotheruniverse.com/tv/features/starwolf.html

I think you’ve confused the basic idea of “Green Patches” with part of the framework of the novel Yesterday’s Children and have slapped the title of another novel (Fahrenheit 451) on it.

And I’m a little confused myself. I’m sorry that I called you Deadly Nightshade instead of Deadly Nightlight in the first post.

Its ok- I derived my user name from the deadly nightshade, actually i am surpised someone made the connection :wink:

You are right yet again-I am sure you are right, but, I Honestly don’t remember the stroy being called Green patches. was it named anything else aside of misbegotten missionary? Hopefully next book thread i can keep my books straight:eek:

When I heard about it from a thread, I went to Amazon and read the exerpt.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0689817851/qid=1017625980/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_67_1/002-4476125-4463249

It’s a diary of a young girl that chronicles her descent into drugs.

It interested me enough to buy it. Reading it for the first time at the age of 28, I wasn’t shocked or disturbed, just saddened, but it’s easy to see how children would find it so.