# Did you ever read a book so upsetting that you wish you hadn't read it at all? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 22, 2005, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622 "2005-07-22T12:43:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/141 "2005-07-24T22:28:08Z")
Speaking of disturbing children’s books, anyone read Neil Gaiman’s _Coraline_? This book gave me major heebie jeebies when I read it at age 26. The recommended reading age for it is eight and up. I would think twice before letting an eight year old read this book. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/142 "2005-07-24T23:34:22Z")
I ran across the short story “Lukundoo” (which is available online, if you wanna Google for it) in a horror anthology when I was a kid—maybe in my elementary school library :eek: , I don’t remember for sure. F’in’ creepiest thing ever. I don’t want to try to describe it. But definitely don’t read it if parsites creep you out. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/143 "2005-07-25T00:32:06Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > OK, then. And what good would an index do her without the books? never mind, I don’t want to know! > > . She thought it could be the framework for new knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Fight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/90ced4/32.png) [@Cat\_Fight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Fight)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/144 "2005-07-25T01:15:54Z")
I regret ever reading anything by John Saul (the horror author, not the philosopher). Gruesome, dirty, little redeeming value. Probably no the best reads for an 11-year-old, either. For the person who read Sebold’s **The Lovely Bones** but is avoiding **Lucky** , read it. She really manages to make her experience readable and even funny at times (but you will probably break down during the actual rape scene, and later during the court scenes). As for the October Game I don’t really understand how the girl, Marion, could be alive. I thought the whole point was that the father was passing around her body parts. He chooses to kill the daughter instead of shooting his wife because he knows it will hurt her more. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/145 "2005-07-25T01:22:19Z")
**Chorpler** Rereading the column, I was wrong on one fact but > [@](#): > > [spoiler] It’s common for Middle Eastern men to insert a special tool into their urethra in order to masturbate? I haven’t read The Perfumed Garden in a while, but I don’t recall it mentioning that. Considering the extensive lists of vagina types, sexual positions for hunchbacks, and so forth you’d think the author would mention it. I’ve never seen such a tool at antique show. I am aware that some men do use urethral stimulation. But I’ve seen no evidence that it’s a wide spread practice in the Middle East, or that huge numbers of metal tools are made for that purpose. > I have great difficulty believing that the wax of a common candle will not soften sufficiently from body heat to be forced out by a stream of backed up urine. I do not believe it it could block the urethra but not be detectable to the touch. I see no reason why chemicals which would enlarge and harden the wax would collect on it, but chemicals which would break it down wouldn’t. Considering that things like this aren’t uncommon in emergency rooms, I can’t believe removal would cost a college education. The ER visit would end up costing the same as a semester’s tuition at most. > I don’t think I have ever seen a pool with a suction filter on the bottom. They tend to be on the sides, at the waterline. I’m not sure that the average pool filter could suck out intestines. Even Cecil’s column mention’s toddlers. Anybody got some cites on the suction of pool filters and the strength of the average teen’s sphincter ani? I have trouble believing that he couldn’t get sufficient grasp on the prolapsed intestine to pull it free of the pump. Logic also dictates he would have to bite his intestine _far_ from his body. How close can you get your mouth to your sphincter? He says he managed to bite the intestine at about six inches from the sphincter. Even if he was that flexible (in which case he would be inside blowing himself), why struggle to bite off more tissue when it would be easier to bite off less? > > And while most digestion actually takes place in the intestines, I think the stay in the stomach would render a vitamin unrecognizable. > > Then, there’s the pregnancy. Yeah, the average pool is a good temperature for semen. Sure. They’d survive the chlorine easily. > [/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Ultraviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/c77e96/32.png) [@Ultraviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ultraviolet)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/146 "2005-07-25T01:33:17Z")
**American Psycho** gave me nightmares for quite a few days after, mainly involving nail-guns. I still don’t know exactly why I finished the book… Another book that upset me was **A child called It**. It didn’t upset me so much with its graphic descriptions of the horrible abuse that the author suffered, but it seemed to me that Pelzer was almost revelling in telling about it. It left me in a very weird head-space, thinking that he was somehow delighting in profitting from his horrible history. It’s hard for me to explain the feeling that this book left me with … Maybe someone else has read it and can explain better. ---
**Author:** ![waits](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/df788c/32.png) [@waits](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waits)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/147 "2005-07-25T02:12:43Z")
I’ve just read through three pages of replies and am I the first to mention _ **Geek Love** _ by Katherine Dunn? ---
**Author:** ![Flutterby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Flutterby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flutterby)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/148 "2005-07-25T02:29:59Z")
> [@Hoops](#): > > I believe that’s _The Conqueror Worm_ by Stephen R. Donaldson, from his short story collection [_Daughter Of Regals_.](http://www.ffbooks.co.uk/c0/c195.htm) > > That guy has an exceedingly unpleasant imagination. I’m surprised he doesn’t write more horror. That’s the one story from that collection that I never did read. I don’t think I will now. ---
**Author:** ![Rubystreak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Rubystreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubystreak)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/149 "2005-07-25T05:56:43Z")
> [@blackhobyah](#): > > I can still creep myself out just thinking about [M.R. James’] “Whistle and I’ll Come to you My Lad”. I just read this based on your words, and not only wasn’t it scary, it wasn’t even very good. Honestly, did you really think this story was so frightening that you wish you’d never read it? I’ve certainly read stories that kept me up all night (Stephen King’s “The Boogeyman” from \*Night Shift \* made me sleep with the light on for weeks, though I was 11 at the time), but this ain’t one of them. I was disappointed… maybe I’m jaded, but this barely even qualifies as a horror story by today’s standards. Stuff has to be really traumatizing for me to regret reading it. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/150 "2005-07-25T11:50:09Z")
October Game again **Cat Fight** , we go back to my earlier question: How did he have enough time to kill her and cut up her body? ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/151 "2005-07-25T12:10:40Z")
> [@waits](#): > > I’ve just read through three pages of replies and am I the first to mention _ **Geek Love** _ by Katherine Dunn? :smack: Ah yes…it was a bit of a downer, wasn’t it? I felt kind of grimy afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/152 "2005-07-25T13:54:30Z")
> [@Eureka](#): > > _The White Hotel_ by D. M. Thomas ( I looked up the author’s name) bordered on being so upsetting that I wished I hadn’t read it but not really. > > Context: Freshman year of college taking a course called “Literary Questions” the above mentioned book was one of the books assigned. There was some sexually explicit material that I found objectionable- _particularily in a book assigned for a class_\* and later some violence that was really objectionable. (Part of the story is reminiscent of being loaded onto trains and sent to Nazi Concentration camps if I recall correctly). > > But, even though I found the book objectionable, I didn’t stop reading it- because how can you discuss a book in class and learn from it if you stop reading the book? I did object on the class evaluations, but I never got the point of choosing not to read a book assigned in class. > > Other than that- I don’t think of anything. I have been known to skip scenes or portions of scenes when reading books like those by J.D. Robb and I find descriptions of gore which I would be happier not reading- but I don’t think of anything that is just so upsetting that I would prefer to go back and not read it. > > \*I read romance novels- some of them explicit, I have some odd and capricious notions of what is objectionable and what is not which I am not going to try to explain. On the other hand, I’m significantly older than 19 at this point. I can pick for myself where my boundaries are, and I’m not sure I’d put them in the same place now as I did then. Why would you find sexually explicit material objectionable? I just don’t get that. I hope no one was actually asking you to DO any of the sex acts. It was more of a descriptive thing…right? I haven’t read the book, so enlighten me if you will please. ---
**Author:** ![Martiju](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@Martiju](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martiju)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/153 "2005-07-25T14:26:31Z")
I’m obviously pretty thick-skinned too, as I can’t imagine being put off a book because I didn’t like something that happened within it. Bad prose, or poor character-mapping I can see, but not description or plot. Having said that, some scenes stand out. I was about 15 when I read Misery, and a certain scene in that [not sure how to do spoilers either] involving a sledgehammer stayed in my mind awhile. Also, American Psycho does have sickening scenes. However, it’s so clever in its satire, and the writing is so hypnotic that this doesn’t put me off at all. In fact, when I reread it, I was kind of disappointed not to get the same extreme reaction I had the first time. ---
**Author:** ![EvilHamsterOnCrack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@EvilHamsterOnCrack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvilHamsterOnCrack)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/154 "2005-07-25T14:26:43Z")
Ishmael… I mean, it’s an amazing book and after reading it, you don’t look at life the same way again. In that sense, I loved it. The bad thing is now I look around, and based on what it says in the book… we should let cancer victims die, let sick people die, not destroy the earth to keep ourselves up, which although makes sense on paper, as a human being with a conscience, I couldn’t live up to doing it or making it feel right… Dunno, maybe I got the wrong ideas. ---
**Author:** ![PookahMacPhellimey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pookahmacphellimey/32/3175_2.png) [@PookahMacPhellimey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PookahMacPhellimey)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/155 "2005-07-25T14:26:47Z")
Two young adults books that I read when I really just a kid, because I thought I could easily handle the language. I could, but the subject matter was just too scary. They are: _Brother in the Land_ by Robert Swindells and _After the First Death_ by Robert Cormier. In adult life _Blindness_ by Jose Saramago is just, but only just, on right side of too upsetting. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/156 "2005-07-25T15:14:26Z")
> [@winterhawk11](#): > > The recent one was Graham Masterton’s _A Terrible Beauty_. Just realized this weekend that I gave the wrong title for this book. It’s actually _Unspeakable_. ---
**Author:** ![photopat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e95f7d/32.png) [@photopat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/photopat)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/157 "2005-07-25T15:19:57Z")
> [@C K Dexter Haven](#): > > Moderator’s note: The question of spoilers for classics, or even for older works that have been around a long time, is a fuzzy one. I could easily take either side of that argument. On the one hand, it’s been around a long time and spoilers are everywhere, it’s classic enough to take it for granted that everyone knows, etc. On the other hand, there are always new readers/viewers who, in fact, don’t know. > > I’m never sure where to draw the line. “Rosebud” is probably the canonical example. But in this case, I think it’s context: **Hitchhikers’ Guide** isn’t really “classic” … and this thread is about books that are upsetting, so I think we should be more attentive to spoilers. This thread may attract people to a book, and therefor we should be thoughtful. My apologies. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/158 "2005-07-25T15:35:00Z")
> [@Martiju](#): > > I’m obviously pretty thick-skinned too, as I can’t imagine being put off a book because I didn’t like something that happened within it. Bad prose, or poor character-mapping I can see, but not description or plot. > > Having said that, some scenes stand out. I was about 15 when I read Misery, and a certain scene in that [not sure how to do spoilers either] involving a sledgehammer stayed in my mind awhile. Ugh, _Misery_. I read the book and refuse to watch the movie because of it. What got me wasn’t the sledgehammer so much as the bit when he was crawling through the house trying to get back to his room when he’s sneaking around the house while Annie’s gone. Someone earlier mentioned Kathy Acker. I’ll never read one of her books again. Not for the gross-out factor, although that played a huge part of it, but because the chick couldn’t write. She is one of the few people I hope is in Bad Writer Hell right now. ---
**Author:** ![UntouchedTakeaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/d78d45/32.png) [@UntouchedTakeaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UntouchedTakeaway)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/159 "2005-07-25T15:46:31Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#): > > Interesting. There’s speculation that “Let’s Go Play At The Adams’” the book I cited, was inspired by the Likens murder. And it was reportedly the basis of Jack Ketchum’s 1989 horror novel, _The Girl Next Door._ That murder must have scared the shit out of a LOT of people. I have a copy of “Let’s Go Play” - it’s apparently the only novel the guy wrote - and then he later drank himself to death. It was pretty pricey too on [biblio.com](http://biblio.com) - but it does make a good companion piece to “The Basement”. For years, John Waters kept a portrait he had commissioned of Gertrude Baniszewski (the woman who instigated the torture of Sylvia Likens) in his house. He took it down, I think, because people kept asking him if it was his grandmother 🙂 VCNJ~ ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/160 "2005-07-25T15:54:43Z")
> [@Rubystreak](#): > > I just read this based on your words, and not only wasn’t it scary, it wasn’t even very good. Honestly, did you really think this story was so frightening that you wish you’d never read it? I’ve certainly read stories that kept me up all night (Stephen King’s “The Boogeyman” from \*Night Shift \* made me sleep with the light on for weeks, though I was 11 at the time), but this ain’t one of them. I was disappointed… maybe I’m jaded, but this barely even qualifies as a horror story by today’s standards. Stuff has to be really traumatizing for me to regret reading it. This story, along with others like “The New Mother” by Lucy Cliford made me admit to the futility of asking people for recommendations about scary stories - none of the things rec’d ever are, and they often make me wonder if people sleep with nightlights on. The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas has been mentioned a few times, and I found it just this side of too disturbing. It’s just a bit too fascinating to regret reading. There is only one book I truly found so disturbing that I wish I’d never read it, and I can’t find it anywhere. It was called “Evil Seed” by I don’t know who, and it was a trashy, vile horror novel I read in my early teens. (so published no later than 1991). Whoever wrote it wasn’t Joanne Harris or C. G. McGovern-Bowen. [spoiler] The cover shows an evil little kid leering up at you from a coffin, holding a rose, I think a dead one. As for the story, it begins with a woman having a one night stand with the devil, and being unable to abort the resultant baby. He grows up soulless and kills everyone in his family in horrifically gruesome manners- like pushing his grandmother _into_ a TV after getting it to show her husband engaging in orgies in hell, and ripping his brother’s head off- not even sparing the half sister who loves him despite being an evil little bastard. [/spoiler] After I read it I “accidentally” left it out in the rain, and wasn’t sad to see the book destroyed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622.md?page=9)