Okay everybody, we all have things that we regret having read. That scene from a book or short story that you think of late at night- when you’re trying to get to sleep. Maybe it’s a leftover from sneaking a peek at “The Exorcist” at age 13, or it could be the “killing Piggy” part of “Lord of the Flies” ( now you know two of mine!). Did you get subjected to “The Red Pony”? I love animals and I keep picturing that sledgehammer…ugh! What are some of the things perpetrated on you by sadistic English teachers and friends with bad taste?
Mine have all been self-inflicted.
The two most prominent (i.e., scarring) are Lord of the Flies at age nine and The Jungle at eleven. I’ve never read them again and yet whole scenes stick in my mind like egg on a hot stove. (I doubt even electro-shock therapy will drive out the imagery of Piggy’s death.)
The article in the recent Taipei Times about an eighty year old prostitute, who, “…with a little make-up was able to pass for seventy…”. I almost (but can’t really) feel sorry for the fifty year old guy who was caught with her.
Hey. Everybody needs some lovin’ once in awhile, Zenster. 
With my vivid imagination, I read * The Exorcist* way too young. Scared the crap outta me. So did * The Amityville Horror*.
I hated with a passion All’s Quiet on the Western Front and The Grapes of Wrath. Maybe if I hadn’t had to read them in the same semster. As it was I was looking for something to hang myself with before we were through.
Someone referred to the first sexual reassignment surgery performed in Japan on Google. Fascinating, but the pictures left scars.
‘The Wasp Factory’ by Iain Banks
it’s a terrific book, but too disturbing.
The scene where the bad guy (I can’t remember his name, though I’ve read the book several times) kicks a farm dog to death in Stephen King’s The Dead Zone.
When I reread that book, I skip those pages. Can’t handle it, wish I’d never seen it. I think I first read it when I was in my early teens. Similarly, when the evil queen in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King boils a black cat; first came across that at about 15.
The scene in Stephen King’s “It” where the little brother gets beaten to death with his own dismembered arm.
shudder
I second The Red Pony. Especially the part where they put a button in his trachea.
And, while we’re regretting Steinbeck, I’d also like to regret reading The Pearl. Killing [name of person killed deleted for those who haven’t read it] seemed so superfluous (sp?), even though I know it fit in perfectly with the point of the novel.
However, I did like The Grapes of Wrath. So maybe it’s just those two stories that I have Steinbeck issues with.