xkcd

by **pieaholicx** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 4:31 pm UTC

Narsil wrote:Which part is that?

I just got through the story Exodus.

by **Narsil** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 5:00 pm UTC

Oh.

Ohh.

That one messed me up for a while. For the purposes of this thread, I would give a plot synopsis, but the subject matter is disturbing even for this thread.

by **pieaholicx** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 5:13 pm UTC

Narsil wrote:Oh.

Ohh.

That one messed me up for a while. For the purposes of this thread, I would give a plot synopsis, but the subject matter is disturbing even for this thread.

The whole book may be beyond that level.

by **nevskey1** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 11:00 pm UTC

I'm still working on "Guts." It was rough going from the start. But I got to around the middle, with the wax scene, and I went from :shock:

to

in a matter of nanoseconds. Next thing I know, I'm on the ground holding my junk and giving out those deep laughing cries of absolute disbelief/pain. It was a bad scene. That was about four days ago now, and I'm still getting my shit together and bracing myself for the rest of the story. I expect that when I finally man-up for the job copious amounts of whiskey may be involved. That, and Will Ferrell's brainwashing video from Zoolander (minus assassination plot) playing in the background. (Actually, with the song it's a fitting soundtrack for the story. If it was a movie, I would play that at the closing credits.)

by **pieaholicx** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 5:34 pm UTC

nevskey1 wrote:...stuff...

Dude, if you had to give up at that point, you are not going to survive it. To put it simply it goes from bad to OMFGTHATSFUCKINGMESSEDUP.

by **Elenion** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 7:39 pm UTC

nevskey1 wrote:..blabla..

Lol wuss:P

It was a disturbing story though.. left me kinda nauseous.. :S

by **Kewangji** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 10:23 pm UTC

cephalopod9 wrote:Guts was icky, but I can't say it really bothered me that much. I've also been wondering
Spoiler:
Is it actually possible to get impregnated from pool water? I would think the chlorine and the quantity of water would put the odds at pretty slim. I'm not a doctor tho'.
.

Yeah, it's possible but not likely at all.
Also, please tell me that guts isn't real. :U

by **pieaholicx** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 10:59 pm UTC

Kewangji wrote:
cephalopod9 wrote:Guts was icky, but I can't say it really bothered me that much. I've also been wondering
Spoiler:
Is it actually possible to get impregnated from pool water? I would think the chlorine and the quantity of water would put the odds at pretty slim. I'm not a doctor tho'.
.

Yeah, it's possible but not likely at all.
Also, please tell me that guts isn't real. :U

It is supposedly based off of two friends of Chuck (the first two parts), and the third from a guy he met while shadowing sexual addiction groups for his book Choke.

by **monkeykoder** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 1:53 am UTC

Guts not so much disturbing just disgusting. Almost boring in it's disgustingness.

by **l33t_sas** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 4:45 am UTC

Yeah I wasn't bothered by guts, I have conversations like that with my friends. I don't get too disturbed by literature in general.

The first story in Philip Jose Farmer's Strange Relations is pretty damn weird though.

I found Darkness at Noon pretty disturbing too but not in the same way as most people seem to be taking it here. Same to a lesser extent with Huxley's Brave New World and Vonnegut's Player Piano.

Varg Vikernes online semi-autobiography is pretty weird too.

by **Kewangji** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 1:11 pm UTC

I'm past the disturbed stage now. I'm just thinking 'dumbass'. I'll thank the internets for that.

by **cathrl** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:44 pm UTC

John Norman's Gor books.

The truly disturbing thing is that even one of them was published in the first place. The WTFery increases with every sequel.

by **Midnight** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 10:20 pm UTC

why do people freak out with guts? ok, it was gross, but there's only a few things about it that make it gross.

Spoiler:

kite runner had it's disturbing bits.

the shining, the book, had some bad parts too.

by **ducknerd** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 6:16 am UTC

The Remade whorehouse in Perdido Street Station. Yeesh, Mieville went just a little over the top on that one.

by **bananarchy** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 2:45 am UTC

My Uncivilized God wrote:Guts

Warning: Graphic depictions of everything. I wouldn't advise reading it if you're under the age of twenty-one or have a weak stomach.

Spoiler:
His sister gets pregnent

Arg, the link, I just had to see what all the hoopla was about. Really didn't bother me that much. there was a short story by Piers Anthony called "On the Uses of Torture" or something like that which I couldn't stop thinking about for quite a while.

by **no-genius** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 12:37 pm UTC

Just finished Gravity's Rainbow

Narsil wrote:-A 12 year old girl being spanked forcibly in the dining room of a cruise liner makes the entire huge group of people simultaneously begin one massive orgy.

Yeah, that bit was weird :shock:

by **Jorpho** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 7:51 pm UTC

I've heard some very enthusiastic testimony about something called "Geek Love". Something about circus freaks successively inbreeding to produce successively grotesque horrors. Never went near it myself.

by **aion7** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 4:51 am UTC

I believe Fight Club has already been mentioned, but it really was disturbing. I'll never look at soap, or food, the same way.

by **grythyttan** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 7:49 am UTC

Just read guts, man that's fucked up. Nthing I had to mention comes close to that.

I'll add this link for those of you who just read a disturbing book and need to regain faith in humanity. (or life or whatever) http://www.cuteoverload.com/

Picture for those who want to be able to eat carrots again. (spoiler'd for not having much to do with this thread.)

Spoiler:

by **aion7** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 4:34 am UTC

I don't want to read anything that's sole purpose is to be disgusting. I liked quite a few disturbing books, but they had more layers of disturbing-ness than most people are saying Guts does.

by **Malice** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 2:33 am UTC

aion7 wrote:I don't want to read anything that's sole purpose is to be disgusting. I liked quite a few disturbing books, but they had more layers of disturbing-ness than most people are saying Guts does.

Guts' sole purpose is so not to be disgusting. It's there to kick of Haunted with a bang, to present the ultimate horror story which stays with you forever, to introduce Sir Gut-Free's character, etc. Palahniuk does a good job of tying all his stories together with overarching themes.

by **aion7** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 5:19 am UTC

The ultimate horror story is, unfortunately, real life. There are plenty of horrible things happening in the world. You don't need a book for that. The news does just fine. If your saying Guts has an overarching theme, it might be worth a read. I dunno. I don't scare easily from fiction, especially that which makes a point of being scary. Unfortunately I don't particularly enjoy someone trying to scare me, unless it's unintentionally funny, which Palahniuk most definitely isn't. I loved Fight Club, but Guts just doesn't like my thing. Maybe when extremely tired, or mentally hindered in some other way I'll take it up. Or if I just lose all faith in humanity.

by **Malice** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 10:01 am UTC

Guts doesn't have an overarching theme. Read it by itself, and it's pretty much just there to gross you out.

Read "Haunted", which is a "novel of stories", which connects Guts to the overarching themes of the work. If you liked Fight Club, you'll probably like Haunted.

by **no-g** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 11:36 am UTC

Narsil wrote:Oh.

Ohh.

That one messed me up for a while. For the purposes of this thread, I would give a plot synopsis, but the subject matter is disturbing even for this thread.

Yeah. The most disturbing thing is just the lack of doing anything to stop it (the director).

EDIT: Well, actually that probably wasn't the disturbing part, but it made it worse

by **blindaurora** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 9:38 pm UTC

I had to read the book Paris Trout[/u] by Pete Dexter for a class in undergrad. That book doesn't have all the gore meantioned above, but I found it deeply disturbing, and I would say, traumatizing. It made me cry and gave me nightmares.

by **doctor.raags** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 12:13 am UTC

An author that I used to find particularly disturbing (and that's disturbing as in...I've finished one book and it was so horrible that I HAVE to read another) is Graham Masterton.

An example of the squeamishness level of his books:

Spoiler:

by **VisionsAndRevisions** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 4:23 am UTC

When I was in middle school or something I tried to read Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card and couldn't handle it. It scared me shitless.

On an unrelated note, I was never a big Ender fan...it was ok, but I loved Card for Enchanted. Sleeping Beauty, Baba Yaga and time travel! Wooo!

by **clockworkmonk** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 5:30 am UTC

not so much a book as an author, and in this case, with a very specific short story in mind. Harlan Ellison's "Lonelyache", which is about

Spoiler:

Of course, one could mention "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream."

by **Amnesiasoft** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 5:59 am UTC

parkaboy wrote:vurt and pollen are about mind altering substances in a post catastrophy world where male undead are considered zombies and dangerous whereas female undead are clairvoyent, cross species breeds have evolved to varying degrees (like dog people) and mix very freely with humans. Pollen takes it a step further and addresses what happens with one of the characters from the altered-mind state breaks into the real world and tries to make it his own through mass paranoia resulting in graphic and unorthodox (but well written) violence

That sounds so awesome. I must go find these books now.

by **steewi** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 12:48 am UTC

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany

Apparently he also wrote one called Hogg, which is pretty much about a masochistic boy and his "daddy" on a pornographic road trip. I'm not going anywhere near it.

by **Teut** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 11:37 am UTC

And then there's The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, which uses the following on the back cover

Spoiler:

The whole book is disturbing on many levels, although brilliantly written. The bit that disturbed me most, though, and stuck in my head for weeks afterwards was the description of what sent Frank's brother crazy. I couldn't do it justice here - go read the book.

by **shivasprogeny** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 1:10 am UTC

One of the more disturbing books I've read was the nonfiction Cannibal the story of the Armin Meiwes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes

by **someguy** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 8:24 pm UTC

My friend lent me Boris Vian's I'll Spit on Your Graves (J'irai cracher sur vos tombes) yesterday, a short novel from 1946; I thought it was pretty fucked up for an older book (though the two things don't always necessarily correlate). It's basically lots of sex, sex, sex, described in somewhat vivid detail at times, most of it with minors (though not children, except arguably for one passage), and two fairly disturbing, graphic murders at the end (a hate crime, no less, or at the very least a vengeance), one of them followed by necrophilia.

I would've never imagined Vian could write stuff like this.

by **Jorpho** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 8:54 pm UTC

someguy wrote:My friend lent me Boris Vian's I'll Spit on Your Graves (J'irai cracher sur vos tombes) yesterday, a short novel from 1946; I thought it was pretty fucked up for an older book (though the two things don't always necessarily correlate). It's basically lots of sex, sex, sex, described in somewhat vivid detail at times, most of it with minors (though not children, except arguably for one passage), and two fairly disturbing, graphic murders at the end (a hate crime, no less, or at the very least a vengeance), one of them followed by necrophilia.

I would've never imagined Vian could write stuff like this.

Holy crap! Does that mean that this piece of infamy is based on a novel ? (No, it has to be a coincidence, there's no mention of it in the Wikipedia article.)

by **Felstaff** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 9:26 pm UTC

nonorganon wrote:CTRL+F find:william s. burroughs Phrase not found
CTRL+F find:anthony burgess Phrase not found
CTRL+F find:jg ballard Phrase not found
CTRL+F find:henry miller Phrase not found
CTRL+F find:harlan ellison Phrase not found
CTRL+F find:robert anton wilson Phrase not found

It's like you guys aren't even trying, at least someone mentioned Pynchon.

CTRL+F find:hubert selby jr.Phrase not found

by **someguy** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 10:20 pm UTC

Jorpho wrote:Holy crap! Does that mean that this piece of infamy is based on a novel ? (No, it has to be a coincidence, there's no mention of it in the Wikipedia article.)

Nope. I ran across that one while searching around but notice that the titles are slightly different--I Spit on Your Grave vs. I'll Spit on Your Graves.

Ebert's description reminded me of Last House on the Left, a movie I doubt I'll ever go near. (gr?)

by **WaywardAngel** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 9:13 pm UTC

I read Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood when I was about 14, remember it being amazing but really disturbing. Having seen the comments in this thread, I won't be taking up a friend of mine's offer to borrow Guts.

by **Nicole88** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:35 am UTC

Not too many books disturb me. But I have to say that American Pyscho definitely rattled me a bit. And I always feel exhausted after re-reading Toni Morrison's Beloved. (The men having sex with animals because there are no women... it's disgusting and heart breaking at the same time. And the part where they steal her milk.... actually, that whole book just about tears me up.)

by **Slice84** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 8:17 am UTC

I read a book called Black Butterflies by John Shirley when I was in middle school and it was pretty messed up some of it creeped me out for a good long while. It's a collection of short stories, half of which are based in real life and about all kinds of of awful things happening. The other half are supernatural in nature and while not all of them were disturbing, a lot were really just odd... Maybe I should go back and give it another read through, a few stories shook me up, but then again I was like 13...

by **Jorpho** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 6:45 pm UTC

Come to think of it, some of Roald Dahl's stuff is pretty creepy. Not his kid's books (which are still kind of creepy in their own way), but his short stories for adults. I doubt they're in the same league as most of the stuff discussed so far in this thread, though, but they also don't necessarily resort to cheap shock value either.

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