Most disgusting book you’ve ever read? Apparently ‘I Was Dora Suarez’ made the editor vomit all over his desk.
Most disgusting book you’ve ever read?
Apparently ‘I Was Dora Suarez’ made the editor vomit all over his desk.
103 Answers
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The Child Called it.
Martin Amis’ Money
@Don I hate Martin Amis 😂
Wow now I’m interested in reading “I was Dora Suarez” 😁
Report back to us what you think!
@Naseegha me too!!!
The Wasp Factory was icky in places as was The Cement Garden. Any of the Fifty Shades trilogy (the subject matter was boringly predictable but the writing style was awful 😂)
When Rabbit Howls
@Christi oh wow! I haven’t met anyone else that has read this book. I was a teenager when I read it.
me too no clue what I was getting into lol
I thought American Psycho a most disturbing book.
And I’m never going to go any where near “The Story of O” as long as I live.
American Psycho haunted me for some time. Can’t even believe I finished it. Didn’t want to but something compelled me to.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I left it in the hotel room after I finished it. Never wanted to see it again!
@Svetlana All of Cormac McCarthy’s books are violent. Some more than others.
The Road is one of my favorite books of all time. But I do love the dystopian genre.
@Joan 😯 not a fan of violence
Svetlana Zak The best of his books and my favorite is No Country For Old Men.
@Svetlana loved The Road!
His most disturbing book is “Child of God”.
Is that the one where they cannibalize the baby?
@Joan, no, that’s in “The Road”. It’s necrophilia in “Child of God”.
I love all of his books. He’s a master. And it’s not gratuitous. “The Road” is my favorite. I loved “Suttree” as well.
Donna Jefferson. There is a book of McCarthy’s that had two men cannibalizing a baby they kidnapped. I will have to look it up. I remember the book you are talking about. It was made into a movie. Those books are hard to read. I had to stop. I got too old..lol
@Joan, OMG. I don’t think I could stomach that one. 😀
It was my last McCarthy book…lol
Outer Dark… A girl bears her brothers child and he puts the child in the forest to die. The child is rescued and taken care of by one of those men that travel from place to place in a wagon selling things. The mother goes in search of the child. This was my last McCarthy book. Geralds Game was my last Stephen King book.
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
Yup, couldn’t get past that first story 😱🤢
@Guillermo I read the whole thing but was totally grossed out
Fifty Shades of Gray. Ashamed to admit I read it. Trash subject, trash writing, my humble opinion.
@Colette utter garbage – it was the writing rather than the story that I hated!
@Nicola I got to go with both. 🙂
Me, too! I have several acquaintances who read all the trilogy and the movie. I honestly don’t know why they were so enamored by it. It wasn’t so much the subject matter (I’m a big girl!) but the 4th grade writing/reading level that made me stop after about three chapters. Life is too short to read bad books!
@Suzzy read what you love. This is not it for me. I said no, no, no and kept hearing from friends it’s the greatest. Egads!
@Suzzy I know!
I read 1 paragraph and closed the book, my brain cells already suffering from the onslaught of terrible writing…
I didn’t care about the story. I’m open to romance, erotica, etc, but the horrible writing was too much, even after a few paragraphs.
@Emmie I am a completer and I need to learn how to put down a bad book, waste of good reading time.
The Story of O
The Velvitine Rabit kindof messed me up too, but in a very different way
They’re not at all the same kind of book! 😉
Arnt they? Everyones just trying to conform, adapt or become real to others standards as apposed to their own
I was thinking one’s bordering on pornography, the other’s typically viewed as for chuildren. I bet they’re not usually shelved next to each other! 😉
Running With Scissors. We Need to Talk about Kevin and Lolita.
Fifty shades of grey 🙈
Summer Sisters by Judy Blume. (I threw it away w/o finishing it)
@Gail ha ha ha ha. I stole that book from a nursing home cause I thought it would be a great summer read. Lol. Got rid of it after chapter one
I promise the nursing home residents wouldn’t have liked it.
@Gail I think Judy Blume is for children isn’t she?
Yes, but she did write some adult stuff.
Seriously? That awful? I mean, Judy Blume has been one of my favorite author for YA books in my teenage period, but I haven’t come across Summer Sisters yet.
11 minutes by Paolo Coelho
I never read it and it is most likely brilliant, but the film version of a clockwork orange disturbed me greatly
I had issues with Stephen King’s Dream Catcher, took me about 6 months and two copies to read it. Left the first copy on the bus
Lolita & Clockwork Orange
@Meghan right there with yoy
kinda think fifty shades of gray movie
Last Exit to Brooklyn. It was disgusting in places, but mostly it is so desolate. Requiem for a dream is his most notorious, and is horrible in so many ways, but Last Exit is brutal.
1984 by george orwell, just couldn’t stand the book and john sandford who writes the prey series also is writing the virgil series the last was ( blue cover) horrible, didn’t like the book.Ran to the library and returned it. Couldn’t get past the first chapter and the first page.
The Monk
So depraved!
@Jodi I had to read it at University. I really didn’t want to.
Following
The Slap
@Tracey Thérèse, who thinks that her poor old mother might not be able to cope with sex scenes or other “alien “ subjects, warned me against reading this book. The sex scenes certainly were not tender, but I found the book an interesting exploration of family, relationships and the outfall of some fairly minor incidents being conflated into major events. I personally found such books as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo far more offensive. Thérèse’s comment, “ You are far more tolerant and forgiving than I would ever be”. I thought that Christopher Tholkis’ Book BARRACUDA was remarkably well thought through and well written.
Oh yes! The Slap was not a favourite! I also found A Little Life pretty unpleasant going.
I found A Little Life hard to read, because of its subject matter, but it was extremely well written, I never thought about stopping reading. I found it illuminating.
Oh yes, Helen – just hard going for me.
Not an easy read, that’s certain.
I don’t read them. The disgusting ones.
Breakfast of Champions. The last scene of The Grapes of Wrath.
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
A truly disturbing book that was originally thought to be a memoir but was later discovered to be fiction.
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. I couldn’t get through it
@Nikki There is a movie ‘American Crime’ which is based on a real story. That book was written afterward, inspired by the real case. Then, a movie was made after the book was published. I watched the movie ‘American Crime’ and was painfully shocked. I looked up for further information and learned that there is a fiction published as well. I was curious but decided not to go through it, as I have lost my appetite for a week after watching the movie. So I don’t blame you.
The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson (Pulitzer Prize 2013). It made me sick with its repetitive useless violence.
I was disgusted with that book, but found it very important to read, and recommend it to anyone curious about the North Korean regime
And on a more universal level it is a good illustration of how individuals and countries can loose all sense of humanity.
Helter Skelter
I really liked the book. Subject matter was tough, especially knowing that it was true. I did a lot of babysitting when I was in junior high and remember bringing this paperback with me on many babysitting jobs. Kind of frightening to read when you’re all alone out in the country, kids all asleep, coyotes howling, wind blowing, dogs barking……………
I remember telling myself that this happened in the “big cities” of California. Made me feel a little bit better than had it occurred on a rural farmstead!
@Suzzy I really liked it too, it made it onto my reread shelf🙂
‘Tommyknockers’ written by Stephen King. This was awful even if it didn’t make me vomit. On the other hand,’Carrie’ made me vomit, but it wasn’t awful.
Catcher in the Rye
@Carolyn what’s disgusting in catcher in the rye?
The main character’s language…
Phoney? I read it a few years ago so don’t remember it that well. I’m sure there are no swear words and no examples of overt ‘adult’ content? Was there anything specific?
A Child Called It. We had to read it as an assignment my freshman year in high school and it was very vivid.
By Reason of Insanity – Stephens. Came out in 1979.
Lord of the Flies. Maybe more disturbing than disgusting.
I’d say both…not a book I’m glad I’ve read.
Perhaps the Marquis deSade’s “Justine or the Misfortune of Virtue.”
@Jamie Justine was my exact choice!
Anything by M de Sade, The Black Book of Poland (true accounts of Nazi atrocities), The Rape of Nanjing, The Killing Fields, Mein Kampf. Humans’ cruelty to other humans (and animals) are definitely very difficult things for me to read about. Lord of the Flies is an allegory, so I see the didactic purpose of that very finely written text. The 50 Shades of Grey series is simply soft-porn written for the mass-market, and is horrible writing — Henry Miller would take a hammer to those books. I think their only value is as objects to be mocked. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14060248-fifty-shames-of-earl-grey
@Peter “Lord of the Flies” was one of my O Level texts, and I read it 9 times in that year, and still saw something new in it every time. I always wondered, though, what would have happened if some girls had been there, or if it were all girls…
@Jenny ~ I taught that book for decades in high school English and loved it. Golding was making “Coral Island” into a dystopic allegory that can be read at multiple levels. I highly recommend the 1994 Irish film “War of the Buttons” (originally a French book) to contrast LOF with a situation in wh children (including at least ONE girl) mediate their violent impulses through game playing. I always had kids write on this, and ponder how violence could be avoided. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiNtHShWnco
@Peter Will put War of the Buttons on my list!
@Jenny ~ lovely stuff
BTW, I found Shindler’s List so moving that when I saw it as a film, I had to leave the theater bc I was weeping so hard. An excellent story, but way too difficult for me to handle.
Peter Kalnin i am German and we watched it with our school 😭 couldn’t sleep for days. To think it happened in my country. I am so proud of my university though bc one professor and several students opposed Hitler, the group was named White Rose.
The Treatment by Mo Hayder, it still bothers me and I read it years ago.
I can’t deal with magical realism…
@Enia Howcome? And not even GGM? 😥
@Matt In my opinion, the magical components make the story fake and undermine my attempts to identify with the characters. I’ve managed to read only half of “one hundred years of solitude” 🙅🏼♀️😅😇
@Enia I think that about fantasy, which has magic to suit the authors’ whimsies. In my view, magical realism has magical components that are in place for specific reasons, be they folkloric, to raise philosophical points, or to circumvent censorship laws of oppressive regimes.