Most unsettling book you have ever read?

[cincibuck]

On the literary side, Something Happened by Joseph Heller and The Sportswriter by Richard Ford. It would be hard to make middle age any less appealing.

On the political side, the book I'm currently reading, State of Denial by Bob Woodward. His characterization of Rumsfeld is a living definition for "arrogant."

 

[The KSB]

 

[NewYorkBuck]

Behold a Pale Horse. Book is terribly written and just rife with crazy conspiracy theories, but there are also a few that just seem too plausible to have no teeth at all.....

 

[NorthShoreBuck]

Publication 17.

 

[cincibuck]

And then I remembered Dalton Trumble's Johnny Got His Gun.

 

[exhawg]

The Da Vinci Code. I can't believe all that crap actually happened. :p

 

[lvbuckeye]

The Devil's Advocate... seriously. all this weird shit started happening, and i was having crazy demonic nightmares, and feeling a general sense of dread, like an evil, foreboding presense was hovering over me- probably because there was... so i burned the book, and it stopped. i honestly believe that book was posessed...
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[scooter1369]

And then I remembered Dalton Trumble's Johnny Got His Gun.

Pretty good movie/music video too.

 

[Jagdaddy]

One more:

"Into the Whirlwind". Eugenia Ginsberg's account of decades spent as a prisoner in the Soviet guglag system.

 

[BayBuck]

 

[Zurp]

I don't think my answer holds a candle to anyone else's. I don't read books. Not SERIOUS books, anyway. Just fiction.

Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series was pretty good. The ending of the last book (which I believe was called "The Dark Tower"), was pretty unsettling. Not in a way like the holocaust or child abuse. More like, "Huh.. he ended the books that way. Um. Ok."

 

[BayBuck]

I don't think my answer holds a candle to anyone else's. I don't read books. Not SERIOUS books, anyway. Just fiction.

Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series was pretty good. The ending of the last book (which I believe was called "The Dark Tower"), was pretty unsettling. Not in a way like the holocaust or child abuse. More like, "Huh.. he ended the books that way. Um. Ok."

I've read most of Stephen King's novels, and to me the most unsettling was "Gerald's Game". There are a couple scenes in that book that haunt me to this day, and I read it in HS.

"You're not real..."

 

[DEBuckeye]

Night

A firsthand account from someone that went through the Holocaust.

I read that too, and I agree- it was a great book but pretty unsettling. Especially when he first notices that what is being thrown into the furnaces are people- specifically, babies. It wasn't long after our son was born that I read that, and that part hit me pretty hard.

On a somewhat lighter note, for some reason Stephen King's Pet Semetary really freaked me out when I read it. I've read almost everything of his, but that one got under my skin....

 

[Fungo Squiggly]

On a somewhat lighter note, for some reason Stephen King's Pet Semetary really freaked me out when I read it. I've read almost everything of his, but that one got under my skin....

Nothing quite so lovely as a toddler with a scalpel hacking at your Achilles tendon from under the bed.

 

[DEBuckeye]

Nothing quite so lovely as a toddler with a scalpel hacking at your Achilles tendon from under the bed.

That little undead scamp- always the trickster!