Books

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson was the one that did it for me.

We read The Yellow Wallpaper and that was pretty effed.

A Modest Proposal traumatized one girl in my class.

We all had to write our own versions, trade them randomly, and read them aloud. She ended up with mine: Have the death row inmates build a prison on the moon, then turn off their air supply to complete their sentence. (Wrote it before I'd read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress)

She finished reading, and exclaimed "What is WRONG with you!?" She knew it was mine because of how hard I was laughing at her panic.

I was outdone by the quiet girl who included a recipe for "kitten kurry" in her essay though. I really should have tried to get with her, lol.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin

Short stories:

• Flowers for Algernon
• I have no mouth and I must scream

Short-ish:

• Of mice and men
• Brave new world

"The Long Rain" by Bradbury was the one that stuck with me.

I only recently discovered Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, but I think that would need to be in the conversation.

The Cask of Amontillado messed me up a good bit. Being sealed into a wall would be a horrible way to die.

In my highschool German class we read Kafkas "Metamorphosis", it gave me weird dreams for weeks.

In a literary sense it's a masterpiece, simple yet intricate. The first sentence alone is genius :

"Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt"

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect".

No backstory, no explanation, the reader is left with the same confusion as the characters. Then the societal observations he weaves in are sharp yet puzzling.

I recommend it highly, but be prepared for strangeness and being left with an uneasy feeling.

Oh man, let's talk about short stories that defined my taste in literature!

• To Build A Fire: definitely built a fascination in me of the morbid and got me way more into survivalism than quick sand ever did. I live in a cold place too and that put it well into perspective how dangerous that can be.

• The Sniper: This was my start into war literature, and what a good start. I keep coming back to this one when I hear people talk about a civil war in the US. It's more unsettling now than ever before.

• The Lottery. How couldn't that be on the list?

• Cask of Amontillado: big vibes. Poe made me goth-brained no doubt.

Our school also had us read Robert Frost. Really great way to introduce kids to the idea that 'some folks just kinda wanna die all the time'. That and why child labor laws are good and important.

It was not in English... But we had to read the golden egg. Story about a guy who s girl is missing. He keeps looking for her. Has driems about them being close together but not seeing the other. . At the end he finds a guy who sais he can do the same to him as he did to the girlfriend. Last you know he is like burried..

Someone else mentioned Flowers for Algernon, so mine will be ģWhere the Red Fern Grows_. Such an emotional roller coaster.

And while I won't downplay those K-12 books, I think anyone who's ever taken a Russian Literature class in college will agree that Russian authors are next level for depressing novels. Few things compare to the bleak, gray, petty, inescapable, hopeless lives portrayed by authors like Sologub, and while English translations would certainly be accessible to high school students, I'm really glad they don't include them.

Unless someone's going to say they were given The Petty Demon as a reading assignment in high school.

Turkish elementary-school books.

Wanna read about a small girl getting beat up by her dad and kicked out before freezing to death as she vividly imagines her dead grandma and lighting matchsticks to prolong her suffering for 20 pages?

I think author was either Russian or Danish. Still no clue why that was a required read at age of 7 in my school.

I read Flowers for Algernon as an adult. It hit me hard. I have since heard that it is read i school many places in the US.

Edit: I've only read the novel he wrote based on the short story, but I guess the short story is equally as good since it won the Hugo award while the novel won the nebula award.

Damn near anything Ray Bradbury wrote. I swear he just wanted to traumatize anyone that read any of his work.

"Computers Don't Argue" by Gordon Dickson. Guy gets shipped the wrong book by a book club, tries to return it, gets sent to a collections agency, and things spiral completely out of control from there. It's lived rent-free in my head since I read it years ago. (apologies for the mobile-unfriendly format, this is the only source I know for this story) https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133

"Unauthorized Bread" by Cory Doctorow is a more up-to-date discussion of the same kind of power dynamics though. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Many people have a visceral reaction to Palahniuk’s Guts, but it never hit me particularly hard. That and the underage incest impreg fantasies, it was always a bit of a turn off.

Honestly, for me, nothing beats good old Edgar Allan Poe, and he’s already in the syllabus.

death of a salesman. making depressed highschoolers read that while some of them already may be considering suicide just about did a few of us in. also the plot just sucks.

All Summer in a Day isn’t necessarily scary, but reading it in 6th grade felt like a real eye opener on just how evil people can be, especially when they don’t even understand that they are.

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. If comics count, The Enigma of Amigara Fault.

My freshman college English prof assigned House of Leaves.

It was awesome watching the preppy kids descend into madness

A textbook on integral calculus

Guts - Chuck Palahniuk
When someone mentioned it, I was like "it's just a story, in a book, and I've read some shit. How bad can it be?" Well, it can be really bad, I wanted to unread it. The memory is fading now, but I still have an "ugh" feeling

Into the Wild (1996) is a popular pick for something both scarring but also uncontroversial.

Less exciting would be The Pinballs (1976).

Guts by chuck palahniuk.

Of mice and men

The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin

Space might be the final frontier but it is by no means forgiving

When the Wind Blows.

Blood Child ild by Octavia Butler. Humans living on an alien reservation have the males implanted by the insect like alien's eggs and they start burrowing out of your flesh when they're ready.

There will come soft rains, I presume, is what inspired that post. It has done a number on many a child

SCP-093.

"Nachts schlafen die Ratten doch" still haunts me...

The Jaunt