Disturbing books tier list - 77 of the most troubling books ever written ranked!

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Books discussed:
120 Days of Sodom by The Marquis De Sade
1974 by David Peace
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts by Charles Birkin
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
Birdman by Mo Hayder
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Blood on the Tracks by Shuzo Oshimi
By Reason of Insanity by Shane Stevens
Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
Come Closer by Sara Gran
Confessions by Kanae Minato
Cows by Matthew Stokoe
Crash by JG Ballard
Dead City by Shane Stevens
Dead Inside by Chandler Morrison
Dearest by Peter Loughran
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite
Firefly by Piers Anthony
Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Gone to See the River Man by Kristopher Triana
Haunted by Chuck Pahalaniuk
Hawk Mountain by Conner Habib
Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
Hogg by Samuel Delaney
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski
I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond
In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
Kin by Kealan Patrick Burke
Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
Let's Go Play at the Adams' by Mendal W Johnson
Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker Martin
My Absolute Darking by Gabriel Tallent
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
Nocturne by Ed McBain
Notice by Heather Lewis
Only Child by Jack Ketchum
Out by Natsuo Kirino
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
Poking Holes by Juan Valencia
Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Sick Bastards by Matt Shaw
Tampa by Alyssa Nutting
Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
The Collector by John Fowles
The End of Alice by AM Homes
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers
The Laws of the Skies by Gregoire Courtois
The Melting by Lize Spit
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh
The Resurrectionist by Wrath James White
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Room by Hubert Selby Jnr
The Second Suspect by Heather Lewis
The Slob by Aaron Beauregard
The Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
The Summer I Died by Ryan C Thomas
The Third Beast by Peter Loughran
The Troop by Nick Cutter
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Woom by Duncan Ralston
Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates
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Music: Who's Afraid of Halloween by Alfred Grupstra from Pixabay

[@kayleighbrown459]

I also don't get why House of Leaves is considered disturbing. Like, it's weird and really cool but disturbing? IDK.

[@M-J]

I’m proud that you finally made a tier! Well done, Olly. Saving for later in the week. 😎 - MJ

[@CriminOllyBlog]

Thanks MJ!

[@M-J]

@@CriminOllyBlog 🤗🤗

[@JimJimson729]

This is a monumental achievement. Time to clear up my reading schedule for the S tier books

[@CriminOllyBlog]

Thank you!

[@PokhrajRoy.]

A Tier List on this channel? Goody goody 👏🏽

[@WishAtElevenEleven]

I so appreciate the amount of time and effort that went into compiling this list! And it helps me know which books that interest me may be ones that I can handle, based on the handful on the list that I’ve already read.

[@eriebeverly]

Way to speed run a tier list of a lot of books. Great mini-reviews

[@CriminOllyBlog]

Thank you!

[@fiberartsyreads]

This was great! Thanks for taking the time for rank all these. Girl Next Door is definitely the most disturbing book I’ve read.

[@CriminOllyBlog]

Thanks Crystal!

[@reneeannreads]

Is it based on the actual true crime murder case? If so, that case disturbed me so bad probably one of the worst torture and murder cases I’ve ever heard of.

[@fiberartsyreads]

@@reneeannreads yes it is based on a true case.

[@pedterson]

Probably the most disturbing book I've read was Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea. In part because of the author's biography, but also because the most disturbing part of the story is told only through a substitute, so your mind has to do the gruesome work of imagining alone. I agree about Blood Meridian. Incredibly grim, but the language is so beautiful and sculpted, and the narration so matter-of-fact and uncaring, that the violence doesn't seem to hit you with immediacy. It is one of the books I've thought about the longest after I've read it, but not so much for the violence.

[@Jose-wq4zr]

I like how the fact that the Marquis de Sade was clearly and transparently a crazy person took some of the edge off of Saló

[@ashbowden]

I absolutely adore the pillow man and have read it at least five times but I never see it anywhere! Great video :)

[@Unpotted]

Brilliant list, and good work. I know you have spent a long time on this project. The rankings will be a helpful guide for those interested in such content. It’s not usually my favorite subject matter, but I found a few titles of interest. Thanks! 😺✌️

[@IngaNoniFayJeth]

Ooooh time to take notes! I have so many of these books already on my Kindle, yay! I absolutely adored Confessions! Flowers In the Attic is an interesting submission - I think what makes that one so disturbing is that so many of us read this book when we were probably too young to read it. 😂. I want to say I was maybe 11 or 12 when I started reading VC Andrews? I know everyone is different, but the only book that genuinely haunts me years and years after reading it is We Need To Talk About Kevin. That book kind of ruined me.

[@Jessie-yn2ci]

Well done! 👍🏽 Am going to pick up more than a few books you talked about. This was a lot of fun to watch/listen to. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽📚

[@CriminOllyBlog]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@rodgilley-writer]

Such a wonderful and entertaining video! And, it will surely fill many TBR lists!!! Very Well Done!!!

[@CriminOllyBlog]

Thanks Rod!

[@mishababernathy7165]

I also have some recommendations: Crash and The atrocity exhibition by JG Ballard, the George Miles Cycle (5 books: Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide and Period) by Dennis Cooper, The dice man by Luke Rhinehart, Sarah and The heart is deceitful above all things by JT Leroy.

[@charlesbradley5757]

“The Road” and “Blood Meridian”, both written by Cormac McCarthy. Visceral and unforgiving.

[@LSPig]

The Girl Next Door is easily the most disturbing book I've ever read. The fact that she could have escaped near the end but went back for her sister added a whole mount of tragedy to it.

[@squashchefan]

Its because of you Olly i read Pillow Man and The Melting, so thank you

[@CriminOllyBlog]

Sorry about that 😂

[@afeeser]

I've read a few of these books. I don't usually pick disturbing books. For me, The Dark Half by Stephen King was the most disturbing. I get more disturbed by psychological horror.

[@JC-ry5sz]

Excellent list, really comprehensive. The Collector really hit me hard, felt very upset after finishing it in a way I hadn't expected, having read a fair few other disturbing books. Same with the Girl Next Door, though that was expected. Another book which disturbed and caused a real visceral reaction in me was Wild Swans, which is a memoir about the communist revolution in China. That book made me feel so much rage throughout at the awful things that humans can do to each other.

[@niriop]

Excellent list Olly, very impressed with your tenacity in this project. If I had to add my own suggestion, I’d recommend The Fungus by Harry Adam Knight (joint pseudonym of John Brosnan and Leo Kettle), which at various points is disgusting enough to be genuinely disturbing, particularly near the beginning.

[@sethball2475]

What a great roster of books - some of which I read, some of which I find tempting, some I don’t think I could stomach. I’ve recently read The Laws of the Skies, and can even say that it wasn’t too long ago I read Haunted. Haunted, I think, was effective for me overall, but yes, the first story was sickening, and didn’t really get topped but anything else in the book. I really liked The Laws of the Skies, though there was a sort of senselessness to it that left me thinking “disturbing….but it just sort of trundled along in exactly the way I thought it was going to.”. I also thought I had gone through something similar, and better, in the graphic novel Beautiful Darkness, by Vehlmann and Kerascoet. Books you mentioned that I loved: The Painted Bird, Johnny Got His Gun, The Wasp Factory. I’ll mention some of the most disturbing books I have read that you did not include: Billy, by Whitley Strieber (Horror) Under the Skin, by Michel Faber (Horror, SF) Compulsion, by Shaun Hutson (Crime, Horror) Wisteria Cottage, by Robert M. Coates (Crime, Horror) Wieland, by Charles Brockden Brown (18th Century, Crime, Horror) Somebody’s Voice, by Ramsey Campbell (Horror) A Killing Winter, by Tom Callaghan (Crime) Suffer the Flesh, by Monica J. O’Rourke (Extreme Horror, and a book I’m mentioning even though I did not like it) Off Season, by Jack Ketchum (Horror) The Kill Riff, by David J. Schow (Horror) Nightmare, by Lynn Brock (Crime) Panther, by Brecht Evens (Graphic Novel, Horror)

[@jimsbooksreadingandstuff]

That is a lot of disturbing books!. Most of the ones I've read from the listing would be in the B tier... like Sharp Objects, The Collector, My Dark Vanessa... I've read a couple in the A tier (We need to talk about Kevin, American Psycho and Poking Holes) but nothing from the S List tier. I can see why these tier list ranking videos are so popular, great work sorting through so many disturbing titles. Poking Holes by Juan Valencia is the most disturbing book I have read, I was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond was the most disturbing book I'd read pre-Booktube.

[@lissavanhouten6628]

I think I hate horror and really disturbing, disgusting books. But this was a really interesting list. I was curious. I thought Lord of the Flies, 1984, and Handmaid's Tale were disturbing for what horrors are visited on humans by other humans. The only books I read on this list were Helter Skelter, Flowers in the Attic and Perfume, probably the more "popular" books.

[@snoopjonson9504]

BLOOD ON THE TRACKS MENTIONED 🗣🔥💯

[@anotherbibliophilereads]

I’m surprised Off Season didn’t make it on this list. Definitely worthy of the A tier.

[@chrisallenmax]

@@anotherbibliophilereads oh my goodness the first time I read ‘off season’ I stayed up all night shocked and turning and reading pages as fast as I could

[@littlemiss131]

@@chrisallenmax by Jack Ketchum?

[@chrisallenmax]

@@littlemiss131 yes! It was sooo good!

[@pazuzu126]

Have you heard of Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott? It is the story of a girl who was kidnapped by a sexual predator and has been held hostage by him for the past five years. It is unrelentingly unsettling and it is actually written for young adults!

[@authenticpoppy]

I was so happy when I finished reading all the Red Riding Quartet. They are bleak and unrelentingly dark. I'm glad I read them, but it was difficult. Great list!

[@cadcar13]

I’d say Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker. Seriously whacked book. It definitely stuck with me. Very weird.

[@SirMasterRattington]

I was gonna mention Clive Barker too. There’s at least a couple stories in his Book of Blood collection that I would include.

[@Momba_Jules]

Loved the ranking! The only book that I can think of that really disturbed me and stuck with me for a long time, that’s not already on this list, is A Child Called It.

[@henrytjernlund]

Glad to see Let's Go Play... make the top tier. I might have put it in "A" myself but unsure. I still have a love/hate feeling about that book. It still haunts me after 2 years. I keep saying that what the kids do is half the horror, why they do it is the other half.

[@ErynnWilson]

Hiya. Awesome tier list. My TBR is now bursting with new possibilities. Thnx! Have you read 'Under the Skin' by Michele Faber????

[@Anthingll]

The most disturbing book I’ve ever read is Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn. It’s about Fred and Rosemary West, but it’s written in a very different style to the normal true crime book.

[@cnsl6140]

This is very appreciated. Keep doing what you do!

[@dreamtonites]

I’ve not seen many people talk about it but Sam Byer’s ‘Come Join our Disease’ absolutely wins it for me. I really struggled to decide my stance on it, at times the prose was super effective and other times it felt like it was stuck in a philosophical deathloop. Either way, I still retch when I think about the bread scene.

[@CriminOllyBlog]

I haven't heard of that one, thanks for the recommendation!

[@watercolor.wyloeck]

Belgium represent on the S tier! The Melting by Lize Spit is just phenomenal! 🙂

[@dianevanderlinden3480]

Just ordered it!

[@atari947]

I feel like anything by Dennis Cooper should be on here

[@jackiemoffitt6780]

Yeah he's the author who disturbs me the most for sure. Feels like I'm looking at something I really shouldn't know about

[@Kobsidian]

A very interesting list, though I don't gravitate to books because of the "Disturbance Factor". The one title I EXPECTED to see, but didn't, is William Golding's LORD OF THE FLIES.

[@misomiso8228]

Timestamps please! It's ahrd to read the tier list sometimes!

[@shakenbake3249]

I got a whole lot of books to read after this one 😂 great video and excellent series!

[@shioramenrabbit]

Stumbled onto this channel by accident! I'm not a great reader of disturbing things, but I thought I'd mention one because it wasn't on the list (I don't know if true disturbing book readers would find it as creepy as I do). Shin Sekai Yori (From the New World). I watched the anime and then later read the novel. It lives more or less rent-free in my head simply because it is so understandable how the society and the rules they enforce could come to be as they are, even if they are pretty horrifying.

[@markalexander3659]

Read most of these, but got some new recommendations, thanks! Gillian Flynn's name is pronounced like "Jillian", btw :)

[@GlitterEnby]

Oh my goodness, you are so much braver than I am. If I tried to read these books, I'd never sleep again. When I watch or read disturbing stuff, my system forgets the difference between fiction and non-fiction (even though my brain knows), and I freak out. It might be the PTSD doing that, though.

[@Romvince666]

Excellent list! Some of these books I haven't heard of, so I'm thrilled that my TBR list is growing!

[@CriminOllyBlog]

Delighted that I’m helping you find new things to read!

[@markalexander3659]

Let's Go Play at the Adams has nothing to do with the Sylvia Likens case (the one that inspired The Girl Next Door), it just happens to have a vaguely similar theme.

[@pattayaesl7128]

new Ollie upload= weekend happiness

[@CriminOllyBlog]

Thank you! 🙏🏻

[@NicolesBookishNook]

Loved this! And the Matt Shaw book bit was 😂😂😂😂 Let’s hope he remains chill and doesn’t come after you. But I think you’d be able to handle it with elegance.

[@CriminOllyBlog]

lol I know a lot of people appreciate his work but I just don’t get it.

[@NicolesBookishNook]

@@CriminOllyBlog same, same. And then everything that happened… ah, no, never reading his books.

[@mzcyberbat]

Interesting fact he's been hired to write a book adoption of a movie. Be interesting to see which one.

[@Billie_Cook]

This list is perfect for someone like me getting back into reading. I loved Confessions both the book and movie. Great list, I know now what books to read for Spooky Season 👍🏾

[@drstrangefreak]

I've read 19 on this list and got some good TBR recs, so thank you.

[@Michael_Wertenberg]

Great video! I agree with some, disagree on others. But I got some great recommendations I loook forward to reading. Thanks!

[@megudo]

The laws of the skies is such a favorite of mine, quick nice read !

[@alvarosalandy7969]

I've read some of this because of your reviews, even when you express not liking the book. I've enjoyed some of them, for example Cows (I had a chuckle with it). I've got some that interest me and others outright don't. I remember reading Out by Natsuo Kirino when I was far to young to.

[@CriminOllyBlog]

Out is a HEAVY book

[@littlemiss131]

Can t believe i watched the ENTIRE video! Exellent video idea!!!😊

[@CriminOllyBlog]

I admire your stamina!

[@damenwalker5260]

Was so excited to see exquisite corpse on your list, one of my favourite books of all time, and i agree 100% with your placement 😊

[@danleach8266]

I'm in the middle of work right now "House of leaves", I'm trying to find the book cover at the end but I'm not immediately recognizing it. Where did it rank? Thank you.

[@reginaldcampos5762]

C

[@danleach8266]

@@reginaldcampos5762 Thank you

[@Rubysoho346]

I really, really enjoyed this. But it would be great if you could post the list in the description or pinned it in the comments because you kinda zoom through this and it's hard to understand you at times.

[@chaundralachaundra]

@@Rubysoho346 agree!

[@Bertha-Mason]

War memoirs, honest ones, are all disturbing I think - but I still consider With the Old Breed by EB Sledge to be one of the most disturbing books I’ve read. Although Sledge was undoubtedly patriotic and proudly served - and those feelings run through the entirety of the book - his depictions of combat and the casual cruelty of teenagers drafted to fight… its really intense and I vividly remember a lot of those scenes even 30 years later. The maggots and the mud too. The guy I bought it from as a teenager told me it was anti-war propaganda dressed up as a memoir and he was right.

[@MementoMori395]

I was about to start reading With the Old Breed, I have it tucked in my backpack right now, so it's ready to go to work with me tonight. (I am trying to finish reading Shogun first, and that book takes awhile) A relative of mine gave it to me as a gift. I so excited.

[@Bertha-Mason]

⁠@@MementoMori395 Oh I love to hear you’re reading this! It’s an incredible book - the detail of combat conditions and the inhumanity suffered by all participants are so vivid, but Sledge somehow remains completely human through it all. Good luck with Shogun!

[@MementoMori395]

@@Bertha-Mason Thanks! When it comes to WW2, I am mostly familiar with the western front stuff. I haven't really read or studied anything with the pacific fighting. So this will be the first.

[@sundaymorning9699]

great video to see right before heading to powells!! picked up copies of sharp objects and i was dora suarez while i was there because of this 🎉

[@ck2352]

Gone To See The River Man was just so good. It stuck with me…. The Girl Next Door was definitely a powerful read.

[@superblomper]

I've been dying to get my hands on The Melting! I don't think it's out in the US yet.

[@KodaMeansFriend]

Lol. The Terrifier 2 metaphor worked so well for me. I knew EXACTLY what you meant. 😂🤣

[@MiLoAnne666]

Wish you gave a short description of what the book is even about...

[@ginabeena6757]

Oh Olly, why oh why did you have to put Firefly on here? The only Piers Anthony books I've ever read we're the Xanth series. I naively thought that someone with such a great imagination and sense of humor must be a good person. 30 minutes on Goodreads learning about this book and I'm crushed! Ugh, I'll never be the same again 😞

[@CriminOllyBlog]

Oh no! Sorry!

[@MementoMori395]

I don't read a lot of disturbing books, so at first I thought I wouldn't have read any of these books. Hahaha, I read 3. American Psyco, We Need to Talk About Kevin and Perfume. I think Stephen King's Rage should be on the list. But perhaps you haven't read it??

[@oliverbehegan]

Interesting list, some I've read, some are on my to-read list, and some I need to add. The Matt Shaw knocking was fairly predictable, though...

[@lyndaslittlelibrary]

Of the 22 of these I've started, The Girl Next Door and Let's Go Play at the Adams' are the only 2 I couldn't finish. I got The Melting for my birthday so seeing it sitting in the S tier with those other 2 is making me nervous 😅

[@rahabintemotiul7418]

Thanks for the recommendations!

[@nicholasjones3207]

The slob - I’ve not read anything that had an impact like when the slob uses the vacuum but after action transplanted to the barn I thought the book was silly and rushed. I really wanted it to live up to the hype but it didn’t.

[@Karalolcowlaw]

I may have missed it but did you mention American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.

[@CriminOllyBlog]

I did!

[@abject_ladder]

I studied The Pillowman all the way back in uni. I think it traumatised me 😂 but my god is it good

[@leonoldfield9765]

Wow, What a list! The most disturbing book I have ever read is The Vanishing by Tim Krabbé. Still lingers with me years later. Honourable mention to The Collector by John Fowles. Very disturbing!

[@yelisieimurai]

Thank you very much for this interesting video! I enjoyed it. I read now Winnie-the-Pooh but after I finish it I will definitely read something more disturbing! It shall be “let’s go play…” (interesting to compare it with “The girl next door” which I read year ago).

[@nicholasjones3207]

You should maybe try some of wrath James white’s later books. The writing gets better. I found succulent prey more disturbing than the book you tiered here. Also his book with Edward lee, the teratologist is pretty disturbing and gross.

[@xSmythosx]

yeah house of leaves is maybe my all time favorite book and i definitely wouldn’t call it disturbing. more tragic and vaguely uncomfortable than anything

[@CriminOllyBlog]

Agreed!

[@Marylily2]

16:46 Reagarding Notice by Heather Lewis, do you think that there could be any truth to this novel? After I read it, I was just left feeling like this had to have come from somewhere. That no one’s mind could be that dark without there having been something. As I was reading it, the vivid depictions of certain events really stood out, and I just couldn’t imagine how she could write like that without having had these horrific experiences. What do you think?

[@CriminOllyBlog]

I know that she was a victim of abuse. Whilst I don’t necessarily think the specific events of the book are factual, I definitely think the MC’s self destructive psychology is autobiographical

[@ritas140]

This Little Family still haunts me and I’ve a high threshold!

[@34tgroan]

Comanche Moon by Larry McMurtry is one you should put on your radar. It’s pretty violent.

[@johnscott6481]

Painted bird has the single saddest page I've ever read. The scene with the horse.if you know you know.

[@bigaldoesbooktube1097]

It disturbing just listening to you rank these 🫤

[@capricous]

Portrait of a Nuclear Family by J.P. Behrens is a great story about just how far a woman will go to protect her family's image.

[@tiffanyclark-grove1989]

I think you actually love disturbing books. May not be the best for an individual psyche.

[@IsraelShekelberg]

Torture Garden? The Turner Diaries? The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing was unsettling. I am not sure the confessions of Carl Panzram counts as a 'book'.

[@Alexandra-ms9jj]

Hogg is admittedly the most vile and disturbing book I've ever read, but it's also become one of my favorite novels. Delany's messaging manages to be really in your face throughout (in my opinion), but it's so easy to miss because he just pulls zero punches in the graphic nature of the entire thing. It's definitely an S tier disturbing novel, that's for sure

[@6moonsofsaturn]

@@Alexandra-ms9jj what do you feel his message was? Definitely agree that it is the most vile!

[@Alexandra-ms9jj]

@6moonsofsaturn There's a couple of things I think Delany was primarily addressing: a) SA is willfully ignored by society and that, in part, perpetuates SA and b) homosexuality was, at the time, viewed as immoral because people were unwilling to confront true sexual immortality. There's a lot more I feel Delany comments on, but those two themes really stood out to me.

[@xWingzTV]

hogg is literal auto-erotic smut written by a pedophile sympathizer with absolutely no literary redeeming qualities… it’s only survived so long because it’s managed to gaslight the horror-lit demographic and so the self-perpetuated hype continues…

[@ulyssesgonzalez2068]

Would I find any of these books at my local bookstore in the Novel section or Horror section? I'm interested in reading some of these and would like to save some money by buying used copies.

[@CriminOllyBlog]

I think probably about 50/50 - a lot of them are horror or crime, but many are general fiction

[@ulyssesgonzalez2068]

@@CriminOllyBlog thank you

[@elliyo4286]

`A Little Life´ the one book I will never shut up about. ^^ I lost sight of how many of these you read, that´s really impressive!! I read about half of this in one year, but even if you do read a lot more you can be really proud of yourself for going through all of them. Phew! ´My Dark Vanessa´ I personally really liked; I appreciated the story of a ´not so perfect´ victim. I guess I just like books that make me cry, and feel something (which is not simply disgust) but there are a lot of books on my tbr from this list; I want to tackle Lolita this summer. I think the most disturbing book I have read (and there aren´t that many) was ´Gone to See the Riverman´ which I hated. Which I´ve also gone on a rant about what all the things I didn´t like were, but there is one ´aspect´ in particular that made me frigging hate this book. ´Eric the pie´ was also really disturbing to me personally; I´m sensitive with animal cruelty. I had to skip a lot of pages, so I guess it´s one I couldn´t get through at all. Really horrific! But didn´t hate it like I did the Riverman book.

[@Marylily2]

19:15 Whenever you say that a particular scene really stuck with you in a book, it really makes me twitch and I’ll go off and spend ages trying to Google the spoilers (because I’m a bit wimpy for ultra disturbing content). Would you ever consider making some kind of video where you talk about the most disturbing scenes from books? Obviously with a big spoiler warning!

[@CriminOllyBlog]

I’m not sure I could, for two reasons. One is that just saying this stuff out loud is horrible, the other is that taken out of context and just coldly described I think the scenes loose a lot of their power.

[@kreggie891]

Hmm..there’s only been 2 books that have really bothered me they were both in the true crime genre. The Last Victim and Slow Death both disturbing in subject and facts of the cases. The Last Victim isn’t very long of a book but is very sad at the end. Slow death is just horrific in the details of what happened. It’s well researched and written but so horrific, I can’t even come up with another word.

[@OwenL2020]

I can't believe you ran through all of those and their plots in one go.

[@CriminOllyBlog]

I was completely exhausted at the end 😂

[@AntheanCeilliers]

Damn I just spent my fiction book budget and now there are so many things I want!

[@CriminOllyBlog]

Sorry!

[@laurakuhlmann1626]

I hated my dark Vanessa especially because it kept trying to parallel itself with Lolita and proving that the author didn't understand the book. Lolita is not a love story or sympathetic to the abuser; Nanokov himself was abused as a child (see his memoir "Speak Memory") and many of his books are written from the perspective of terrible people, but he's usually more clear that he dislikes the MC. In Lolita Nabokkv didn't hold the readers hand, and as a result some readers interpret it as justifying abuse. It does not. So I don't understand what Vanessa was trying to do, because Nabokov was already critical of the abuser.

[@themelonsoup]

There's a similar book that's actually a memoir called Becoming Lolita. The MC is groomed by a teacher who utilities the book Lolita to do so and eventually the MC figures out that it's not a love story. I'm describing it poorly lol.

[@gerarddonaghy2720]

In some ways it depends on what's disturbing, I think torture porn, perversions of nature, even some types of body horror, are not necessarily that disturbing, at least not in terms of the simply descriptive, though I think you make that point well enough in the rankings too. Another sci fi masterworks series book Random Acts of Senseless Violence is good and kind of disturbing too in its depiction of a kind of individual and social breakdown into disorder. This book plays a sort of a trick but its also meant to be a meditation on how deterministic, or not, the world is, or so I thought, which is kind of disturbing some how too. Its part of a series but I never read any of the other books in the series. It was kind of stand alone jarring and I liked it for that.

[@gerarddonaghy2720]

One I seldom see mentioned is Arslan, in part as its sci fi masterworks series, it contains some pretty shocking sexual violence and also a plot which may or may not have to do with the freudian death wish/drive, I wouldnt read this again and I think the author totally nailed the necrophilious vs biophilious idea, let down by its finish but shocking at times and will remain with me anyway. The Wasp Factory I think deserves a mention, some of the understated savagery in that book is unforgetable.

[@BohdanKozachenko]

you should really do more of this type of content its popular

[@CriminOllyBlog]

I may well do 😊

[@ephinygale]

Great video! I would add Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon by Matt Dinniman to this list.

[@waltera13]

I know it's a traditional gesture, but I looked at the thumbnail and all I could see was Bill Hader's "Stefon" from Saturday Night Live. *SOmeone* had to tell you. Sorry if the comment is lame. .. it's like Spinach in your teeth though. As always you are the master of booktube.

[@electrolyteblend]

Would you do a tier list based on how scary or terrifying the books are?

[@electrolyteblend]

As in books were your scared to turn the page. Or that have you scared to go on a walk alone. Or keeping all the lights on at night

[@CriminOllyBlog]

I’ll have a think! Thanks for the suggestion

[@TractorCountdown]

I'm curious as to why Stephen King isn't in your list. I'm not suggesting he should be, but am genuinely curious. I don't tend to get disturbed by books, but one scene in 'Blood Meridian' still turns my stomach when I think of it.

[@CriminOllyBlog]

I can’t think of any King that really disturbed me

[@TractorCountdown]

@@CriminOllyBlog Fair enough :)

[@johnyarrow6100]

Have you ever read What Happens Now by Jeremy Dyson? I thought that was pretty messed up

[@1183newman]

Surprised no Edward Lee or Richard Laymon on the list.

[@CriminOllyBlog]

I’ve read a tonne of Laymon and he’s too bad a writer to be disturbing really. Lee is a gap though, I need to read The Bighead I think

[@1183newman]

​@@CriminOllyBlog A novel i read quite a while ago which i remember being distrubing is "Son Of The Endless Night". Might be worth checking out if you haven't read it. It is about demonic possession.

[@Disturbingoverwriter]

Nice categorization. May I know this website? I wanna do one for myself too!

[@CriminOllyBlog]

It’s called Tiermaker