What book have you read that wasn’t subjectively “bad” but you regrets reading all the same?

For me, Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter. The book was engaging and it kept me on my toes, but I just with I hadn’t “poisoned my head” with all the graphic gore that was in there. I years later i still think about this and how I really wish I had never read it.

Question inspired by a comment /u/PrincessOfWales made in another thread :)

  • FaeTouchedChangeling@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Oh, dude. So I was a kid that was always reading way above my grade level. Obviously kids like that get into all sorts of weird adult books, right? And often life experience doesn’t catch up to reading level quick enough for us… so my mom had a big book wall (don’t we all though???) and I swiped Cujo and stuck it under my mattress around age 10 and would read it when I was I’m private. Dude. Blew my frickin mind, some of the shit in there. I haven’t gone back to read it for almost 20 years now. Nope. And I’ve read other stuff like that since then, but the fact THATS the specific book that I read at 10 that freaked me out so much, I just…haven’t lol

    • TheMedicOwl@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      I had a similar reaction to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I was nine when I read it, the same age as Maya Angelou when she was raped, and reading such a graphic account told in the first person by a girl my own age really scarred me.

      • lavender_airship@alien.topB
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        1 year ago

        Luckily I was 12ish before I got my first King scarring.

        It was Rage, though, followed by The Long Walk, which might have been worse since the protags were closer to my own age?