Thursday, January 24, 2008

My eyes are burning

Back when I was in college, my friends and I use to have this saying- “The visuals are killing me!” So is the case when I read some books that make me shudder in disgust and I have to turn away, but not before a visual of a certain scene pops into my head and makes me think- “This visual is killing me!”

At this moment I am trying to get through a book that is considered one of the worst books I have read in while, probably will end up in my top 10 worst of all time. Even more so then the tree sex book of 2007. And don’t forget the erotic re-telling of Phantom of the Opera by Colette Gale where Eric and Christine become really friendly with a huge harp! Not much can shock me anymore, but this book is a true “shock and awe book”. I don’t want to give anything away as of yet and I honestly can’t form a final opinion because I haven’t finished. Let’s just say I’ve been having nightmares of huge purple, pulsing, veiny penises coming to get me. Thanks Kristie(J) for that visual!

There are a few books I have read throughout the years that simply make me go “bleck.” One being a critically acclaimed novel that the first time I read, I seriously had to stop myself from being sick. It is American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I have tried countless times to get through this novel and I just can’t, where as my sister who reads a book maybe once every six months love this book and can’t stop raving about it. I have seen the movie with no problem, BUT the movie left out two very graphic scenes that are so horrendous to read. If you have read this book, you probably know which scenes I am talking about. I really can’t look at hangers the same way every again.

I am the type of reader where I really try to look for the good in every book I read. But sometimes there are just some books that boggle the mind. How can an author want this to be read and why would a publisher even think of publishing it?

So, if you are brave enough, I would love to know what books made you close your eyes and say, “THE VISUALS ARE KILLING ME!”

Katiebabs

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Neal Stephenson - Quicksilver.

There's a scene in it where they torture a dog. (Not, in a sense, in a nasty way - the motives are pure - scientific research - but still, they torture it.)

Don't know why it bothered me so much - I am a complete wimp about that sort of thing, but it bothered me worse that in would have bothered me if they had tortured a person. J.D.Robb does much worse to her average murder victim.
And it's not that I'm a dog lover - at the time I read it, I'd never owned a dog.

Does work out in the end, because (SPOILER) the person involved in the dog torturing has to have an operation without anaesthetic, so cosmic justice triumphs.

But definitely bleck.

Marianne McA

Anonymous said...

Let's see. I have a couple. First of all, I never could get through "Lolita." I know it's supposed to be this amazing social satire or whatever, but it's about a middle-aged man who at one point actually does screw a 12-year-old girl, and I just... Ugh... I finished it, but it's so far the only book I've assigned an F grade to.

Also, and this may get me stoned, but I can't read Lorra Leigh because of her thing about barbed penises. That just seems so very painful to me.

Kati said...

Kate Douglas. I seriously love Wolf Tales because she totally justifies the "polyamorous" thing, and well, I dig all the bed hopping and man love.

What I *DO NOT* dig is when one of the players in a sex scene "shifts" and becomes a wolf. Oh holy god. It freaks me out every time. I tend to zoom through that scene with a major squicky feeling.

But man, she writes some excellent m/m sex. So I keep with it. Maybe I'm just a sadist. LOL!

Samantha said...

Hmmm, I can't think of any one book in particular that really squicked me out. But I can tell you that the one thing I can't stand to read in books is rape scenes. They're too much for me and I usually end up having to skim ahead or put it down. Last semester in my world lit class we had to read a short story that was about this woman who gets captured by a group of rebels who rape and torture her and it was graphic. It was horrible and extremely haunting. This is probably one reason I try to be carful about the romances I pick up, because I get extremely pissed off if the uber alpha hero basically forces the heroine to have sex with him. I don't give a crap if she ends up going "oooo" toward the end of the process. But aaaaaanyway. :P

Ana said...

Noughts and Crosses. I absoultely hated that book. It received rave reviews everywhere, and I tried to give it a go. It was a complete nightmare, one you try but can't escape because I wanted to see what the author would throw at me next. It was like she sat down and made a list of all conceivable plots in the history of literature and condensed them all in one book: It is like Romeo and Juliet meets To Kill a Mockingbird meets the Catcher in the Rye meets Street Car Named Desire meets Rebel Without a Cause etc etc.Then throw in a bit of alcoholism, kidnapping, teenager pregnancy and you have the book.

LOL , crickey I had a bit of a rant here and I still can't believe my eyes: are you telling me someone wrote an erotic tale of the Phantom of The Opera?

sula said...

Yep, ana, it is called Unmasqued - An Erotic Novel of the Phantom of the Opera

I liked the 'idea' of an erotic POTO tale but the execution really didn't measure up, imo. Still, it's kind of entertaining. lol