"Top 10 Most Depressing Books" Topic

1. The Road
Cormac McCarthy

2. The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath

3. Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy

4. 1984
George Orwell

5. Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand

6. The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

7. Night
Elie Wiesel

8. On the Beach
Nevil Shute

9. The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison

10. Lord of the Flies
William Golding

link

Interesting. I happen to like 1984 and The Lord of the Flies.

Hated the Grapes of Wrath.

Haven't read any of the rest, but I was thinking about reading the Road.

I know they're for a younger crowd, but I found Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows very depressing.

The Road-- at least there was the barest flame of hope at the end.

I bought the road, tried to read it. Threw it away. First book I have ever done that too.

Has Cormac McCarthey ever written anything that wasn't depressing?

Franz Kafka "Metamorphosis" ==> wake up as a cockoach, really upliflting.

The Difference Engine. I found it all amounted to nothing, and then fifty years later, computers become sentient. Okayyy…

Il n'y a pas de pays sans grand-père, by Roch Carrier. It's about an old Quebecker that spends his time time thinking about the same three idiotic things on his porch. His grandson is a separatist, gets arrested, and then the old guy goes psycho and attacks a bus driver. I can't believe I wasted time reading it…

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell…very, very depressing.

Pete

I could not finish The Village of Stepanchikovo, and I am otherwise very resilient

Any fantasy by C. J. Cherryh (not her Science Fiction, though, which I love. How can the same author write two such different styles?)

Any novel where they use the word "introspective" in the blurb (at least, in my experience …)

Just about anything by Solzhenitsyn

The sirens of titan was my first encounter with a sad book.
i think it changed me.

Any of Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
Lice – Blaise Cendrars
All Quiet on the Western Front
1984

I made the mistake of reading a lot of Depressing, realistic stuff as an early teen, and I am firmly convinced it contributed negatively to my mental state. Aged 11 I was a straight 'A' student in everything, tolerably socialised and getting on OK. Aged 13 I was a miserable failing loner, it took me 'til I was about 17 to get out of it.

Ban depressing books now!

Pat

I made the mistake of reading a lot of Depressing, realistic stuff as an early teen, and I am firmly convinced it contributed negatively to my mental state. Aged 11 I was a straight 'A' student in everything, tolerably socialised and getting on OK. Aged 13 I was a miserable failing loner, it took me 'til I was about 17 to get out of it.

Nah, that goes with being a teenager. along with spots

+1 to the Thomas Covenant series. I'd (thankfully) forgotten them.

Wuthering Heights has to be up there too. Not only is the story depressing the actual diction is depressing. I's say that Metamorphosis does take the cake though, as Vonnegut proved.

I thought Atlas Shrugged was uplifting.

oooh lets not forget Tess of the Durbervilles
and Animal Farm
amd Homage to Catalonia

Pat

For History I would go with "The Guns of August" – so many chance to avoid cataclysm all ignored.

Pretty much anything by Thomas Hardy (at least the one's I read), "Johnny Got His Gun" by ??? and the Don series by Sholokhov.

Rob

Harry Turtledove's whole series following "How Few Remain". All his characters are either malevolent or boring.

Watership Down

whaaaaaa?

How the hell is Watership Down depressing? are you a Lapinophobe? are you allergic to English Wildflowers? were you secretly rooting for Woundwort and his Nazi Efrafans?

I mean this seriously*. How the hell can you find that book depressing?

* I am allowed to be serious three times per year. This is number 2, after the Snorbens thing.

Pat

I've read…

1984 – made no impression on me
Atlas Shrugged – an enjoyable read
On the Beach – depressing topic, but I don't recall the book being depressing
Lord of the Flies – not exactly depressing, more like, I never want to touch that book ever again

Native Son by Richard Wright

Don't forget "Slaughterhouse Five".

"Perdido Street Station" by China Mieville (sp?) was pretty darn depressing too, though I don't take exception to any of the titles listed by the OP.

I have only read two on the original list (LotF and Jude the Obscure). I think I will continue to avoid the others.

Bits of Grapes of Wrath I rather liked; given it's a Steinbeck, I think is odd. Somehow managed to avoid Lord of the Flies in school, and see no reason to read it now. I work with a bunch of teen-aged savages; I have no need to read about them.

In general, unless I have to read it for say, a class, if I find a book depressing, I dump it. Saves a lot to trouble that way.

Quite a recent one – Star of the Sea by Jooseph O'Connor. About a murder on a ship full of people fleeing the Irish famine, IIRC it was nothing more than misery porn. All the characters had either had a terrible life, or were awful people, or both.

Crime and Punishment – Dostoevsky
The House of the Dead – Dostoevsky
A Hero of Our Time – Lementov
Dead Souls – Gogol

Actually pretty much all Russian Literature…

Pete

Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

I've read 1984 and Lord of the Flies. I didn't hate 1984, though yes, it was depressing. I didn't exactly hate LotF, though I didn't like it either. I just cannot appreciate a mindset which is devoid of hope and treats life as devoid of meaning. Me, I choose hope, meaning, love, faith and joy. I think my choice is better.

As for the others, no, haven't read them, and I'm really not drawn to them either. I did like Steinbeck's East of Eden, but I've heard enough about The Grapes of Wrath to choose to avoid it.

Actually pretty much all Russian Literature…

Beat me to it. Brothers Karamazov is pretty grim as well and as already mentioned, anything by Solzhenitsyn.

Salmon Rushdie may desrve to be on the list as well but his stuff is so fantastically unreadable I can't tell if it is depressing or simply a bad read.

Several books on the Holocaust, the titles of which I can't remember at the moment (read them years ago).

I've read several books that have saddened me, but 1984 left me genuinely depressed.

An Oakland Raiders Program.

I've not read anything on that list. I started The Grapes Of Wrath, but gave up before they even got to California.

I read the Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant (well, the first six – not touching the most recent ones), and was waiting for something, anythihng remotely positive to happen to the title character. Nope, nothing. Miserable to the end. I know a guy who read them twice, voluntarily!

The Pearl By Stienbeck
The Sheep Look Up By Brunner I trashed this one.
and the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, this one made me want to reach through the story and beat Thomas upside the head with a spiked bat.

I didn't find 1984 depressing, nor Homage to Catalonia (both essentially covering the same thing).

On the Beach though, pretty grim. Of all the nukewar fiction I found that one the most disturbing. In the disturbing category is also JG Ballards 'The Wind from Nowhere' and 'Indoctrinaire' by Christopher Priest. That last one really freaked me out, but again, it is the whole cold war nuclear apocalypse thing. Strange times.

'The Sheep Looked Up' just killed me, especially as there are so many modern parallels, particularly Puritan and their 'organic' veg.

'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists', yes, very depressing.

I'm almost tempted to stick up for poor old Thomas Covenant. They weren't _that_ bad.

They were Martin, they were.

The Stranger-Albert Camus

Dont read it if you're feeling suicidal.

J G Ballard The Terminal Beach.

For decades I was fascinated by Ballard but never understood him. There was something deeply disconnected, alienated, about his fiction that spoke to me, but I couldn't quite make him out. When I read Empire of the Sun I finally got it. He's a camp survivor.

Interesting that 1984 is on a few lists.
I found it gripping more than depressing, and suspenseful.
Of course the very end is a little depressing, but you just keep on hoping!

Anyway.

The Stranger – yes. please kill me now…

The Unbearable Lightness of Being – ennui epitomized! – this book RUINED me at the age of 19.

Hiroshima – John Hershey – a catalog of unhappy

Koestler's "Darkness at Noon".

"For decades I was fascinated by Ballard but never understood him."

Yes, his books have a wonderful dream like quality, even if many of the dreams are actually nightmares. He always reminded me of Ray Bradbury.

David Copperfield. Couldn't finish it.

Didn't find Grapes of Wrath or 1984 depressing. They were so well written that I was absorbed in the story. They were just two experiences that instilled in me a sense of making sure that I don't treat others cruelly. Fight injustice and exploitation.

JW

What is really depressing reading is an enormous book that seems to end up with no purposes in having told its story. Virtually every bloated novel by Stephen King (The Running Man, and The Stand are the only two exceptions in the c. half dozen King novels that I read).

So, Les Miserables, and War and Peace are waaay too long for what they have to say.

Where a Red Fern Grows dreadfully depressing as a child (my Fourth Grade teacher read that one to his class).

A Separate Peace was depressing from start to finish.

Moby Dick is depressing, also for the first reason mentioned.

The BIBLE is depressing with little glimmers along the way. I hate that book. (Book of Mormon, same thing only shorter.)

The Ring sagas that Wagner took his operas from are uber depressing and bloated out of all proportion. You can tell the plot on a 3 by 5 card, and the repetitious details go on for pages and pages….

1984
Brave New World
Down and Out in London and Paris.

I've never read 'Atlas Shrugged' but from reviews and writings about it I can understand why two sets of people have opposite reactions to it.