/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.10284983]

Let's get some S A D B O Y lit up in here.

Post the most depressing books you've ever read.

[Anonymous No.10284987]

There's also Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Shit was pretty brutal.

[Anonymous No.10284997]

Also feel free to post books that you read as a kid and made you sad then.

For me, the Green Mile was pretty devastating. I don't know if it would have the same effect on me now.

[Anonymous No.10285000]

[Anonymous No.10285001]

Before John Green turned into a cuck, he actually wrote a decent book called Looking for Alaska. Everything since then has been a cheap imitation playing on the same formulas, but that had some pretty brutal parts.

[Anonymous No.10285004]

White nights by Dostoevsky

[Anonymous No.10285006]

Stoner by Williams, gives you an empty feeling, existential dread type atmosphere. Wouldn't call it depressing though.

[Anonymous No.10285039]

>>10285001
That's the one with children giving blowjobs, isn't it? You're right, the degradation of children's literature is pretty sad.

[Anonymous No.10285067]

>>10284983
Wouldn't necessarily call it sad, but Crime and Punishment. I read it during a time I was already worn out and depressed, so I had to put it down before I finished it. It was good, so I plan on reading it all the way through some time.

[Anonymous No.10285086]

>>10285039
I don't give a fuck about all that, some Christians made a big deal out of it, to me it was just shit that happened when I was a kid and nothing out of the ordinary.

The sad part is obviously when Alaska dies and you think this isn't happening, she'll be back, it's a kid's book. But she actually does die, and you go through the stages until accepting the fact.

[Anonymous No.10285095]

>>10285086
...have you literally never read a kid's book where someone dies before?

[Anonymous No.10285097]

>>10284983
Catcher in the rye

[Anonymous No.10285100]

>>10285095
Kek.

[Anonymous No.10285101]

in many ways it's a fun lighthearted book but the core of it really got to me and the ending is fucking brutal

[Anonymous No.10285104]

kite runner, but the end was also really happy in a way so I guess I haven't read that many depressing books

[Anonymous No.10285108]

>>10285101
How the fuck is this sad?

[Anonymous No.10285112]

>>10285095
I was a kid then, not expecting it, not in a non-fantasy setting. Gimme a break man are you call me a fag because I got sad reading Watership Down too?

[Anonymous No.10285116]

>>10285097
True but I was 14 when I read it. Had a really big impact on me.

[Anonymous No.10285121]

>>10285108
well it's about how mediocre life is for ugly awkward people, in a very real way
the ending where she's lying on her bed crying about how she's never going to have anyone ever and that's literally the realistic scenario and her nice parents are going to just be stuck with her in her unmarriageable hopeless state until they die is unbelievably dismal, all the more so for being so low key and realistic

[Anonymous No.10285156]

[Anonymous No.10285157]

>>10285121
DUDE just watch the south park episode about ugly people and cheer your sorry ass up

[Anonymous No.10285165]

>>10285104
Awfully mediocre book. Would not recommend

[Anonymous No.10285170]

>>10285157
i don't watch south park, but how will it cheer me up?
is it about how ugly people will all find happiness with each other?

[Anonymous No.10285177]

>>10285112
No man, Watership Down is really fucking sad. You'd have to be a fag not to cry when Hazel stopped running.

[Anonymous No.10285184]

>>10285165
>awfully mediocre book
what books do you like then, chump?

[Anonymous No.10285207]

>>10285170
It's kinda like natural selection. Men that are unattractive have to find some other way to attract females - intelligence, creativity, humour - which is why most of the great achievements in history were not by chads but by the virgins who if they had been attractive they would have been preoccupied with chasing skirt and then had a mid life crisis when they realised they'd done nothing.

[Anonymous No.10285226]

>>10285207
>unattractive
>a mid life crisis when they realised they'd done nothing.

Eh, you can have both, no biggie.

[Anonymous No.10285248]

[Anonymous No.10285260]

>>10285207
but what about people who don't have intelligence, creativity or humour? these people exist and die alone in an unremembered ditch

[Anonymous No.10285266]

Notes from Underground
Mainly because I related to the Underground Man at the time. It helped me turn some things around in my life.

[Anonymous No.10285302]

Lot of children in this thread.

1984
Darkness at Noon
The Good Soldier
Long Days Journey Into the Night
Correction
Oblivion (especially good old neon)
Bel Ami
The Drowned and the Saved

[Anonymous No.10285318]

>>10285260
Hard work and dedication. Read "outliers". It's more about time you put in than just talent or genetics.

[Anonymous No.10285323]

>>10285302
You realize it;s easier to find a book depressing as a child than it is as a man when your emotions are pretty much faded into an empty void? I used to cry at films, now I'm so desensitised to that shit I actually enjoy cutting onions to be reminded of what it's like to have tears come out of your eyes.

[Anonymous No.10285335]

>>10284983
Made me depressed for days

[Anonymous No.10285339]

I'm a hardened medfag who's seen the most fucked up shit imaginable and this made me cry like a goddamn child.

[Anonymous No.10285355]

>>10285335
Looks interesting. Can you write something about the book. I'm currently reading Life in the Clearings and I love books written in this time period.

[Anonymous No.10285360]

The heart is a lonely hunter

[Anonymous No.10285408]

>>10284983
L'Assommoir
On the Heights of Despair

[Anonymous No.10285419]

>>10285104
What are you doing here?

[Anonymous No.10285426]

>>10285121
I agree with this, those last few pages turn the whole tone of the book on its head

[Anonymous No.10285590]

>>10284987
>Shit was pretty brutal.
Genuinely haunted by the description of the cannibal's cellar.

>>10285006
>Wouldn't call it depressing though.
This. It ends on a positive note.

>>10285302
>1984
No.

[Anonymous No.10285594]

>>10284983
The Bell Jar is YA fiction for people who think they're too old for YA fiction.

[Anonymous No.10285597]

>>10284987
The road and no longer human are the most depressing books I've read from recent memory

[Anonymous No.10285605]

>>10285184
Not him but Kite Runner is shit. Come back when you graduate high school.

[Anonymous No.10285728]

>>10285594
It actually helped me fight my depression because I read it and realized that I never want to be anything like the MC.

[Anonymous No.10285916]

>>10284987
something about the description of the big barrel grill will never not give me chills

[Anonymous No.10285923]

>>10285594
almonds: activated

[Anonymous No.10285958]

>>10285101
Only book that ever made me cry

[Anonymous No.10285971]

>>10285594
The section of The Bell Jar where Esther is at the height of her depression (I vaguely remember a scene where she tries to drown herself at the beach but can't hold herself under water long enough) is genuinely mesmerising

[Anonymous No.10286052]

F E E L

Watership Down
Sputnik Sweetheart
Dubliners
Wuthering Heights
The Vampire Armand
East of Eden
The Once and Future King

[Anonymous No.10286086]

If you want real depression rather than cheap sadness:

Absalom, Absalom!
100 Years of Solitude
Journey to the End of Night

[Anonymous No.10286094]

>>10284983
Saw this shit hanging at a Starbucks lmao

[Anonymous No.10286185]

>>10285355
>Intelligent and passionate girl grows up unfulfilled in a narrow, provincial town
>We follow her from childhood until she is a young woman
>Yearns for love from others but is constantly rebuked
>Father becomes bankrupt, brother goes off to work in a factory

[Anonymous No.10286189]

>>10285156
a little life overdoes it at times in my opinion
all that misery porn definitely robbed a little of its impact

[Anonymous No.10286514]

>>10285605
explain why then, because I wanna know why /lit/ shits on every single popular book

[Anonymous No.10286560]

>>10286052
Sputnik fucked me up

[Anonymous No.10286803]

[Anonymous No.10287354]

For Whom the Bell Tolls. Wtf lit no hemingway

[Anonymous No.10287362]

>>10287354
To elaborate
The feels when no qt spanish partisan to lie with you under the winter stars in a bed pine boughs while contemplating existence.

[Anonymous No.10287367]

>>10285248
this, also Richard Yeats

[Anonymous No.10287368]

>>10285594
Shut the fuck up you pseud cunt

[Anonymous No.10288024]

Specifically, The Depressed Person, though most of the stories are great.

[Anonymous No.10288929]

Sons & Lovers

[Anonymous No.10289099]

>>10284983
I hate Sartre. I hate this book. I hated reading it. Having all that in mind this was the most sad and depraved novel I have ever read. It almost gave me a panic attack at multiple points reading it (although that isn't saying a lot because I get those extremily easy).

[Anonymous No.10289126]

just fucc me up

[Anonymous No.10289133]

>>10284983
Last week i went to the american museum of art and there was an exhibit on sylvia plath as she is considered an illustrious american, which i agree, she's a decent novelist and great poet. However i was bothered that i couldn't find any reference to faulkner, hemingway, gaddis, mccarthy. I mean what the fuck? Do you guys think i am overreacting? Sorrh for the diatribe, none of my friends or family understand my feeling of indignation.

[Anonymous No.10289143]

This book stopped me from becoming an alcoholic

[Anonymous No.10289151]

>>10289133
I haven't seen the museum but I would agree if it is as you have described. Welcome to the modern age, I guess.

[Anonymous No.10289402]

>>10286514
Literally the first thing on google

https://litreactor.com/columns/your-favorite-book-sucks-the-kite-runner