Video summary

i read the 10 most disturbing books ever written.

Main summary

Key takeaways

Entertainment

Overview

This video is a long, highly opinionated “disturbing books challenge.” The creator tries (and largely fails) to figure out why people are drawn to dark fiction, then ranks 10 famous/infamous novels by how disturbing they were to them personally. The project starts as a quick YouTube upload, but takes four years, including moments where they feel sick, devastated, and—surprisingly—amused.

Framing the Project (Why Disturbing Art?)

The creator opens by asking what compels humans to seek the “darkest parts of humanity” in art, offering possibilities like:

  • Sick curiosity
  • Catharsis
  • A desire to understand ourselves

They clarify they weren’t chasing gore for gore’s sake. Instead, they wanted a “range of depravity,” repeatedly returning to books that show up on lists/icebergs and across spaces like Reddit and Twitter—sometimes including titles other YouTubers have already covered.

They also emphasize:

  • The ranking is based on their own reaction
  • There are light spoilers
  • Some topics may be age-restricted and limited for monetization

The Ranking: Key Highlights + What Stands Out

#1: Justine / Sade — Marquis de Sade

  • The creator didn’t finish it: they read about a quarter, skim the rest, and then stop entirely.
  • They describe it as “porn written by a serial killer,” calling it demented, pointless, and brutally graphic.
  • What strikes them most: the contrast between the grotesque content and proper/classical language.
  • Main takeaway: it’s objectively fascinating but also boring—endless depravity their mind can’t sustain.

#2: A Little Life (Hanya Yanagihara)

  • They use light pop-culture framing/jokes (e.g., videos of young women crying; a meme comparison).
  • They expected tears but found the book worse in a different way: it becomes so relentless that they feel emotionally manipulated.
  • The book is summarized as 800 pages of “the worst things happening to the nicest people,” centered on Jude’s:
    • extreme trauma
    • self-harm
    • child abuse
    • decades of accumulating tragedy
  • Their major criticism: the suffering starts to feel implausible, and the ending (where Jude dies as “mercy”) makes them angry, not cathartically satisfied.
  • They quote Yanagihara’s skeptical take on therapy, which they strongly disagree with.

#3: The Road (Cormac McCarthy)

  • Even though it’s popular and adjacent to “Oprah’s book club” culture, they initially underestimated it—especially after reading Blood Meridian first.
  • The father-son apocalypse is portrayed as simple, fast, and philosophical—and the creator calls it a “philosophical 180” compared to A Little Life’s pessimism.
  • Disturbing, but not as personally devastating as the top entries.

#4: House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski)

  • The creator calls it either an overhyped horror gimmick or a masterpiece, admitting mixed feelings.
  • What works (for them):
    • horror through imagination
    • shifting spaces and “bigger on the inside” rooms
  • What doesn’t (for them):
    • dense layered structure (academic satire, intrusive editors, mental health digressions)
    • intentionally “bad” language and academic parody
  • Still, the Navidson-record layer is praised as among the best horror fiction they’ve read.

#5: No Longer Human (Osamu Dazai)

  • They connect the protagonist’s alienation and self-loathing to modern audiences (including jokes about browsing forums at 3 a.m.).
  • The most shocking element: the protagonist’s passive witnessing of his partner’s death.
  • It’s hard to get through, but they say it “unlocks” emotionally at the end when the journal’s perspective is reframed by someone who knew him.

#6: Earthlings (Sayaka Murata)

  • A surreal, darkly funny story about neglect and childhood rupture, where the narrator believes she’s an alien.
  • Plot highlights include:
    • childhood romance fractures family life
    • she kills her abuser
    • later, she believes she must blend into a factory-like society
  • They praise the anger and sardonic tone, then note the story “devolves” into surreal violence, cannibalism, and necromantic elements.
  • They link its vibe to fans of Yorgos Lanthimos (absurdist, cruelly stylized).

#7: Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo)

  • Presented as anti-war horror through psychological realism.
  • A soldier wakes up unable to see/hear/speak, gradually realizing he lacks body parts—only sensation areas like neck/forehead.
  • The creator emphasizes unbearable claustrophobia: the protagonist can’t even properly communicate and is sedated when he tries.
  • They mention its cultural resurgence around Vietnam-era politics.

#8: Sick Bastards (Matt Shaw)

  • The creator’s tone becomes sharply critical:
    • they call it craftless, repetitive, and emotionally empty
  • They mock the “gross-out” approach as insufficient without atmosphere and psychological motivation.
  • Plot summary: a cannibal family with incest-like dynamics, an unclear apocalypse reason, and a predictable twist about a government experiment.
  • Their argument: it reads like bad porn and isn’t meaningfully disturbing—more just gross and poorly written.

#9: The Girl Next Door (Jack Ketchum)

  • The creator describes it as an extreme, slow-motion degradation story loosely based on real events (Sylvia Likens).
  • The horror isn’t only violence—it’s power structures:
    • adults using kids as servants
    • humiliation
    • kids becoming complicit
  • They praise the emotional depth and anger in the writing, while acknowledging controversy and tasteless cover choices.
  • They compare the dynamic to atrocities enabled by “following orders” and ongoing social power systems.

#10: Cows (Jeremy Valance / “hagbeast” described) — numbering is inconsistent

  • They spend significant time on this one.
  • They call it grotesque, surreal, sickening—and also “incredibly stupid.”
  • Plot summary:
    • a lonely man is abused by an extremely fat mother (“hagbeast”)
    • he gets a job at a slaughterhouse
    • he’s drawn into ritualistic slaughter
    • he tries to kill her
    • he’s also involved with a woman obsessed with dissecting animals
  • They mention additional imagery: talking cows living in sewers plotting revenge (including duct-tape “power move” framing).
  • The creator frames it as a weird “self-acceptance” journey, but says they dislike it and call it ineffective as literature despite its impact.

Note: The creator notes their numbering is a bit inconsistent.

Overall Themes + Concluding Reflections

The creator draws a repeated contrast between:

  • Disturbance with purpose, such as:
    • anti-war moral argument
    • trauma portrayed as psychologically real
    • existential/philosophical contrast
  • Versus disturbance as exploitation or emptiness, especially in their critique of Sick Bastards and frustration with how some trauma can feel engineered to overwhelm.

They conclude they didn’t just want shock—they wanted to test:

  • how much darkness they could withstand
  • whether horror/violence becomes harder to tolerate in a media-saturated internet world

They also argue reading disturbing books is harder than watching disturbing movies because you can’t “tune out” sentence-by-sentence—your imagination supplies full realism.

Personality / Roles Shown (As Requested)

  • The main narrator/creator: An English-speaking book YouTuber/critic running a Patreon book club, delivering rankings with humor and strong opinions.

  • Referenced creators/critics (not appearing on-camera): Nick Fear(s), Criminoli, OwlCriticism, Cinema Stix (re: transition and Nebula promo), plus the authors/titles discussed throughout the ranking (including Yanagihara, McCarthy, Dazai, Murata, etc.).

Original video