I have a bit of an off-topic question for you all: Did a book ever ruin your life?
Well, maybe that’s overstating things a little, so let me rephrase: Did you ever read a book that had a giant effect on your life, only to realize later that this effect was basically a negative one? Maybe you read Ayn Rand in high school and became an insufferable junior Objectivist for a couple of years? Maybe you gobbled up conspiracy theory until it finally occurred to you that Reptilians aren’t the real problem with the world today? Maybe you read a book that inspired you to join a cult that you later had to extract yourself from painfully?
It doesn’t have to be this dramatic. I’m just wondering how many of you all have stories like these, and what these stories are.
I might have a little bit of an ulterior motive. But it’s a good one, honest!
Many, many books have had a profound influence on my life, but mostly not in the toxic category. The ones that have been toxic to me have been those I used to prop up my own world view. Ironically, these have mostly been books by new wave atheists, like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. In Dawkins’ case, while I appreciate and applaud his monumental work in the field of evolution, when he stepped outside his area of academic expertise and, crucially, claimed he should be believed because of those science chops, his ideas became toxic for me. I swallowed “The God Delusion” whole, believing from it that science is the best tool for understanding faith.
Hitchens, while a wonderful writer and keen intellect, was prone to a similar assertion – that his experiences in international journalism made his pronouncements on religion infallible. His book “God is Not Great” is very easy to read and wholly compelling.
Between those two books (and others), I learnt a style of rationalist discourse that made me wholly obnoxious. I was so wedded to the concept that science is the only way of knowing anything about the world, I fought vehemently against any other epistemology when I encountered it. I don’t think this won me any friends and I cringe now when I think about how awful I was to other people. The greatest irony in all this is that, having been an avowed atheist for more than twenty years, I have recently had experiences that led me back to the church (I say back because, before I was an atheist, I was baptised and confirmed, although I never felt very close to the church at that time and I was very young – twelve, I think). This isn’t something I talk about to most people but I thought it was important to say here given the topic (and I feel safe here). I now feel very strongly, although with a great deal of conflict inside given my previous stated position, that I am a Christian.
(PS. The saving grace, if you will, of the new wave was the wonderful Carl Sagan, whose loss came far too early. Rather than preaching atheism, however, he simply told the truth about the power of science to examine the big and small questions in life. He was a very gentle person and his wife, Ann Druyan, who was such a profound influence in his life and was also his collaborator, continues to bring his ideas to new generations through the reboot of the Cosmos series. Sagan’s book “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” had a very positive impact on me and helped me start to understand how science can be used beneficially to help us avoid the pitfalls of modern life.)
Catcher in the Rye. I mostly laughed at the main character, then groaned because I kept seeing Holden Caufield in everyone, for months.
I’ve internalized all sorts of bad stuff, but I don’t think I can trace anything to an individual book I wouldn’t have absorbed from the surrounding culture anyway.
That said, while they didn’t in anyway ruin my life, I spent years trying to figure out if L’Etoile du Pourpre and the other 1950s French Catholic Boyscout YA novels of Serge Dalens had really existed in my middle-school library or if they were just some kind of fever-dream. Those things are their own slashfic.
@Catalpa
We’re not talking about The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, are we? Although he wasn’t the love interest, he was the main character. I was given those books to read by my parents when I was around 10. I don’t think they knew about the rape scene!
Not ruined me, per se, but one that I have never forgotten and that had an effect on the way I see the world is To Kill A Mockingbird.
Although I suspect that is true of many.
Another one that I’ve re-read often is The Thorn Birds.
And for me, *anything* by Christopher Moore is sublime. I follow him on Twitter…which reminds me, Shadowplay, I just followed you. ?
@Z&T
This reminds me of an article on Cracked where the reviewer had to read a Steven Segal book. Very funny!
http://www.cracked.com/blog/i-read-steven-seagalE28099s-insane-novel-so-you-donE28099t-have-to/
The manga Freezing (it counts as a book, dammit). Didn’t ruin my life or anything per se but it’s so fuckin bad, ewe guise!
Painful fanservice? Check. Any actually good moments destroyed by the creators’ misogyny and thematic bankruptcy? Check. Almost instantaneous dismissal of the story’s own conceit? Check. The worst harem plot I’ve ever seen (I’ve seen plenty, they can work… sorta)? Check. Rape and abuse and incest arc that means nothing and clearly only exists cos the creators are either ‘edgy’ or ‘into that’ (what’s the difference, right?)? Check check check. And the bad guy in said arc was, of course, just a troubled boy really
I useda be a ‘finish what you start’ typa reader. Freezing killed that in me. Maybe that’s not a bad thing (sunk cost fallacy and all that). But… I kinda miss that less jaded, ‘maybe it’ll turn around’, version of me. Also mighta helped dash any hopes I had of being a writer, not sure…
@PeeVee – The Thorn Birds is one of those novels that haunt you for a long time after you read it. I was trying to find the movie on YouTube a couple months ago and ran across the clip at the end, where a dying Richard Chamberlin is delivering the beautiful ending monologue to Rachel Ward. Some asswaffle had inserted a jump scare into it, wrecking the moment. I should have known to check the comments first.
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was life-ruining, only because that was how I found out about periods.
Actually, I’ve never read either of those. Neither have I been able to look at The Ones Who Walk Away… the same way ever since I found out that Omelas is just Salem, O(regon).
I did read an awful lot of Xanth books as a youngster (got bored sometime before I learned that Piers Anthony is certainly a pedophile), those probably didn’t do my growing psyche much good. Also Ender’s Game.
@ Lucrece,
For you 🙂 ….
I’m going to quote a little snippet of the Amazon review of my aforementioned tome….
“Ben, a fitness instructor, is twice her age, but he is a vigorous man able to challenge and out-perform men young enough to be his sons.”
Link for citation purposes, you probably don’t even want to read this..
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Tango-Brooklyn-Kirk-Douglas/dp/0446516953/ref=la_B001HD02G6_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523306669&sr=1-14&refinements=p_82%3AB001HD02G6
The book itself is far, far, worse.
Yes it is THAT BAD. Someone here (of stout mind) should read it, you will literally have to cringe your way through it.
I return!
Yeah, I’ve read some pretty bad-ish books over the years, usually because I decided to read one of the ‘big classics’ and it failed to live up to the hype.
Take Dracula. Sure there were some high points throughout the book, but by the end I just felt like they weren’t worth the rest of the mess.
Tom Sawyer faded from my mind as soon as I finished. Huckleberry Finn will probably never get finished.
All this is to say nothing of A-Level English required reading. I could literally not stand Handmaid’s Tale and 1984 as both left a sour taste in my mouth, so I just read the endings and worked my powers of bullshit from there.
Thankfully, only Year 12 was about dystopias. Year 13 was all about Gothic literature and Macbeth and Canterbury Tales were much more enjoyable (even though that was the third time I’d been taught Macbeth in English class)
Welcome, Batgirl! \o/
Like a bunch of others have said, I read insufferable Atheist books for awhile, Sam Harris and Dawkins and the like. I’m embarrassed to admit it; Dawkin’s writing is so *bad* when he’s not talking about genetics.
I also read all of Yudkowsky’s blog Less Wrong, which… well. My relationship to the work is now complex. There’s great stuff in there, but, uh, bring a shovel.
Read a book in high school titled “Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex*
*But Were Afraid To Ask, by Doctor Pervy Ignoramous. ( or at least I think that was the author’s name. I might be wrong.
Anyway, it was supposed to be an “enlightened” look at sex. And it was very popular at one time, so, my percolating hormone enfused teenaged brain poured over it.
There was a chapter about homosexuality. In which the author stated that gay men who have anal sex eventually lose all muscle control in their rectum and cannot hold their feces in, or even walk normally, without holding their legs together without shit pouring out.
For years, I was afraid to even get near a gay man ( until I got to college and noticed that no gay men reeking of doo doo. Or stumbling around in a half poop squat ).
Really, not only traumatized me, but made me into a crappier (no pun) human being for those years . And to this day, I can’t even think about trying anal without that image popping into my mind briefly.
Do I win?
How about seeing something in your surroundings that changes your outlook?
My friend’s idea: Why are there so many cancer places? All the hospitals here are building cancer centers, they advertise on TV, there’s at leas two children’s cancer hospitals – why?
You can tell people like this have visual art training, they notice things others may miss.
This is a different way of looking at things that can be life changing too. And you can learn to look at things this way too. So they tell me. That pile of art books is another thing I need to get to work on.
The Sirius Mystery.
Again, obviously didn’t ruin me, but I didn’t quite have my critical thinking skills quite developed. It was a ‘there’s something here, clearly’
It’s about alien intervention fuelling ancient advances in technology and understanding, and I’m pretty sure tombs being water filled beneath the pyramids for the benefit of advanced and reptilian alien benefactors.
Very pleased to now understand Occam’s razor at least.
Also believed the right wing had a better handle on economics. That wasn’t a book though so much as a whole media landscape…
And on the other side, a book that changed my life MUCH for the better, “The Selfish Gene” started a lifelong fascination with genetics, which morphed into interest in paleoanthropology… And Scildfreja speaks Ultimate Truth, that man needs to stick to genetics, as he has only two areas of expertise:. genetics and horseshit!
The first one I can think of, I honestly don’t remember the name of the book or the author, thankfully. I was in my early teens when I read it. From my current perspective, I think the author really did hate women. I can remember a scene where one of the characters entices a dog into a car and proceeds to brutally murder it. The main character in the story is a woman who has some sort of telekinetic powers. She was sexually abused as a child by either her older brother or cousin, who at one point puts a snake…yeah, not going to expand on that. It was awful.
About halfway through the book she meets a nice guy, or possibly a Nice Guy (TM) given what I remember about the book. She ends up marrying him, and at the end of the book he is lying in the hospital in a coma because he fell for her ebil, ebil misandry spell.
The other one I can remember is “The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane.” I never saw the movie, never wanted to after reading the book. There is a young girl of thirteen or fourteen, as I remember, and the landlord where she is living seems to be lusting for her sexually. At one point he murders her pet rat. I don’t remember much else about the story, but that scene stuck with me.
A lot of books seem to have torture of animals and women or girls. It makes me worried to read much of anything, to be honest.
Cyrano de Bergerac. I thought it was romantic until well into my thirties.
Whichever book is the last one of the Chronicles of Narnia, where CS Lewis reveals that he’s been tricking the audience the whole time and the lion is Jesus blah blah blah, aren’t you stupid now. I threw the book across the room (it was a library book) and luckily didn’t put a hole in the wall.
The Education of Little Tree. I first read it in grade school and though there were things in it I never really believed (and by college I’d realized that some parts of it were promoting fascism) it still hurt to find out it was written by the author of the “Segregation Forever” speech.
On the bright side, I found out a school charity I support was using Little Tree, and I persuaded them to drop it.
Don’t laugh – okay, do, if you like! – but I honestly think Anne of Green Gables* badly influenced me when I read it at 8-9: specifically the part where the main character hits a boy on the head with a slate because he makes fun of her red hair. It gave me the message that a smart, imaginative girl could get away with unjustified violence – if I’m not just making that up in retrospect? I dunno? Childhood is weird.
Oh, oh. As for children’s books that scared me, the main one was At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald. Why? Something about the blurred lines between dreams/waking and life/death (I had a similar reaction to the Wizard of Oz film). Starting when I was about 7, my main fear about dying was that I would live forever (hey universe, way to make the kid with that particular fear be born into a Christian family).
On the other hand, it seems lucky that the first sciencey person I read who mentioned atheism was Douglas Adams.
*Here’s a sheltered existence for you: I’m bi and I didn’t even remotely read Diana/Anne as a couple until people pointed out their romantic dialogue years later (“bosom friends” indeed). Now, I don’t think Montgomery was pro-lesbian at all, but she did have Anne and Di talking to each other in romantic ways to show that they were reading flowery romance books and copying the style… and of course Anne, as she matures, is heteronormatively drawn towards Gilbert whom she once bashed in the head with a mini chalkboard. True love.
Hippodameia:
Oh! The only book I ever threw was The World According to Garp. I haven’t read it since high school but I remember something about a sect of women cutting out their own tongues in protest and…them not allowing Garp to his own mother’s funeral? I had to read it for class and I’m pretty sure I chucked it at least twice, I was so angry. I forgot all about that until now.
Uh… Sort of, but in a really bizarre way that wasn’t the book’s fault and hasn’t dampened my adoration of it at all: Long story short, before I was diagnosed and medicated, my schizophrenic fixation was Lord Of The Rings. Yeah. ^^;;
@Lucrece
Nope! (Though I did come across that one later, when I was a bit older. After Thomas decided to become a rapist, I had no interest in reading literally anything else in that book unless it was the sentence “And then Thomas died in a fire.” Thankfully that book I only got from the library selling bin for $0.50 cents, so pitching it was no great loss.)
This other one was essentially a harlequin romance masquerading as a fantasy novel. The viewpoint character was the heroine. It was set in Greece, I believe (or Rome, maybe), and Rapist/Love Interest came from from England (or Ireland or something), conquered their city, and took the protagonist as his wife to cement his claim or some shit. Then there was something with gods (Mag, Magda, something like that? Something celtic.) and reincarnation cycles. I don’t think I ever actually finished it, it wasn’t very good.
I cannot immediately recall any one book that ruined my life, but can think of several that influenced it one way or the other. And by the time I finally dredged them up from my memory. this thread will be all but inactive.
The comic book that started a lifelong affair with the medium was Star Wars #64. The thing was literally looking at me from the shelf, making me want to buy it. The book(s) that showed me it was possible to do a decent fusion of SF and Fantasy elements would be the first few of the Book of Swords series, and On A Pale Horse. There’s more, but that will work for now.
On V.C. Andrews: I never read any of those books all the way through, though I did peek at some of the endings. Besides confirming that they’re twisted (though I may like that better now than way back then), well….
One of them had the young MC totally paralyzed from the neck down, and confined to a wheelchair. Her internal dialogue at that point was (paraphrased) “I will never walk again, let alone be an active participant in my life. Therefore I will spend the next several decades imprisioned in this chair and let my soul fill with bitterness until I become a withered old woman.” My reaction on reading that was “Get thee to a disability support group ASAP! “ cause that’s no way to spend decades of your life, ya know?
On Thomas Covenant: it’s been years since I’ve read the books, but it should be noted that Covenant did face some serious consequences for raping the young woman (whose name is escaping me). It was acknowledged in-story that he did commit a crime, and lost the trust and goodwill of people he depended on up to that point.
As for C.S. Lewis, that really wasn’t a trick about (one of) Aslan’s other name(s). That plot confirmation was hinted at pretty strongly in many of the other books before it was made explicit in The Last Battle. And given that much of Lewis’ non-fiction discussed Christian theology, why is it suddenly an unforgivable shock to find those themes in his fiction?
Yeah, to the book’s (dubious) credit, from what little I bothered to read after that, the action was described and treated as pretty horrific. And I probably could have stomached more of the book if Thomas was an antagonist or even an allied side character. But the protagonist? Somone who I’m expected to empathize with and root for? Someone who I’m going to have to follow around for the entirety of the story? No, can’t bring myself to do that for a rapist.
(tl; dr, lots of disconnected raging and venting about toxicity.)
Ugh. For me it was The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It was a Christmas gift to me by an aunt whom I love and who I’m sure meant well and who knew I liked fantasy and science fiction. But God, I couldn’t do more than skim through it and this was when I was in my late teens, a voracious reader, and had super high verbal skills.
It was all a bunch of neopagan claptrap about Old Ways = Good Christianity = bad, how sexuality was free for all and anything counter to that (like just not wanting to) was wrong and repressive, and how ends justified the means when it came to getting what you wanted. I got furious when it was decided by the powers that be that it was neato keen to manipulate two half-siblings into having sex without knowing it because Goddess says so and animals do it all the time because nature and nature is right. Or it’s fine to neglect your kids because your Tru Wuv from a past life has returned and you’re so obsessively in love with each other there’s no room for anybody else. Or that it’s just fine to commit adultery with your elderly husband’s hot young son because Goddess Said So.
Admittedly, none of it turned out well, but I sure as fuck wondered why I was supposed to regret Avalon going into the mists after all the shit that Morgaine and company pulled. They seemed more dangerous to me than the Christians, who were nearly all painted as a bunch of hardcore misogynist prudes who wouldn’t know magic or herbalism if it bit them in the ass. It felt like just another kind of dogmatism.
The thing is, I’m… I don’t know how to say it… heavily influenced by what I read and absorb it. If I’m uncomfortable with something I read, the fault must lie with me, not what with whatever shit I just read. Like I was somehow repressed and wrong for being raised Christian, or because all the pseudomystical feminist claptrap made me uncomfortable, or because I felt uncomfortable with open sexuality like that. I got seriously fucked up about it all because I felt uncomfortable as hell, and yet had NO words to explain why.
For the neo-pagan, poly, and other readers that may be reading this and feel affected, I am sorry, I am not trying to offend or hurt anybody. There’s a lot of good ideas going on you have, and part of me agrees. There’s a spirituality and openness that I wish I could embrace and I feel like I’m in a box of fear and resentment and anger. But I feel like I’ve been contaminated by the toxicity and abusive side of all this free love/ mystical feminism/ paganism, where it’s used as a bludgeon to manipulate and control as much as toxic Christianity and misogyny. Or at least as presented by people like MZB, and, given what we know now about her…
It’s like what T.H. White said was on the walls of the facist ant colony that his Arthur explored: ‘ANYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY’. And if it wasn’t forbidden, you HAD to do it and you were wrong to not do it. (Seems to be the LOGIK of a lot of the authoritarians and misogynists David covers as well). Life isn’t that black and white, but when you’re young, do you know that?
I got into some situations as a result where me feeling like I was in the wrong or repressive about how I felt with relationships left me open to emotional abuse and guilt-tripping for not playing along or being upset about it, and the resultant scarring. Being depressive and watching my parents’ marriage fall apart at the same time did not help.
Given what we know now about what MZB did to her own children, part of me is going ‘oh, so I wasn’t crazy for feeling wrong about it after all.’ I’ve read up on all of the subjects that bothered me in order to understand them, and realized what I absorbed was toxic and just as abusive as all that damn book harped about being evil. But I still have a huge, huge, huge flinch reaction about somehow being forced or guilted into something I don’t want.
Part of me still rages. It may until I die.
Fuck you, MZB.