I wanna read something depressing for some reason.
+1 Bawled my eyes out reading that one. I made my oldest son read this book when he was a phase where he was glamorizing the military and war. Changed his mind, changed his life. Now he's a veritable hippie. Read it.
Oh, fuck. That book is one of my favorites, too. Today, Stephen realizes his tastes run towards the depressing.
"A Prayer for Owen Meany". Sad and poignant but maybe not depressing, sorry.
It's one of the first books I recall my dad and I "bonding" around. Thankfully, many have followed.
Classic. Someday I'll reread that one, I recall really enjoying it.
I'm going to have to add that to my list. I read his The Face of Battle some time ago, and walked away with a lot. It analyzes and compares Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. Just a really interesting book.
Maybe not the saddest book ever written, but it's made me sadder than anything else after reading it: All Quiet on the Western Front.
One of my favorite books has always been a Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. I won't spoil the ending for you, but let's just say it's not full of sunny skies and rainbows. I still come back to passages of the book often, and tend to reread it every few years.
Thank you for this thread. I started another one recently looking for similar suggestions. For me it was Goran Simic's "From Sarajevo, With Sorrow". I picked it up after a thread recently, and it is the most astoundingly beautiful poetry I've ever read, but also the most depressing. He wrote the poems under candlelight from 1992-1995 in Sarajevo while the city was under siege in the Bosnian war. You understand so much more about the human condition and humanity from reading that.
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro for me. Ishiguro's books in general are largely depressing. Just in a achingly slow way. Like watching a train slowly chugging towards a broken bridge, and trying to put on the breaks too late. Then agonizingly sliding into the rushing torrent hundreds of feet below while the passengers silently clutch to anyone nearby as they begin the inexorable fall.
I recently posted the most wrist-slittingest lines of verse if that's any help.
The Trick Is To Keep Breathing, by Janice Galloway. It's like David Foster Wallace's "The Depressed Person" but the length of an entire novel. At the time that I read it, I didn't have this frame of reference, and couldn't make an easy, glib joke at its expense in order to minimize its impact. For that matter, David Foster Wallace's "Oblivion" - in which appears the aforementioned story - is a bummer throughout, especially the first story about a very sad man working in a market research firm with zero ability to connect with his colleagues or indulge in his rather pedestrian fantasies. Sad as in "literally causes me to weep" would be Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory," a short story tacked on to the end of Breakfast at Tiffany's about a boy, his grandmother, and a balloon. I'm fortunate to have grown up with all four of my grandparents, three of whom are still living, one of whom raised me, all of whom mean the world to me, and I've yet to brace myself for life without them, even though I should.
Every year at the end of the semester, the professor that I worked for would read "A Christmas Memory." When he would get to the last two pages, he would hand it over to me to finish because he didn't want to start crying in front of the class. I made it a tradition to read in my house each year, but now, I can't read it aloud any more either. I do have to correct you on a couple of details, though. This story is not about his grandmother. It's about a distant cousin on his mother's side of the family. And it's not a balloon, but a kite. They make kites together to fly, and that is the final image.
Thomas Hardy's 'Jude the Obscure' is certainly the most depressing. The whole story conveys an impression that the characters are being coerced into repeated sorrow and frustration. It seems to imply that we create our misery simply by neglecting to consider, or trying to exceed, our limitations. I once heard it described that the novel slaps the reader in the face with a fish - a very large, wet, and plaintive fish, indeed.
I'm reading Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles at the moment and it's frustratingly depressing. No character has made me madder than Angel Clare in any book I've read. Would you recommend Jude the Obscure?
If you're enjoying Tess, then I eagerly recommend reading Jude. The two books are a continuation of much of the same attitude, although their themes differ noticeably. You could also try reading some of Hardy's earlier novels, which have more lively and humorous elements. Far From the Madding Crowd and The Trumpet-Major immediately spring to mind.
I hadn't, but I'm glad you pointed it out to me. I love old hip-hop, and I know they're essential, but I haven't listened to much Blackstar. For anyone interested, here's a link to the song in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5kBz7D3rHo
A book that made me angry with how unfair, and sadly realistic, the story turns out is In the Woods by Tana French. I have to stop typing this now and go think about something else.
If its immediate depression you're after, skip the book and go straight to Dancer in the Dark
I read Wuthering Heights a couple of times as a kid, and I felt like I could always relate with Heathcliff. Unrequited love, a large theme throughout my adolescence.
"Rachel and Her Children" by Jonathan Kozol. It's a nonfiction book based on the interviews of homeless families that were housed in the Martinique Hotel in New York City. I've only been able to get through it once. Elie Weisel's "Night" sure packs a wallop, too. It's a really heartbreaking memoir of the author's experience in the Holocaust and it's only 100 pages so you can get the full effects all at once which I think makes it even more powerful.
I just finished Looking For Alaska so I'm a little biased at the moment, but if you want a good book that too many people think is for Young Adults, you should read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.