Literature That Will Really Screw With Your Head

By leigh
updated about 1 month ago

From mainstream to fringe, these books have definitely had an effect on how I see things, for better or worse. Of course I was an English major, by default we're a bit odd anyways.

The Consumer - Michael Gira

Winner, Most Disturbing Book

Written by the singer/songwriter of American rock and post-industrial group Swans , Michael Gira, The Consumer is a truly disturbing read. The short stories were created in two waves, the mid-1980s and the early 1990s, and offer an appalling yet entrancing look into half-real half-imagined tales of human suffering and misery. Seriously, this book is a disturbing read.

If this sounds intriguing, good luck finding a copy; it’s no longer in print and even used copies fetch a pretty high price.

The Theory of Almost Everything - Robert Oerter

I was okay just leaving quantum mechanics, string theory and other such bizarre ideas be, but this book got loaned to me and started convincing me that scientists really have no clue what they’re talking about either. One nice thing about this book, it’s really intended for the layperson, you don’t need a degree in the sciences or mathematics to follow the general idea of what’s going on, though it probably helps.

Particle physics never made more, or less, sense.

American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis

You’ve probably heard of the story, or the movie American Psycho starring Christian Bale. Still, the sheer dissassociative psychosis of the novel’s main character can’t be fully realized in film.

Reading about the wealthy, unfeeling sociopath, I wonder about the culture that shaped this character and this story. Set in the late 1980s, Manhattan, it’s possible to imagine Patrick Bateman as a real person, alternating between fashion and pop culture commentary, dating socialites and chopping up strangers.