this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2025
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What would you pick? (piefed.cdn.blahaj.zone)
submitted 15 hours ago by LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone to c/books@lemmy.world
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[–] monotremata@lemmy.ca 1 points 53 minutes ago* (last edited 53 minutes ago)

"Computers Don't Argue" by Gordon Dickson. Guy gets shipped the wrong book by a book club, tries to return it, gets sent to a collections agency, and things spiral completely out of control from there. It's lived rent-free in my head since I read it years ago. (apologies for the mobile-unfriendly format, this is the only source I know for this story) https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133

"Unauthorized Bread" by Cory Doctorow is a more up-to-date discussion of the same kind of power dynamics though. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

My freshman college English prof assigned House of Leaves.

It was awesome watching the preppy kids descend into madness

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 1 points 21 minutes ago

That book drove me to madness, not because of the creepy content but just because there was so much going on in the endnotes. I'm compulsive about reading all the footnotes and endnotes in anything I read, but I generally hate having to keep one finger in the page I'm on in the main text while reading through the notes in their tiny font (e-readers are a godsend to me, as long as they handle notes decently, which not all of them do). I had a hardback copy of House of Leaves so it was a bit of a physical ordeal and my hands hurt all the time.

[–] protogen420@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Come and See by Soviet Union

[–] higgsboson@piefed.social 3 points 2 hours ago

The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin

https://archive.org/details/coldequationsoth0000godw

Or

The Veldt by Ray Bradbury

https://archive.org/details/the-veldt

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Into the Wild (1996) is a popular pick for something both scarring but also uncontroversial.

Less exciting would be The Pinballs (1976).

[–] monotremata@lemmy.ca 2 points 51 minutes ago

Had to look this up, because I briefly thought you were referring to "Pinball, 1973" by Haruki Murakami.

[–] defaultusername@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

A textbook on integral calculus

[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

That'a fair. We have to learn how to read textbooks and manuals at some point.

[–] ninjabard@lemmy.world 7 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin

[–] BootLoop@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 minutes ago* (last edited 10 minutes ago)

We read this in university computer science ethics. It gets you thinking, which is good.

[–] Inucune@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Was on my way to post this. Revisited in ethics 101 in college, and again in ethics in technology(uni). 'Harm reduction' is the answer you are looking for, because no matter how perfect you think your ethic framework is, nature and bad actors will never respect it or take responsibility. Reality mocks philosophy's 'utopias.'

[–] ninjabard@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

Somebody always suffers in a utopia. That's why othering people is the first step in taking away rights. Gestures very loudly at current events

[–] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 9 points 7 hours ago

death of a salesman. making depressed highschoolers read that while some of them already may be considering suicide just about did a few of us in. also the plot just sucks.

[–] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 5 points 6 hours ago

SCP-093.

[–] pseudo@slrpnk.net 2 points 5 hours ago

Why stop at a short story? I'll go for a novel.

[–] kinther@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

A Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever

https://williamflew.com/blue.html

[–] TheGiantKorean@lemmy.world 12 points 8 hours ago

The Cask of Amontillado messed me up a good bit. Being sealed into a wall would be a horrible way to die.

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip 16 points 10 hours ago

Someone else mentioned Flowers for Algernon, so mine will be ģWhere the Red Fern Grows_. Such an emotional roller coaster.

And while I won't downplay those K-12 books, I think anyone who's ever taken a Russian Literature class in college will agree that Russian authors are next level for depressing novels. Few things compare to the bleak, gray, petty, inescapable, hopeless lives portrayed by authors like Sologub, and while English translations would certainly be accessible to high school students, I'm really glad they don't include them.

Unless someone's going to say they were given The Petty Demon as a reading assignment in high school.

[–] node2527@lemy.lol 9 points 9 hours ago

When the Wind Blows.

[–] Philharmonic3@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

The Magic. I believe it is a short story, and I'm sorry to say I don't know the author. It's quite scary if you follow the instructions. A good lesson in the power of imagination and ritual.

[–] Zirconium@lemmy.world 7 points 9 hours ago

Blood Child ild by Octavia Butler. Humans living on an alien reservation have the males implanted by the insect like alien's eggs and they start burrowing out of your flesh when they're ready.

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 13 points 11 hours ago (4 children)

Damn near anything Ray Bradbury wrote. I swear he just wanted to traumatize anyone that read any of his work.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 2 points 14 minutes ago

That short story about the automated house that keeps going even though everybody is dead fucked me up pretty good. I can't remember whether that was part of the martian chronicles or not.

[–] orbitz@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 hours ago

I must need to read more, last short stories I read (maybe listened) were relatively tame about being on Mars I think, so possibly not the right collection. Maybe I didn't quite get their message either. Did listen to Something this way comes, which has its disturbing parts but not overly but nicely geared for a younger audience for sure. That said I started reading Stephen King and watching horror movies much younger than is probably expected, think first Nightmare on Elm Street was before 10 heh, King books were later of course.

[–] Doctorzoidy@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Oh my God thank you. I'd been trying to think back to an animated short story about a house with no living humans going about it's programmed life that I saw in school in the 80s. On and off for the last 20 years I've searched for Asimov, Clarke, even thinking maybe it was Adams, never considered it was Bradbury. There will come soft rains. 20 years!

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago

Mine was all summer in a day. I know the feeling.

[–] Uebercomplicated@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Shoot, you beat me to it. I was going to recommend The Long Rain, which I read when I was 12 or so and it certainly traumatized me. (I love it now though)

The entire collection is fantastic though. I highly recommend!!

[–] Glitch@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 9 hours ago

Copy-pasta deserves a unit in my classroom, the Russian sleep experiment

[–] jaycifer@lemmy.world 13 points 11 hours ago

All Summer in a Day isn’t necessarily scary, but reading it in 6th grade felt like a real eye opener on just how evil people can be, especially when they don’t even understand that they are.

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