Book Chat: Strangest Book You've Read

Today I'm linking up with Sweet Green Tangerine and Stacey of Life on Cephei.  This was a little bit difficult for me.  Recently, HuffPost Books put up a Facebook post asking readers what book were they just too disturbed to finish.  Their responses intrigued me and became books that I added to my to-read list because well, I'm curious.  One title was Battle Royale which was basically the Japanese-style version of The Hunger Games and came out several years before Suzanne Collins' novel.  Taking place in Japan, students are forced on an online together to fight to the death.  Unlike Hunger Games, the students were tricked and it shows what people become like when they have no other option.  Another title was The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  Taking place post-nuclear apocalypse, a father and son survive against other humans turning into cannibals.  V.C. Andrews, the author of the Dollanganger series, writes about children who are forced to live in their grandmother's attic.  It deals with some dark issues like killing children, isolation, and incest, but the Flowers in the Attic is crazy popular.  I've physically picked up a copy of it in the bookstore and had it in my hands so many times but have never purchased it.  I can handle dark, but can I handle that?  Other mentions included Stephen King novels like Pet Cemetery.  I remember seeing a brief part of the movie and becoming incredibly sad at the thought of a little boy losing his life.

So the strangest book that I've read, off of the top of my head, would be 50 Shades of Grey.  One the writing is terrible but I was sucked into the character of Christian Grey.  I also was really interested in why it was so incredibly popular and had been dubbed by the media as "mommy porn."  Having worked in sexual health research and sexual health education, a lot of what the book covers has been existing for hundreds of years.  I know it disturbs a lot of people, the relationship that Grey has with Ana, however it was one of the first fictional books that I've seen that actively talked about sex and had the characters communicating their boundaries.  I was impressed. Would I have preteens read it? Haha no, but I do like seeing that type of communicating between consenting adults.  You don't really see that in the "sex scenes" of popular shows, advertisements, or even books.

I think in general, romance novels are a little strange.  They are my occasional guilty pleasure, if I need a "potato chip book."  The plots are incredibly outlandish and of course they take place on a cruise ship or in a villa by the sea.  If only, if only ;)

Thanks for reading! What is the strangest book that you've read?