Top Ten Books That Were Hard For Me To Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a book blog roundup hosted by one of my favorites, The Broke and the Bookish.
This weeks subject was Top Ten Books that were hard for me to read.  This will be a hard list to make.  Some were hard to read because of the subject matter, some were hard to read because of the emotional reaction they instilled in me and some were hard to finish because the story sucked dog.

If they were hard to read, why would I want to relive them?  I'll share the pain with you.....

1.  Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane...hands down one of the best books I've ever read.  But hard to read and hard to digest because there were lots of crimes against children in it, and Christ, but Lehane write believable characters.  You close that book and know that those people really exist and draw breath in our world and there's nothing you can do about it.

2.  The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman....if you come from a family that has struggled with addiction in any form, especially in a sister, this book will tear you up from the inside out.  As a mother, do you sacrifice the healthy kids to save the sick one?  Or do you give up on the addict in order to save the others?  The unanswerable question.

3.  This One is Mine by Maria Semple...eff me running, this was my mid-life crisis book.  Crazy, crazy and the ending with the tattoo (no spoilers here) ripped my heart out.  Sometimes you want to take the slightly crazy, little bit dirty, road that you turned off of in order to be safe.

4.   Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro...I don't like science fiction as a rule.  But this book of the future was intense.  And unfortunately, I can see it being real in our not so distant future.  As we continue to dehumanize ourselves through cell phones and computers, when will the human connection and morality finally lose to our selfishness?

 5.  Mother, Mother by Koren Zailckas...this book struck a chord with me as a mother, daughter and a nurse.  How many times do we see mentally ill people, where we are just taking other people's words for the mental health of their family member?  All families have secrets, and they only let you see what they want you to see.  This book was a great reminder of that!

6.  Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver...a girl gets a chance to keep reliving the last day of her life over and over, knowing that she's going to die.  I hate books where kids die.  And to have it keep repeating like Groundhog Day was emotional torture.

7.  Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld...I usually like her books, but I am including this one because it was one that everyone raved about and I could hardly get through it.  Seriously....I could barely read it and I could have cared less about anyone in it.

8.  The Angel Stone by Juliet Dark...I discovered that I may be a masochist.  I read all three of the books in this series and could hardly stand any of them.  But I felt weirdly compelled to finish all of them..  Every last stupid word.  I love witch books, but an incubus?  I just can't with this series.

9.  That Night by Chevy Stevens...I had a hard time finishing this because I found the main character so dislikable that I didn't care if she was ever cleared of her crime, or if her life got back on track.  The whole book made me feel dirty.

10.  The Dinner by Herman Koch...Another book that everyone raved about, the next big thing.  I had to force myself to finish it.  The adults were repulsive, even more disgusting in their normal lives than the crime that their children committed.  Silkwood shower anyone?