You know, I thought about it long and hard and...I can't say that I recall ever feeling that bad about reading a book or fanfic.
I've read books that have disappointed me or that I disliked or that made me angry because I felt they'd wasted my time and I wanted my cash back (one book in particular whose author I now forget which abruptly gathered all its protagonists in the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Centre on September 11 in the last 10 pages and thereby got himself out of the plot hole he'd worked himself into when they were all killed immediately springs to mind in that latter category!) and I've definitely read books that have left me with a satisfied, warm glow as I read the last page...but I can't remember ever being sickened or disturbed by a book.
Perhaps because horror and thriller novels are among my favoured genres - maybe over the years I've grown a thick skin and a greater tolerance. It takes a lot to make me wince.
But really, I think it's partly because for me a book is...just a book. It can affect me at a superficial level, I can enjoy it or hate it, but as its characters are purely fictional, even those I feel empathy, affection and sympathy for can't disturb me at any major level.
Oh, perhaps one, small exception to that. An author who kills the dog in his story loses major points with this reader. :p That will guarantee to have me in floods of tears. But, again, it's a fleeting emotion and I don't wallow in despair for days afterwards once I've finished the book.
The only time I remember even coming close to the experience you describe, Ann, was when I recently read Brian Keene's City of the Dead. No high classic this one - it was purely zombie schlock horror. Not something I'd normally pick up, but I was in the mood for something that mindless at the time. Usually, there is some way that the human race defeats the threat, but Keene managed to kill off every hero he had and destroyed the entire world - which is a far more logical outcome, I suppose, when you're dealing with a zombie horde.
I think it was because the utter bleakness of the ending, the completely and ruthless destruction of any hope at all that the author had left us with, and possibly the fact that I wasn't expecting it and was anticipating that our heroes would win the day in the end, that left me slightly depressed. And I did find myself mulling over the ending for a day or so afterwards. But, again, not in any great depth or in the sense that I wished I hadn't read the book at all.
In fact, in the end, although it wasn't an ending I could say I enjoyed, I admired the author for having the courage to take the logical route rather than producing the usual rabbit out of the hat in the final chapter that won the day and decided that it was a much more 'satisfying' ending for being logical and realistic (if you can make such a claim about a story of zombie invasion
).
LabRat
