Video: 3 Good Books for Your Dark, Dark Soul

Watch this compilation of three dark books and other booky videos on my Read Remark youtube channel here.

I do love gritty, dark books. The kind that grab you, shake you around a bit, and leave you needing a shower.

Sometimes, I must follow up a dark book with something fluffy to set me right again.

Here are three good ones for those of you who, like me, get a perverse joy out of the dark stuff:

You by Caroline Kepnes.

Wow, this book is creepy! It’s told first-person, from the point of view of a stalker who falls deeply for women and does his stalkery thing to get with them. These women are no delicate flowers, though. His latest conquest is deeply unlikeable, giving me as the reader the strange paradox of hoping he gets taken down, but also not.

Why is that?? I wouldn’t exactly call it rooting for the bad guy, because I don’t. But in the several moments it looks like he might get caught, part of me says “nooooo” You is just so wonderfully creepy and disturbing. It’s the kind that I read while thinking, “Oh, this is horrible! …must see what happens next!” I finished it in two days.

American Housewife by Helen Ellis.

Women are tougher than they appear. And may of the women in American Housewife are pure stone under those pretty chignons and ruffly skirts. There’s no weakness there.

They’re cold, calculating, supportive when they need to be, and capable of dirty things they have to keep secret because it could scare the crap out of the men in their lives. As a bonus for you with short attention spans, the stories are super short. So short that some are vignettes, or lists. Read it! Here’s my full review of the book.

Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris.

If you’re familiar with David Sedaris, you’re familiar with his ultra-dry and sometimes macabre wit. Boy, do I love Sedaris. In his early days, when he first became famous with “The Santaland Diaries”, he wrote a book that included not just his real-life observations, but some fictional short stories.

And boy does he go dark. Here’s an example: an ultra-rich couple goes to further and further extremes trying to one-up each other in the sport of extreme philanthropy. One woman even pulls all her teeth out and wears them as a necklace. Where the philanthropy is in that, I’m not sure, but you could say that about a lot of the “humanitarian” works in real life, as well.

So, when they go low, let’s go lower! Grab a creepy, dark book and feed your dark, dark soul.

…And then look at a picture of some puppy dogs and unicorns while eating peeps. Think of it as switching between the hot tub and swimming pool. After spending some time in one, you need the sharp temperature change.

Jump in!