Is it the same as our fascination with horror movies? Trying to imagine the worst that could happen? And I'm not arguing against that: slavery used to be normalised in the West and is still practised here by the “greedy” and “selfish” in the shadows; but can't "greedy" and "selfish" still be evil? It was more challenging for me (in a very large section on sexuality) to think of pedophilia as a sexual orientation instead of an active choice, and Shaw urges us to see it as natural (and unharmful if not acted on) so that pedophiles can feel safe to open up about their urges and seek help. The Rape of Nanjing by Iris Chang is still unfinished on my bookshelf. It is a well researched book that details the Japanese atrocities in Nanjing during the Sino-Japanese war but it is difficult to face the detailed descriptions of their inhumanity to fellow human beings and I had to put it aside. Maybe I will steel myself to finish it one day.” lwb48_zh A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is the worst book I have ever read. I found it both morally and intellectually offensive; morally offensive for the things it says about victimisation, mental illness, and suicide, intellectually offensive for being asked to believe the shoddy, contrived plot and world building.” sarahcl

Vera’s novel draws on and strikingly articulates the well-documented effects of those who suffered from and survived the worst kinds of evil actions. We know that the victims of genocide, torture, and rape, never fully recover. We also know that evil leaves a residue of moral pollution for the perpetrator and deep shame for the victim, which is never washed away. Our horror and visceral disgust in the face of evil actions and persons is a testimony to this. Vera’s novel is a masterpiece at expressing this facet of the concept. Honourable Mentions The most unsettling book I’ve ever read has to be The Room by Hubert Selby Jr. Spent most of the book wishing it’d be over soon. Apparently the author himself was unable to read the book for another 20 years after writing it!” EastOfMacondo There were also a lot of contradicting arguments in the book. One that stood out to me was Shaw’s stance on porn – it’s not that bad and we should stop being so critical of the porn industry and those obsessed with it, and maybe we should allow porn to be used in health classes. But later in the book goes on to wag her finger at misogyny, chastising society for allowing ourselves to become over-saturated with images of women that promote an unhealthy idea of sex and women’s bodies, ultimately leading to demeaning women in society. It was when Terry started stretching his theory to encompass a vast conspiracy that included the Manson murders that my "suspension of disbelief" really snapped. Everyone seems to want a grand theory for what went wrong in the 70's. And given the hysteria over Satanism and cults at the time we know people can start to make false connections or hear things on heavy metal albums which don't exist. I also thought Terry does this with Berkowitz's letters. That said, Terry's chapter on the Manson murders (despite his reaching) is full of fascinating details about celebrities and seedy drug connections which were largely covered up.Keeping up the deadly charade becomes increasingly difficult when Celaena realizes she is not the only one seeking justice. As she tries to untangle the mysteries buried deep within the glass castle, her closest relationships suffer. It seems no one is above questioning her allegiances—not the Crown Prince Dorian; not Chaol, the Captain of the Guard; not even her best friend, Nehemia, a foreign princess with a rebel heart. Are those who sexually assault evil? They are certainly often portrayed as such. Unfortunately from the cases we do know about, sexual assault is so prevalent that if we were to send all the perpetrators to a remote island, we would see our population shrink dramatically. It seems like the book is one of those cases where if you put enough time, effort and energy into searching for any possible clues, a thousand can be fabricated. But even more than that, Terry seems to even create evidence which he later announces is 'fact'. What a hero! You could spend the time left drowning your sorrows, giving away all your possessions in preparation for the rapture, or laughing it off as (hopefully) just another hoax. Or you could just try to do something about it.

This was actually a little better than I expected. The author makes a pretty good case that Berkowitz was not the sole killer involved with the "Son of Sam" killings, and that he had connections to people who were possibly involved in all manner of shadiness, primarily drug dealing. I'm willing to buy that, and I'm willing to buy that Berkowitz put in some effort to appear crazier than he actually was prior to getting caught. I don’t give many books 1* as I can usually find a thing or two about a book that I enjoyed. Ultimately, I found Julia Shaw’s book so frustrating I’m surprised I even finished it. First, I’d like to start by saying that as a fan of true crime, sinister stories, and exploring the “dark side”, I waited anxiously for this book to hit the shelves. That’s the received opinion about some of the worst atrocities, isn’t it, that they were only possible because the perpetrators refused to see the humanity in their victims, or were duped by propaganda into believing that a whole group of people were less than human? It doesn’t seem absurd to see dehumanisation as at the root of evil.Beginning with a short story appearing in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" in 1978, the publication of Stephen King's epic work of fantasy-what he considers to be a single long novel and his magnum opus-has spanned a quarter of a century.

When it got to the bit where he inserts a tube into a woman’s vagina and then runs a rodent up it I found myself suddenly inexplicably weeping. That was 20 years ago and I haven’t reread it since, so don’t know how I’d react now.” noush I read American Psycho all the way through but nearly fainted reading one of the scenes. I did get rid of it … thought of burning it but imagined a vision of some kind of devil in the flames, so consigned to a cardboard box and then the dump.” tribordGenerally, the people who discuss this book are either conspiracy nuts who believe the government is spying on them through their cereal or something equally crazy, fundamentalist Christians who are eager to prove that Satan is out to get everyone or professional skeptics who have an axe to grind against the former two and a desire to look very smart and very clever on top of it. Because it’s a rather hefty volume, plus I noticed that there are lots of controversies surrounding this book, I’m not going into details here. My idea of an interesting true crime book is more along the lines of the ones written by Ann Rule. Those who read her books will know what I mean. The fact that Terry gets more traction from the letters, articles, and other highlighted books that Berkowitz mails around the country to various DAs is a bit naive. I mean, letter writing and strange mail was one of Berkowitz's Son Of Sam calling cards. The fact he continued after arrest seems to prove his culpability more than anything else. Furthermore, the sending of articles and other texts to law enforcement continued to support Berkowitz's paranoid delusions, showing others all the evidence that connects the scrambled world view of his mind. As a light pop-science entertainment book, this was fun enough. She has a whole chapter titled, Kinky as F**k, about how a lot sexual deviance is pretty much universal. She looks a lot of different experiments and leaves the reader thinking about perception, and especially how, over and over again, people are led to do terrible pain-inflicting things without protesting, accepting their actions as normal. And she has gifted us with this terrific (if under-supported within) summary at the end: