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# This has been reposted here to Lemmy as part of the "Curated Tumblr Project."
I made the icon using multiple creative commons svg resources, the banner is this.
The one that sticks with me is called "the cold equations", and it's about a pilot flying a ship through space and discovering he has a young girl stowing away on board. Since he only has enough fuel to get to his destination if the ship weighs a very specific amount, he has to decide whether or not to jettison the girl out the airlock. I remember liking it, but I've never forgotten how emotional it was to read.
Touching Spirit Bear
I vividly remember passage describing in great detail of the main character nearly and slowly dying on the island. he was covered with mosquitos and the book dives headfirst into describing in great detail of this guy chewing into a live mouse/rat and then swallowing it.
There's a story called "Time Safari" that ends in a dude just straight up killing another dude. This was in a kid's literature book.
Also I think Casque of Amontillado is funny.
Huh I never realized how weird of a story that is to tell to kids
Don't even get me started on a tall tale heart or that one story about this dude fantasizing about escaping while getting hanged
I thought that was called a Sound of Thunder. Because the last line went "there was a sound of thunder, then silence." Or something to that effect, heavily implying that the time safari employee killed the hunter who stepped off the trail and on to a butterfly.
I also remember that one of the results of stepping on the butterfly was that all English words were spelled fonetically (typo intentional), a "mistake" I would happily go back in time to commit.
I also remember this short story, the death of the butterfly also changed the results of an election.
I remember that. Either Ray Bradbury or Isaac Asimov.
Hunting party goes back in time to hunt dinosaurs right.
Zapped while zipping...
A Modest Proposal was quite memorable
Mine is the one where the soldier returns from WWI completely desensitized to murder and fucked in the head.
He starts stabbing little girls, just like in the war. "Poor people" by Móricz if anyone is interested.
if anyone is interested.
Nah I'm good 👍
Fucking hell.
I still often think about "Flowers for Algernon."
I don't think about it much anymore but I cried at the end, which is a rare occurrence for me
Hmm, for short stories, it's probably "The Most Dangerous Game."
Plot with massive spoilers
MC is a big game hunter traveling by boat to the Amazon to hunt jaguar. He is warned by locals about a local island called Ship-Trap island. He falls overboard and swims to Ship-Trap island, where there's a big mansion inhabited by General Zaroff, another big game hunter. Zaroff explains that he got bored of hunting animals and set up the island to attract ships, and when a ship wrecks on the island, he gives the sailors a knife and a head start, and if they can survive 3 days, they are set free. Zaroff then sets off to hunt them with a small caliber pistol.
Plot happens, and at the end the MC makes it look like he committed suicide by jumping off a cliff. Zaroff returns home, and the MC is waiting for him in his bedroom. Zaroff congratulates him, but the MC says the hunt isn't over, and we see the MC sleeping in Zaroffs bed at the end of the story.
The themes are pretty disturbing if you stop to think about it, and even if you don't, there's a fair amount of violence.
Fuck yeah. Loved this short story.
If I hadn't been really into Tom Clancy novels, it probably would've scarred me for life. But I was already reading about terrorists trying to mass-genocide most of the planet (Rainbow Six) and assassins shooting people in the eyes at near-point blank (forget the specific book), so a little gore didn't phase me.
There was a short story I read by one of the great Russian authors (name escapes me atm). A young man made a bet with a banker that he would spend 10 years in solitary confinement and be provided with any reading material he asked for. If he could endure it the whole 10 years, the banker would reward him with a handsome amount of money.
Tap for spoiler
He sticks it out for nearly the entire period and leaves the night before the time is up.
Fantastic story, thought about it pretty regularly throughout college.
If this rings any bells, I'd love to be reminded of the name!
Edit: Nvm, I found it! The Bet by Anton Chekhov
For me the school book short story that grabbed me was The Smallest Dragonboy by Anne McCaffrey. Not super scary, just sticky.
Most of the stuff we read in class was fine, or we knew was going to be fucked up as it was Gifted and Talented class.
The book that fucked me at the time more than those was reading Maus. At like 12. And if I bring it up with mother, she'd say it was my fault for reading it, instead of, you know, maybe she should vet the book instead of going "oh cartoony of the holocaust, that's fine"
Holocaust was fine, every Hanukkah one of our 7 gifts works be a book, and you'd run out of noob holocaust books that relayed to judiasm real quick. But most were written for kids so.
Not Maus
read Maus a few months ago (as a 30 year old man) and it has hung over me like a dark cloud. I had to physically set the book down and walk away when it got to the diagrams of the gas chambers at Auschwitz, detailing how industrialized the extermination was. absolutely horrifying.
Which is why I don't recommend it to preteen me at all! I think it's extremely important now, but man. Not uh. Not to a kid.
I was a senior in high school when we read the short story "Rape Fantasies" by Margaret Atwood out loud in class. I was 18 and still not ready for it.
Jesus...
It wasn't in English class but I will never forget a book we read in another class I can't remember the subject of that class for some reason. The book was "A Child Called It" that just describes horrid child abuse.
Something I read in history class and not English lit: Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland by Jan T. Gross.
Most American students learn extremely little about how truly horrific the Holocaust was outside of the concentration camps and medical experimentation. This is a book about local Jews being brutally murdered by their own neighbors in Poland. Not by Nazis. Just your average person.
It was really upsetting but enlightening. Everyone should know about the atrocities that occurred throughout so much of Europe during that time.
From high middle-high school timeframe, probably The Yellow Wallpaper, I just think about that one at least a few times a year. And I only read it the one time in school.
The less well known one I remember from elementary school was My Brother Sam is Dead. It's about a family during the American revolution, where the father just wants to stay out of all of it and live their lives, but the eldest son wants to join the revolution. The whole story is just the hardships the family has to go through after the son runs off with the only gun to fight and ends up dying, and how that affects the family and the youngest brother, who the story is told from the perspective of.
None of my friends remember My Brother Sam is Dead, but if I'm remembering right, the ending is kinda dark for a bunch of 3-5th graders.