Who has read American Psycho ? I need you...<spoilers>

I hated that book. I hated it even more because of the total cop-out ending
WARNING - am about to write a spoiler....
I mean, c'mon '...and it turned out it was all a dream' I remember writing something similar in an essay aged 7 and my English teacher had me for it then, quite rightly.

Mysogynistic, unpleasant, shallow... No, I wouldn't bother. There are so many good books to read, and limited time to read them all before we die. 'American Psycho' didn't disturb me, but it's four hoursthat I could have spent reading Something Less Boring Instead.

i read it when i was in my early 20#'s and while i found it pretty disturbing it isn't something that has stayed with me iyswim?

not sure i would want to read it again now.

glamorama is pretty grim too

In my flat sharing days a flat mate was once reading it. I got up one morning to find his copy in the kitchen bin. He said it was too awful to finish and so grim he didn't want anyone else to read it either - hence the bin. And he was probably the most broadminded person I've ever known. Needless to say I've never read it myself.

the thread about fur coats haunts me much more than a made up book

Wolf Creek

I couldn't even finish it.

I couldn't read it now, I'd me in a mental hospital. That and Irvine Welsh, as someone else said. I wish I could erase that from my memory. Also the film 'Wolf Creek', and one episode of the Sopranos which I saw when I'd just had dd and has haunted me ever since/

i read it when i was 20, it didn't bother me that much to be honest. just read it and make your own mind up

i kinda hoped it would unfold or improve.it didn't

I have read it and found it a little disturbing! Read it in my teens though/early 20's and it did make me feel slightly dirty, in a similar way to Hannibal. The 2 books that I have mixed feelings about as they made me really think about things that I thought I would switch off about like most other books. I had a similar reaction to 7even too, it is in that sort of bracket I think (if only for me!)

I have to admit too that I found the writing style to be at time confusing because of the content but have mainly washed my memory of it! (Although there is one scene involving him at his flat that is still sitting there...)

horrible and women hating

use it for wrapping used tampons

I hated it (but I finished it )

It's the only book I have ever put in the bin

i felt similar about ... some James Herbert and 'Filth' by Irvine Welsh.

I started reading it many years ago but had to stop as I found it too disturbing.

Still find it hard to fathom how anyone could even imagine those scenes.

i wish i could un-read it. it contains graphic accounts of obscene torture & murder.

don't need those images in my mind. I have enough problems with knoing about real historical atrocities without knowing about imagined ones.

the book is oddly ..boring too. the psycho finds it all extremely dull.

vile gratuitous violence.long huey lewis and phol collins drone.the paul allan thing was overdone

read it,wished i had not

another person here with it being the only book I've willingly gotten rid of.

Just horrible for horrible's sake.

I thought it was a brilliantly written portrayal of obsession and of a completely soulless society. I didn't enjoy reading it, but I found it hard to put down and would read it again. It does stay with you though - don't read it if you're feeling a bit sensitive. My DP was extremely bothered by the misogynistic violence but he thought it was a great book too.

I'm glad there was a point to them, mattellie! I thought it was just horrid for the sake of it

(like some of the 'new' crime writers!)

It?s a modern classic and Bret Easton Ellis is a superb writer. That said, it?s better if you read his books in the order in which they were written ? American Psycho should really be read after Less Than Zero and Rules Of Attraction, and then they can be seen as a kind of trilogy charting the degrading effects of drugs, sex and violence respectively on the human soul.

God, sorry that sounds a bit pretentious But seriously, reading them in the correct order does give you a slightly different perspective on the extreme violence of American Psycho.

Hideous.Hideous.Hideous.I read it after DH had, The most worrying thing was that after I had read it DH said to me ''It was a shame what he did to that homeless man's dog eh?'' very worrying

ComeWhineWithMe, Nooooo! Don't buy it! Borrow if you can but don't pay cold hard cash for it. Can you not get it from the library?

I completely agree with what everyone's said about it being gratuitously unpleasant. I could have stomached it better if it had any depth to it but I thought it was morally vacuous and as shallow as the people he was presumable satirising. It also upset me as it was so obviously determined to disgust in the most misogynistic ways possible, I thought.

I actually tore up my copy as I didn't want anyone else to read it (and books are sacrosanct at Madamplatz). Otherwise, I'd send you my copy!

PS My DH lent it to his grandmother, after skimming through the first chapter. He thought 'it was such a nice description of New York'...

I read it mainly because someone had warned me off it and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I hated it - I found it utterly gruelling and it's the only book I wish I'd never read. The majority of the violence is directed against women which makes it much more personal somehow. Most of the men I know who've read it didn't seem to be as bothered.

I read it, shockingly violent! Brilliant book tho! Flogged it to the second-hand bookshop after finishing it, and luckily I've forgotten most of it!! :o

An awful lot of it is not about physical violence but other forms of people being truly awful to each other and literally creating the Psycho that is Bateman He is deluded and insecure to a level you can't imagine until you read it.

I would like to read it again, sometime, but must say that I found the violence so graphic that I ended up deciding that at least half of it was entirely fantasy in his head (so I just skimmed over it and didn't see that I needed to know the details, anyway).