Diary of an Oxygen Thief

by Anonymous

Hurt people hurt people.

Say there was a novel in which Holden Caulfield was an alcoholic and Lolita was a photographer's assistant and, somehow, they met in Bright Lights, Big City. He's blinded by love. She by ambition. Diary of an Oxygen Thief is an honest, hilarious, and heartrending novel, but above all, a very realistic account of what we do to each other and what we allow to have done to us.

Unknown Binding

About the author

Books can be attributed to "Anonymous" for several reasons:

* They are officially published under that name
* They are traditional stories not attributed to a specific author
* They are religious texts not generally attributed to a specific author

Books whose authorship is merely uncertain should be attributed to Unknown.

See also: Anonymous

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

HORRIBLE. the first two pages are good, the next ten pages are semi-interesting and the rest of it is shockingly bad. ANOTHER overhyped tiktok book that in my opinion does not deserve its credit

[Morgan Shinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think it depends on the type of books you like.. i mean i loved this book and i didn’t find it boring, i finished it in one setting. got some good laughs and came close to tears and it was overall really intriguing.

[Milly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only read two pages and I’m DISGUSTED

[Nadia Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it. The author is a dick, a serious arsehole, speaking about a feigned desire to be a better person. No feminist should read this, no misogynists too (they’ll get ideas). Nor should either of them read any other book by this author.

This book is one to read with complete neutrality. He speaks of sex in the worst ways I have witnessed. He speaks of women in some of the most offensive ways I have heard. People with poor self esteem should avoid his books either.

The reviews are right, the middle of the book is boring to a certain degree. It’s a slow paced dump of information for 30 pages straight that you have to battle through to return to him being a humorous arse. 30 pages of him improving his life when the reader just wants things to get worse and entertaining again.

He’s a recovering alcoholic in a marketing job: not very interesting story telling when the book is LITERALLY A DIARY.

Regardless of its reviews, it’s not a TikTok book or something to be mindlessly absorbed. It’s misogynistic, kinky, tedious, and frustrating to read.

Nevertheless, enjoyable.

[molly bennett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I TRIED TO WRITE A REVIEW AND THEN THE APP CRASHED 😤😤😤

anyways, here’s a synopsis of what I was saying:
- why did I think this book was popular?? there r barely any reviews !!
- i enjoyed this read even though it is twisted and cynical and about two pretty awful people (what does that say about me haha)
- i appreciate the anonymity of the author, i honestly couldn’t tell if this story was real or not
- it was a little slow but it was short so what does that matter
- basically a story about a villain being played by another villain (i think, it was hard to tell what was going on sometimes bc it was just thoughts)

anyways I might read again in a year, but no time soon! the sequel looks kinda the same so might try that out

[cycy!! · Rating 2 out of 5]

boring most repulsive book ive ever read didn’t like it, i get its basically a diary or whatever and im not supposed to like the author but anyone who says its funny clearly has no sense of humour i deadass sighed in relief when it closed this shit was so ass

[Rodolfo Sandoval · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book felt like someone oversharing in a very long Reddit post

[Sal · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are very few times where I could not finish a book. Sadly, this was one of those times if I could rate this book lower than one star, I would. This book feels like it was written by an edgy 14-year-old kid, who had just started reading, classic literature, like the catcher in rye I mean, look at the main characters name for chrissake. although it was somewhat interesting to read a book written through the lens of a man who clearly hates women in a way that I couldn’t even fathom it was also written in the most unbelievably boring way I have ever seen a book written. This book is written like the frantic thoughts of a someone who feels they are smarter then they actually are. This book drips with the ooze of a scumbag, who has never felt a touch of a woman; so if any of that sounds interesting to you, give it a read.

[Hira · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bootleg American Psycho

[Mary Kate Lyons · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wack ahh man got me feeling bad for him at the end for a second until I remembered he did all of this over one person. What happened to him was crazy but this was not the way to process that. Therapy exists babe! Still not convinced this book isn’t just a social experiment but we’ll never know I suppose. Disgusted and intrigued at the same time. Kinda wanna read the next one in the series bc what the actual hell was that? Anyway the entire point was to NOT like the main character and therefore I give it 4 stars because I despised him but I refuse to give this 5 stars.

[dyl · Rating 2 out of 5]

HUH?!!!

[MYLES TURNER · Rating 2 out of 5]

The start is so entertaining & well written…
The rest is not…

[freya · Rating 2 out of 5]

An alright short story

[Haylie House · Rating 1 out of 5]

Waited for it to give and it never gave.

[b · Rating 3 out of 5]

pierwszy rozdzial mega a pozniej troche spadamy w dol

[ghostly lotus · Rating 2 out of 5]

it was kinda an awful book. the writing was mediocre, and most of it talked about his past trauma. but it was interesting to read a perspective that is the one who hurts, not the one who was hurt. i only really read it because i saw a girl in my class reading it, and i like to read books i see other people reading

[helen 💕 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kinda boring. There were some typos. It was an okay story but it wasn’t that great tbh.

[Huda Fiaz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Of course, I saw a reel on instagram how it is the most disturbing and interesting book and Of course, it wasn't. It was disturbing to know that the normal guy,you think he is normal, are dating thinks all these things about you and wants to hurt you emotionally. I mean it was disturbing because of this. It was a diary so it felt like the character was talking to us like we were listening and he had a very weird way to talk because most of what he said didn't make sense. If you are going to publish a diary as a book at least write it better. I mean writing it like a diary is OK but at least the publisher should correct the use of comma and spaced sentence and words to make it make sense for the reader. The character is elusive when he wants to be. He says he wants to tell us his story but he doesn't. He skips almost all the things that will help us understand him. He says he is a bad guy and he is but he also wants sympathy or pity. From some of his sentences I concluded that he was abused as a kid but" I didn't take it in the ass or up the ass" I think that was the paragraph but I don't remember at what part of the book and at one point we get a glimpse of his father saying that he wouldn't care if the protagonist doest not talk to him and at that point he felt hurt. I think that was the point at which he knew what it feels like to be emotionally hurt by someone's verbal assault and he does that to all the girls he met. He said he loved Penelope but didn't elaborate on that love. And the most confusing part was that did Penelope actually slept with him after he said all those awful things to her( if you read the book you will remember the scence where she cries in the bed and get up in the morning and start wearing her underwear). So my point is he didn't want us to know how much evil he was, he just wanted our focus on what happened to him and gather our sympathy or maybe not sympathy but applause kind of , at the end, when he didn't take a drink from that glass of cola( I mean he did make it a big suspense with music in his head and like the scene of a movie). When he was narrating his story to us he had a specific script in his mind with all the plot twists and of course background music and don't forget that Dante's poem. The people who felt sorry for him at the end felt that because they couldn't get any other book from the povs of the victims the protagonist hurt. Imagine a book written by Penelope and all the others he hurt. I don't think you will feel a little bit sorry for him and give him a win at the end for not drinking that cola. It was a revenge narrative simply and the ramblings of a scorned man. I mean the guy met one intelligent and manipulative woman and made her a hell lot of issue. This also shows that all of his victims were emotionally vulnerable and the women who didn't have their life in order. They were insecure at some point in their life and that was why it was so easy for him to manipulate them and hurt them. I don't know but imagine yourself a sane women who is loved by your family, has goals and ambition and wants to date to marry, has good body image will meet an alcoholic guy who says that he doesn't look alcoholic and says the sexist and the most boring things( he does not elaborate on his conversations just says that he learned ways and expressions to charm a woman from some show) will you find such a guy attractive and suppose you do find him attractive and starts dating him but after the way he hurt you will you want to stay in contact with him as the other victims in the books remained. I know that he got off on the reactions he got from the women he hurt and less visceral the reaction the less he enjoyed it and in the end he says that women are naturally kind and even after the way he treated them they were kind to him. I don't know about you but I think the women who are kind to him even after that have some deeply ingrained issues. It doesn't make it ok for him to hurt them but I want to point out the absurdity and the petty way of the man who calls himself a genius that he didn't manipulate the one strong albeit deceitful woman he met he only preyed on the weak. And that is a weak villain and not a villain just an emotionally stunted man who acted like a fool when he met a pretty women even though she gave him all the hints at what she thought about him.
He did say some things that had some wisdom like that charity thing that we public support the children with AIDS and adults with AIDS are dangerous bet because we think they did that to themselves. Not everyone has these povs but most of the world has. He did good to point that and there were also some sentences that were also good but I can't remember them now.
So needles to say that the man failed to impress me with his wit or masterful plot or story if that was his intentions. I think he had an ego thing. Just imagine you think yourself so important and genius and evil that you think your book should be published before your ex and public should make the book famous.
Hurt people hurt people( it doesn't justify shit)

[Nusrath ✨🌙 · Rating 3 out of 5]

“If it was happening to someone else I
would have approved and even wished him well, but because it was me
I couldn’t bear it, as if I were miscast in my own life. If I saw
someone across the street who did the things to me that I routinely
do to me I’d run in the opposite direction. But I can’t, can I?
I’m married to me.
And from what I could see, marriage to other
people was the norm out there”.

diary of an oxygen theif is interesting in the sense that it is so raw. Very rarely do we get to see someone write knowing that they are flawed. Anonymous knows he is flawed, we as readers realize just how much. Some of what he writes, he knows it is a collosal dick move from his end but there is so much that points to something so much more sinister. It especially stuck out to me that the worst thing that had happened to him was a girl he loved crafting this image of him as a sexually inept loser (which, to be fair, he was.) and having men sexually harass him for her book, and through none of it did he realize that he had also previously raped a woman. This is his one crime that he doesn't even seem to register even after going through a version of it himself.

Aisling was not only his karma, she was a reflection of himself and his greatest sins.

Also, I like to believe that pen and the rest of the girls he hurt are all unbothered and laughing at him realizing he hurt them cause he considered himself some deep nonchalant playboy villain. I'm a 100% fucking sure he wasn't. Pen wouldn't be a victim if she knew a hunt was going on, what predetor waits 4 years?

if i rate the book a person writing a fictional story in the lens of an ego blind man - 3.5/5
if i rate it considering the writer actually is confession to his crimes and it's consequences - 2.5/5

overall, 3/5

[Johanna:) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sooo, this popped up on my feed one day, I decided to read it because why not right? Well I regret it.
First of all, the first couple pages are interesting. You get this idea of “hurt people hurt people” and yada yada.
But basically the entire book this is all we care about. The main character is an awful person to the people around them but uses the excuse of “being hurt by others” to justify his actions.
There is basically no actual plot and this felt like a chunky diary entry.
There is also no character development whatsoever, which at this point im like “why write the book then?”
Because no plot, no character development, and no growth literally gives us absolutely nothing.
The only reason I gave this book 1.5 stars is because I did end up finishing this book pretty fast. I read it in two sittings within the same day and although the writing was shallow and repetitive, it was enough to keep me reading at a good pace which is something I enjoy.
Overall, this book doesn’t need to exist. It gave me nothing and ended with nothing. 1.5/5 ⭐️

[Cogito · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sorry but this book sucked.

I gave Diary of an Oxygen Thief a try because I have a thing for the "plotless book with an unlikeable cast of characters" genre, but this book was so overhyped. I literally stopped reading at what, page 5? And then deleted it from my Apple Books library for it to be never downloaded on my iPad ever again.

The protag doesn't do a good job at being misogynistic. Take Osamu Dazai's Oba Yozo. Yes, he states many...odd things about women but he does have other relatable qualities to make his misogyny redeemable such as feeling alienated by society and clowning around to cover up his sadness. The book makes it's entire personality to be misogynistic to the point where it sounds like "heh...you like women? Pathetic. I'm a Patrick Bateman stoic sigma male...only BETAS respect women..." like be so fr.

Honestly, just read The Catcher in the Rye. For starters, Holden Caulfield isn't misogynistic and he's actually somewhat likeable. I'm giving it an extra star, because, hey, at least it isn't like Haunting Adeline or worse!

[darla ☆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

with a vile protagonist and extremely sadistic imagery, diary of an oxygen thief manages to be a disturbing little novel that teeters between surprisingly profound, and pathetically disgusting. it makes for a riveting read all around, seeing the depths at which this protagonist will sink to as he reveals the scope of his crimes and punishments.

i'm surprised more haven't read this yet, it's very reminiscent of other horrific classics such as a clockwork orange and lolita (and perhaps even the cult film Naked), though the core story doesn't manage to stay quite as cohesive as either. for those that are interested, mind you that there are explicit rape, various kinds of assault, and sexist scenes.

[Divine · Rating 1 out of 5]

The most self indulgent and overly angsty book I've ever read in my life. Not at all interesting or distinct. This feels exactly what you may think a young privileged 'trauma/victim complex' obsessed narcissist from tumblr would write. Don't get me wrong, I'm all up for our protagonists to being a horrible person, I love when books take risks like that. But this book isn't trying to take a risk or be creative at all, it is all purely for shock value. This honestly feels like someone who was butt hurt by an ex and decided to vent about it in a book and come off pretentious. Except it isn't pretentious nor is it intelligent or even witty in any way, it is just a painfully shallow book about a masochist who has nothing but that to offer to readers. Uninteresting, not worth the read.

[Rosalera · Rating 2 out of 5]

Consider this 2.5 stars.

If you ever wanted to read the incessant ramblings of a paranoid, misogynistic, alcoholic then the book definitely delivers.

The main character is created to loathe and if you’ve been unlucky dating then you’ve probably met someone just like him.

It’s hard to say what kept me turning the pages of this and seeing it to the end. Half was probably the way the writer bounced the dialogue between tangents and side comments that I found myself led on a merry goose chase of getting to the point. The other half was sheer curiosity to see where all of that mental meandering would lead to.

True to form of speaking to or dealing with anyone like this the answer is nowhere. I don’t know why I had expected anything different.

[Lain · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got this book on sale and I'm still pissed I wasted money on it. This book is 100+ pages of the most insufferable rambling I've ever read. The main character is such a pretentious asshole he makes Holden Caufield look likeable. This entire book is just the narrator explaining how he's a alcoholic, womanizing, borderline abusive prick and alluding to this traumatizing incident with the one woman who made him the one pursuing for once, only for the karmic revenge plot to be the most boring act of public 'humiliation' I've ever heard that he could have just fucking walked away from. I donated this book the second I finished it.

[addison · Rating 4 out of 5]

people hating on this book are the same type of people to hate the catcher in the rye because of holden caulfield. it’s MEANT to make you hate the narrator. i personally loved how you slowly got to understand the narrator, his background and experiences, and his growth throughout. his experience with describing the way he hurt women makes you think of every shitty ex you’ve ever had and gives you that same tingly, stomach dropping pain of an ending relationship. his hatred for himself and craving for pain and heartbreak is heartwrenching yet relatable along with his description of a lonely adulthood. i would love to see an a24 adaptation of this book.

[Zaid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished this book so fast, I have heard and read many negative comments and opinions about it and how it is a toxic masculinity book and sexist and etc we’ve all heard that, now i can’t deny that it does have some of those but its one of those novels that is funny, captures your interest, you want to read more, you want to know more and above all the narrator is a very honest man which I love and enjoyed and gave it that realistic, you’re in his life typa feel.

100% recommended (side not dont take anything said in the book personal its just a book enjoy it)

[Abigail Dickerson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can I say that this book was interesting but I didn’t like it? It’s a fictitious work but written as an autobiography from the perspective of a man who is clearly some sort of sociopath. He abuses people in several, very graphic ways throughout the story and his means of justifying his own actions are so shocking it’s not even funny. This is not a feel good book or an anything book really. When I turned the last page I was just kind of staring blankly like “oh, okay.” Very strange but if you’re interested it’s not a very long read at all.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the book in one sitting. I think that the author has good dark humor and observations about wealth, growing up, and other cultures. He is not a likable character, but I started to feel bad for him as I read the book wanting to understand him. They do mention his past trauma and his support groups which I like. I think if he were friends with someone in his support group and we got to hear both sides of the story it would help balance some of the dark aspects of the book however, I don’t think that was the authors intent. I think it’s supposed to be dark, raw and shocking on purpose.

[reem 🧸 · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book is so deceiving!!! I was very excited after seeing the first page go viral and admittedly our guy had his moments where he was interesting to read about but overall the writing was just so lazy and boring and there’s nothing special about him or this book, the concept had so much potential and the detailing could���ve been easily much more alluring but unfortunately the author decided to just create a waste of a book.