Okay, so I’ll readily agree that book burning is generally a bad thing. But, honest to God!
Normally, when I don’t care for a book I’ve bought, I’ll take it down to the second-hand shop and at least get a couple of bucks back. But twice now, I’ve finished a book and just loathed it so much that I physically destroyed the book rather than let another person go anywhere near the turkey.
(I can’t name the books; I’ve finally managed to block the titles from my memory. But the authors were big names in their fields, so I could look them up if I wanted. I don’t want.)
Books I have personally destroyed? That guy who wrote Bridges of Madison County. I read ‘Slow Waltz at Cedar Bend’, or whatever that book was called. If it is indeed a ‘slow waltz’, how apt. So boring. So annoying. So pretensious. I threw the book in to the paper recycling.
I found American Psycho really awful. I have read good things by the author, and yes, I know it’s a parody, or self aware, or whatever - but I just found many passages to be horrific. Couldn’t burn it though, it was a friend’s copy. If it was mine? yeah, I probably would have chucked it.
Nope. It’s weird but I’ve never really hated a book. In fact, I think the only book I ever quit reading after more than 10 pages was Interview with a Vampire. I didn’t really hate it, it just got boring and I was uninterested in the story and characters about halfway through.
The only spanking I ever recieved at the hands of my mother happened when I was four, and it was because I had ripped pages from a book.
Since then, no matter how excreble I find a book, I cannot destroy it. I’m a voracious reader, and I don’t like libraries, because they want the books back, thus a sizable part of my income goes to Amazon.com. I have learned the hard way that one cannot always depend on the customer reviews.
I take the ones I dub a Waste of a Tree to the local used-book store, which is primarily stocked with Harlequin Romances from the late 80’s. No matter how bad the book I am selling, it can be no worse than what they carry in profusion.
Funny thing is, both of the books I destroyed were by authors whose other books I’ve enjoyed. Maybe that was part of it – an obscure sense of betrayal, or something.
Many years ago, closeout book stores were all the rage. Most of the time you could some great deals, sometimes not. I was in the fiction section one day and a book entitled The Building. I don’t recall the author. It was about a run down apartment building in New York. IIRC, there was very little in the way of proper punctuation. After about three chapters I had to put it down. This was probably one THE worst pieces of crap I had ever (tried to) read. I didn’t destroy it (SACRILEGE!), but I did drop it in a Goodwill box. Hopefully, someone bought and could enjoy it.
I must share my secret book shame: back in the 80’s, I bought the entire Invader’s Plan in HARDBACK! I had no idea who Hubbard was. After numerous changes of address, I found these in a box. I had discovered what Hubbard was all about. This was the ONLY time I ever destroyed books and I hated myself for doing it spite of what I had found out. Believe me, if I had known, I would NEVER have even read the dust jacket.
hmmm… how about Crossroads of Twilight, the latest installment in the interminable Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.
Actually, I take that back - I’d just burn half of it… and half of each of the previous two books - then I’d glue the remaining pages together to make one book that actually went somewhere. Now if only RJ or Harriet had done that we could have had a decent book that didn’t take 6 freaking years to develop some actual plot.
goes back to hammock, sniffing and braid-tugging along the way
