Ooops, I was trying to quote Wang-ka there…guess I did it wrong…:smack:
Since I get most of my reading from the library, buring and mutilation aren’t really options. However, when I was reading Wizard’s First Rule, big chunks of pages started falling out of the binding. This book was so bad that it wanted to self-destruct, and I can’t say I blame it.
At an SF/fantasy convention I attended in early 1983, an author was giving out free copies of the first book in his Warrior of Vengeance series (titled Sorcerer’s Blood).
It was worth every penny I spent on it.
I wouldn’t burn books either, but I figured this was all hypothetical.
I was going to say the collected works of Danielle Steele and VC Andrews.
>I’d burn Mein Kampf for what it advocates.
Well, I bought Mein Kampf, and has it here on my bookshelf, for no other reason than it was illegal to own where I live (well it wasn’t as it turned out, but it is in some other European countries). Haven’t gotten around to reading it yet though, but I will someday. Here is a man who orchestrated the death of millions – I think it’s pretty important to know what went so terrible wrong in that little mind of his. I also bought The Satanic Verses for much the same reason – but will probably never get around to reading that.
Never did throw out a book, but if I should some books by Piers Anthony comes readily to mind, or that awful book: Thomas Covenant, White Gold Wielder argh! White Gold Wielder my arse, that little miserable, self pitying bastard stole many hours of my precious youth that would have been better spend drinking hard liquor and smoking pot. Also the books of The Illuminatus Trilogy, which I have read back to back for some obscure reason, I hate them with a passion.
I’ve never thrown away a book, either. I give them to Goodwill and the Salvation Army, though.
I love picking through their shelves for books. It’s fun to find a good book there sometimes.
But they have WAY too many Harlequin paperbacks and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. Ugh.
More stuff that should hypothetically be burned.
I’m just as opposed to burning books as the rest of you, but if I had to…
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Dickens. I was overjoyed when the teacher started to hand out the books for the semester. Oh goody I thought, a Dickens book I haven’t read yet.
It’s the only assigned reading that I didn’t finish in my entire life. God it was awful.
Oh, is that like Teenocracy? I’ve never read the book, but I did read about it in the Curiosities section of F&SF a year or two ago.
Has anyone mentioned the Chicken Soup for the Soul books? My lord! I caught a friend reading “…for the teenager’s soul” in high school (when they didn’t have the really specialized versions e.g. “…for the British lesbian albino’s soul” no, wait, lesbians don’t have souls, do they? And albinos, well, I’ll have to check the WWJD site) and hit her in the face with it. Whenever I find one in someone’s house I open it up and read all the last line’s in a slow, tearful voice, one after another “…and that’s when she realized Tommy had given her the best gift of all- the gift of friendship.” “…and I knew right then that Mom wasn’t coming home at all, but would always live in my heart.” Mwaaaah!
What about just parts of books? Like the last page or so of Grisham’s * The Partner*. Good book with a ridiculously stupid ‘twist’ ending. And based on the 1 Danielle Steele (?) book I read (I believe it was * Silent Honor*), her books would be a lot better if every other sentence were removed (ones such as “He knew from the first moment that he saw her that he loved her.”)
The novelization of the movie, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. I actually shocked a friend one night by throwing it into the fire. (Yes, we had been drinking.)