Have you ever actually destroyed a book?

[MilesColtrane]

Doing such a thing used to be unthinkable to me, that is, until I read Hubert Selby, Jr.'s "The Room".

The novel relates the stream of thoughts of a criminal confined in a solitary cell.
Selby basically locks you inside the mind of a psychopath for 288 pages.
It's tedious and sadistic. (probably like prison itself)

The main character's revenge fantasies involving the cops who arrested him are nauseating.

Ordinarily, I sell books that I've finished reading to a used book store; not this one. I just didn't want to inflict it upon anybody else, especially if they didn't know what they were getting into.

I ripped the pages out and shredded them. I love books, but not this one.

[Downtown Hound]

1. I bought some book on China in the 90's

which turned out to be paranoid right wing fantasy about the tremendous military threat they posed to America. It was written by some right-winger, and basically served as a front to bash Clinton and a call to boost the defense budget. Yes, I tore out the pages about halfway through and threw the book out.

[Lindsay]

2. I did in 'The Deerslayer.'

I had to read it in high school. I loved most of what we had to read, but that one I detested. Four years later, my younger sister had to read it. After her school year was over, we burned it on the barbecue. It made a nice blue flame.

[Uncle Roy]

45. Mark Twain destroyed "The Deerslayer" too, in his essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses"

which you might also find under the title "The Literary Crimes of James Fennimore Cooper". The thing is a treat, full of lines like:

Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in "Deerslayer," and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.

Later, Twain gives examples of some of these "rules of literary art", that require, for instance:

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the "Deerslayer" tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air.

2. They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the "Deerslayer" tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the "Deerslayer" tale.

4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the "Deerslayer" tale.

5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be
interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the "Deerslayer" tale to the end of it.

and so on. A little later Twain writes:

Cooper's gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but such as it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects, and indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of stage-properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with, and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread in the tracks of a moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail. Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick. Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently was the broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred other handier things to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leatherstocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series.

The thing is a fun read. Any high school English teacher who assigns "The Deerslayer" should be required by law to offer Twain's essay afterwards, as an antidote.

[lligrd]

3. No, But I Know Some Television Faux News Shows That I

would if it were possible.

[MilesColtrane]

5. That's the thing about these new-fangled flatscreens

You can't put a brick through them.

[lligrd]

6. You Can Still Toss Them Out The Window Though

Provided you can lift them or enlist some help. lol

[northzax]

28. pshaw, you just aren't trying

put some heft behind it, no problem.

[Syrinx]

4. I tore up a Bible once

I'm not proud of it.

I was visiting an elderly relative. She always seemed like a nurturing figure to me as I was growing up. Very kind and reverent woman.

Something about gay people came on the TV. I think it was on Crossfire, on CNN.

She shocked the hell out of me. Started talking about how gay people should be "lined up against a wall and shot."

Her comments shocked me. I was confused and hurt. This seemingly kind old lady was advocating genocide against gay people. And she quoted scripture all along the way.

I grabbed the Bible from the table and ripped it to shreds.

I had had about three beers, and that probably affected my judgment, but my anger was real. I was seething.

I'm straight. But, damn, her hate and hypocrisy really pissed me off. My actions were inappropriate, but her hateful speech, supposedly based on a holy book, surely set me off.

This event was quite a long time ago. The woman is still alive, and I still love her. But I hope she has changed her thinking a bit, because on that day she didn't seem to be the Christian that she professed to be.

My actions were wrong.

[silverweb]

7. Yup. I forget the name, though.

It was written by some young reTHUG twit from UCLA. A RW relative sent it to my daughter, who was then in high school, in the hope that it was "not too late to save her" (yes, stated in those words) from this mother's leftist influence.

She read a few pages of it and gave it to me, saying, "You might want to shred this one. It's garbage." I read a few pages, flipped through the chapter headings, and agreed with her assessment.

Normally, books are considered close to sacred in this house, and what we don't care for we donate. But this was dangerous distortion and misinformation, and I'm not sorry to say I did thoroughly destroy it.

[NMMNG]

8. Only in the line of duty

I worked in bookstores for a number of years and we had to destroy books sometimes. :-(

[eppur_se_muova]

17. Well, most of Coulter's go that route, I'm sure. nt

[ClintonTyree]

9. Yes....

I read some books (or started to anyway) that were SOOOOOOOOOOOO bad I tore them up and threw them away so no one would ever experience the agony of reading them again. I think of it as doing the world a favor.

Seriously, I have no idea how some of the Authors on the NYT Best Seller List ever got there. A lot of those books could have been written by a 10 year old but they end up on the Best Seller List? :wtf: I guess they pander to the masses and let's face it, the masses aren't all that bright.

Some books need to be destroyed and it's our duty to carry out that task. Anything by Ann Coulter for instance. ;)

[pnwmom]

10. I haven't, but

my doggie has.


:bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[mcscajun]

11. No, never. Here's a book-lover's horror story, though.

I once worked with a man who did a lot of reading, mainly the latest hardcover books. He read them on his commute. I never saw him do this (I'd have had a major fit, I know), but another co-worker explained to me that every day, he tore out the pages he'd already read, to make the book lighter day by day. When challenged by her, he didn't see the least thing wrong with it; it was his book, after all.

[mitchum]

19. I've done that numerous times with paperback books...

so that they may fit in a pocket, etc...

[Patiod]

31. I've done that with Vanity Fair magazine

I don't want to buy a $20000 watch, but I do like some of the articles after the first 100 pages of ads.

[tanyev]

12. Yes.

Our library system has books for sale in the lobby. These are books that have been donated to the library. They do not want to add them to the library collection, so they sell them cheap as an ongoing fundraiser. I keep a constant eye out for right wing garbage. It's very satisfying to shred a dust cover with Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity's photo on it. Then I rip out the pages and put them in the recycle bin. I don't think of it as destroying; more like disposing of them properly. And the money goes to a good cause.

[porkrind]

38. No shit, give them a decent burial

put them out of their misery.

[poverlay]

52. Burned a Tom Clancy novel and about 3/4 of a bottle of rum in a rainstorm on a camping

trip once. No choice though. Bear Grylls wasn't on yet...

[Berry Cool]

13. Philosophically, I could never bring myself to destroy a book.

It would be like trying to silence someone else's opinions. And it would make me no better than the fundies who burn books they think are immoral.

However, one time I did find the opinions expressed in a book so egregiously offensive that I couldn't resist the temptation to write in it about how I felt...and it did not belong to me; it was a book in a university library. And ordinarily, I would never deface a library book either, even if I knew I could get away with it. I would regard it as ruining someone else's property and damaging something so others could not benefit from using it. This book, however, disgusted me so much that I couldn't resist. The fact that some other library user had also done so before me no doubt helped.

It was some tome on women, written by a man, I think in the early sixties. It was the most sexist piece of claptrap I had ever read in my life. I can't even remember the details, but to this day I remember how very, very much it offended me. I think the gist of it was that women are essentially stupid and remain at the level of stupid, silly children all their lives, even after they become adults, and it was advice to men on how to handle women by remembering this fact.

In the front of the book, some female student who had read it before me had written a little paragraph about how disgusting she thought the book was, but at the same time, she had to say she was glad it was in the library, as proof of how sexist some men's thinking of women was at the time, so that others could read it as a historical piece and see this. I added my own similar feelings after hers, and stuck it back on the shelf.

To this day, it remains the only time I have deliberately defaced a library book.

[Coyote_Bandit]

14. Many

I attended a Christian school. We were required to read some books written by some of the word of faith fundie prosperity preachers. Folks like Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Charles Capps, Benny Hinn and others whose names now escape me. No need for me to keep them. And I certainly didn't want anyone else to be influenced by their deceptive and manipulative teachings. Burned them all about 20 years ago. I've often regretted not burning the diploma as well.

[mzteris]

15. a couple of times.

I recently read a couple of *young adult* books - and the "storylines" were just awful. So awful, I didn't want anyone else ever reading them again.

I found a book by one of my favorite authors that basically was filled with violent under-age sex predation. Threw that one away, too.

There've been a couple of others that were just bad. Written badly. Poorly plotted. Conceived. Everything. Makes you wonder how the hell they got it in print.

[LWolf]

16. No.

There are many I could entertain fantasies about burning, though. I can't imagine what might move me beyond fantasy into actually burning a book. I don't want to imagine it.

Here are some that I have sentenced to eradication in fantasy:

The "left behind" series.
Margaret Haddix' "Among the....." series for younger readers
"The babysitters club" series
All "Goosebumps" books

[mitchum]

18. I love Selby's work (used to talk with him on the phone when he was still alive)...

but I haver never cared for "The Room". I always found it to be unremittingly ugly without any underlying beauty. Selby himself was in a unhappy state of mind when he wrote the novel.
It's the only one where I have never bothered with securing a First Edition

[latebloomer]

20. Well, I stabbed "The Grapes of Wrath" with a butcher knife

because it was a gift to my live-in boyfriend from a woman with whom he was cheating on me.

I must hasten to add that that was a LOOOONG time ago! :D

[mitchum]

27. Yknow, THAT sounds like a great song lyric

:)

[FloridaJudy]

43. I've done similar

My ex-husband gave me some crap pop-psychology book about positive thinking the day after he asked me for a divorce. I set fire to it and mailed him the ashes. Ordinarily, I would never destroy a book (don't tempt me, Ann Coulter), but my cat used to have a habit of shredding books when she was ticked off at me or felt neglected.

Then she discovered there's a big red button on the surge protector connected to my computer. When she wants to get back at me for some imagined slight or other, she pushes it and runs like hell....

But at least my books are now safe.

[politicat]

21. I've dumped a few into the garbage.

I inherited an office once with a lot of parenting self-help books (I was working in community mental health, so I assume that my predecessor had the books on hand to give to parents) and she had a whole row of Dobson's Focus on the Family work. I read through them and dumped them. There was no way I was going to give those out as advice, and I was scared that if I donated them to a library or took them to a used bookstore, they'd end up in someone's hands who would believe what that sadistic idiot preaches.

I've also dumped a few copies of intelligent design books and pseudoscience (there's no global warming, we've never been to the moon, if you pet this crystal, you'll get better) books.

I don't feel bad about it at all. Some ideas need to die.

[Pithlet]

46. I would dump Dobson books, too.

I consider that a service to the community.

[pitohui]

22. not on purpose

if i don't like a book maybe someone else will, why kill another tree?

selby is not our most beloved author, i recognize that tho :-)

[mitchum]

25. Well, he's my most beloved author...

he was also a kind and gracious man who was very generous with his time

I agree with you that maybe someone else will like a book that I don't enjoy (or have finished reading) If I don't have a particular friend in mind, I will just leave the book in a public place for someone to discover.

[Wickerman]

23. As a former bookseller I've received a lot of crappy books

Sometimes they are in horrible condition. They are the ones that are hard to part with, but, like an aged and enfeebled pet, perhaps its better to put them out of their misery.

Sometimes crappy means books by Rush, etc. Those, I've contemplated destroying but ultimately put in the Goodwill box where I know they will sit on the shelves for some magic time period then be sent to the incinerator to make room for books by Ann Coulter that won't sell, either.

[AngryOldDem]

24. No way,

Not ever. Books, no matter what they are about, are sacred to me. I only dispose of them if they are literally in tatters, and even then they have to be beyond any kind of repair. There is no way I would EVER destroy a book intentionally. I just have a visceral reaction to it, for some reason.

[mitchum]

26. The late great Pauline Kael had no problem with that

She begins her review of "Farenheit 451" with an anecdote where she is burning some potboiler in the fireplace and a visiting friend is horrified by the deed.

[catbert836]

29. "Atlas Shrugged"

I wasted several weeks of good time reading it, that I'll never get back. When I finished it, (curse my inability to just leave books unfinished!) I broke the binding in as many places as possible, ripped out all the pages, then put it in the recycling. I suppose that's poetic justice!

[terrya]

30. No...even seeing copies of Ann Coulter's books at bookstores.

Even then. Books are sacred to me.

[peaches2003]

32. Mirror Mirror

Came close with this one, but gave it away instead to someone who wanted to see if it was as bad as my book club thought. I couldn't even look at the cover.

[Dorian Gray]

33. Once

Don Quixote, in Spanish. We spent 8 months reading the damn thing in Spanish III in high school. Our teacher was an asshole, nobody understood the book because it would take almost a month to read a chapter, and we never finished the damn thing. To this day, anytime DQ comes up in conversation I shudder.

I almost threw Angels and Demons off my 42nd floor balcony (where I used to live) when I read it years ago. The ending was so... so... STUPID that I was pissed that I wasted time on that crap.

[Clintonista2]

34. I'm sorry but I must buy this book now lol. nt.

[Forrest Greene]

35. Derrick Jensen

One of those big-ass, meticulously researched books of his, forget which one, I read two of 'em. Really impressive work, clear passion, heart in the right place tho not in the least practical. Inspirational, in a way, I suppose you could say.

Conditions on his maillist turned out to be so cultish, toxic & sycophantic I had to waste the book just to form a sort of antibody. Ugh.

[China_cat]

36. A fitting end to a rotten book

(especially a hard back edition) is to find someone in your community who does 'altered' books and donate them.

For those who don't know, altered books are sort of like scrapbooking, only using an actual book. Pages are pasted, cut, painted, glued, glittered, laced, etc. Sort of like making a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

[porkrind]

37. Yep: Dennis Miller and PJ O'Rourke

Just tossed 'em in the trash. (Hey, I'm not a BARBARIAN!)

[JitterbugPerfume]

39. when my dad passed away (at 95)

My sister had given him a book by Pat Robertson , and it ended up in my stuff

I put it in the trash where it belonged

[Princess Turandot]

40. Several years ago, I inadvertently bought a book in the 'Left Behind' series....

in hardcover no less! When I got around to reading it and took a closer look, I was so appalled that I walked out to the common area of my floor in my apartment building and threw it down the refuse chute without reading more than a few pages of it. First time for such an action by me. (When I've finished with a book that I've bought and do not wish to keep it, I either give it to the library or place it in the common area of my building where someone can retrieve it.)

[loves_dulcinea]

55. i was given the first

in the series and i couldn't read more than a few pages either. it went into the trash. this is so not like me, i tend to hoard books.
it was a gift from an ex-gf. i had broken her heart. she was trying to reconcile, i think.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

41. Any paperback I like I'm quite likely to destroye, to be honest.

I'm all in favour of respecting books, but the way I respect them is to carry them around with me wherever I go...

I've never intentionally destroyed a book as a form of criticism, though.

[JitterbugPerfume]

42. on the other hand

I have books that are helld together with rubber bands and super glue. I would not dream of distroying them

Treasures one and all

[MisterP]

44. I beat up Clarke's "3001"

awkward prose, patronization oozing out the pores, shaky grasp of human nature and character

[LeftishBrit]

47. Only once...

The book was Robert Kendall's "White Teacher in a Black School", which I'd bought second-hand because I'm interested in personal accounts of teaching and education. But this one turned out to be so unpleasant and racist in its tone and conclusions that it revolted me: even more because it wasn't instantly obvious that the book was of this nature (or I wouldn't have bought it). I usually give unwanted books to charity shops, but I couldn't stand the thought of anyone reading and absorbing this book, so I put it in the recycling box. In one way, I felt guilty, because I generally consider censorship and book-destruction to be wrong. On the other hand, I couldn't bring myself to do anything else!

[philosophie_en_rose]

48. Yep.

I've had books so long that they've fallen apart. When they couldn't be taped back together, I bought new copies and used the remaining pages for fire starter.

:shrug: Not a big deal to me.

I also destroyed a book I received from a well-intentioned idiot, because I didn't want the book anymore. It was not worth donating or giving away. I believe I used most of those pages to wrap vases, when I was moving.

[shimmergal]

49. Yes, but not in anger.

Old outdated textbooks, books which are mildewed or falling apart, etc. occasionally.

'Course I seldom buy books that I'm not really eager to read. So there's a pre-selction process that probably weeds out the ones I'd absolutely hate.

[vanlassie]

50. Yes, some James Patterson crap

It was a story about young women being held hostage in underground cells by two deranged criminals on both coasts. Detailed descriptions of torture such as allowing snakes to crawl...well....I am not going to go into the details. I was so repulsed by this I pitched the book and will never read the guy again.

I mean, what the F***? This guy is a best selling author and he gets his millions writing about ways to torture and sexually exploit women? Give me a break.

[Liberal Veteran]

51. The entire Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind up until book 5.

I have a low tolerance for imbecilic writing trying to pass itself off as a polemic.

I got them from a book trading store and destroyed them, lest they fall into the hands of someone who thinks they are getting a decent fantasy series.

[MrSlayer]

53. Never intentionally. I have read some to death though.

For instance, my original Lord of the Rings trilogy books simply fell apart after being read so many times. Quite a few books I own have fallen into that catagory and had to be replaced. Even if I consider a book to be total shlock I would never destroy it intentionally. I'd rather give them away or donate them to somewhere where someone else might enjoy them.

[greatauntoftriplets]

54. I dumped a bunch when I moved from a big house to a condo years ago.

But they were only outdated travel books...many that were years out of date. I no longer could use London on $40 a Day.

:rofl:

Most that I got rid of (downsizing), I either donated bags and bags full to the public library or gave to a friend who passed them on to other people....telling those friends to pass them on and pass them on, etc.

[lepus]

56. I have destroyed many books

But then again I owned them.

Most of the ones destroyed had no merit in them, or were poorly written etc.

I read a lot. I can generally read a book in an evening or two. I have probably read something on the order of 4000 books or so. If I destroy a book, generally it is because I am not willing to inflict it on others because of problems with the book, but not the ideas contained in the book. But then again I have a collection of old favorites that have almost been read to death.

[BOSSHOG]

57. I guess this counts

I flunked chemistry in college (the only class I flunked) and I retook it the following semester and eked out a passing grade. After I got my grade, I took the book to my grandfather's house and threw it in his burn barrel. Not a political statement, I just hated that class.

[TeenageDemocrat]

58. I burned Ann Coulters Book

After I read the first chapter of the book "The Church of Liberalism", I threw into my fireplace. She is such a jerk! That book is so full of it!

[peaches2003]

59. Good for you!

[InkAddict]

60. I know it sounds crazy, but Anne Rice's "Lasher"

went into a dumpster behind a Kroger grocery store along with a lot of other "dark" stuff in an effort to "exorcise" a small group of college students that included my daughter. I came to believe that she was on the brink of a very serious meltdown and had to do something...I'm not sure how it all got started, but she and her friends were all VERY sleep deprived and had had some very "unusual" experiences after playing w/a Ouija board in which they communicated with "Bob," who, according to them, was not a very nice guy.

Thankfully, getting rid of the stuff by way of a "make it up as you go along" ritual seemed to ease their paranoia and they were able to muddle through the semester and cope with the stuff that life throws at a lot of college kids. Time passed...the "events" stopped and eventually the young people went their own ways; however, to this day, my daughter absolutely refuses to go to certain places in the community that she considers "dangerous" and actually DO have a long history of paranormal hauntings.

BTW, I have enjoyed many of Anne Rice's novels. Oh-o, this posted at 11:11 by my 'puter's clock.