Have you ever literally thrown away a novel because you thought it was evil, and you did not want anyone else to read it?
If yes, tell us about it?
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@GeePawHill The answer is no, but I genuinely struggled with this with some of Heinlein’s work; it made me angry and I didn’t want anyone to read it BUT in the end I couldn’t make myself destroy a book.
@whybird Understood. And I also confess to a transition point for me. I loved Heinlein for many years, maybe even up until I was 30.
Now I conceive of him as a dirty old man whackin' off on the toilet under a 20w light bulb.
Other than "grok", what did he ever give us?
@GeePawHill Are we talking about “The Art of the Deal”, or…😂😒
@GeePawHill I did not answer the poll, because I do not recall doing so. But I do recall seeing a bookcase featuring only Dianetics and Scientology books at a local Goodwill store and later feeling regret for not buying all of them at the cheap prices just so I could throw them in a dumpster.
@GeePawHill
Atlas Shrugged. I really shouldn't have even bothered starting it, but I kinda wanted to know...
@golgaloth Yeah, I see it. Rand is a good example of a writer who was a shitty person writing novels justifying being shitty people.
@GeePawHill sadly. I wanted to read it but my family gave me to believe it was evil. I'm not sure if it was the same book or different but I participated in burning a book once for the same reason. There was also an exorcism or two, so. You know
@independentpen My dear friend and mentor Tony burnt _The Exorcist_ itself. It was the first I'd ever heard of someone believing a novel was actually evil.
@GeePawHill
It was a left behind book.
And then a textbook about how God created the USA to be the perfect civilization or something.
@Osteopenia_Powers Oh yeah, I read one of those. Ick.
@GeePawHill All the Harry Potter books from my childhood. I destroyed them before putting them in the bin. Good riddance.
Well, I kept 2. They're covered up and holding up my laptop to a more ergonomic height. They're supporting the trans agenda.
@GeePawHill I was just a kid. Got into reading Edgar Rice Burroughs. Then this guy from the used book store was all “if you like Burroughs, you’ll enjoy these Gor novels”
What an ass. I think I took that first book (Tarnsman of Gor) camping and burned it.
@wndxlori @GeePawHill My dad had all the Gor series when I was a kid. When I grew up and learned what those were about...it explained a lot.
@wndxlori Heh. Creepy dirty books that weren't very well written. :)
@wndxlori Burroughs, maybe, not so bad writing. I did love my Tarzan books.
@GeePawHill I still have my Burroughs collection in paperback. I think I managed to grab everything that was in print in the 70s
I have never recommended reading the 1972 book “First Blood” to anyone, ever.
There are reasons for this.
@paninid I remember the book well. Not sure anyone's read it nowadays, tho some might remember the Stallone movies.
@GeePawHill I read a horror book called Nathaniel when I was a young teen. As I was reading it, I was too scared to see the cover, which had a big skull behind the words:
NAT
HAN
IEL
I finished reading it. And donated it to get it out of my house. 🤣
@GeePawHill Threw my one Harry Potter book in the trash because JK Rowling is evil, not because the book was. (I still voted Yes, because that seems close enough.)
Did the same with books by Orson Scott Card. And Neil Gaiman. For the same reason.
@GeePawHill I've tossed one across the room because it was utterly infuriating, too
@kinsale42 I've gotten rid of plenty of books that were shitty, to be sure, but I just brought them back to the library or the used bookstore.
@GeePawHill novel, no. Andrea Dworkin’s “Intercourse,” yes. Plus several diet and Christianity books placed in our Little Free Library.
I am a "yes". The novel was John Irving's first huge splash, _The World According to Garp_.
I read it shortly after it hit mass-market paperback, and then I tore it apart and put it in three different trash cans.
Irving's a gifted writer, w/o question. The book is enthralling, a page-turner. (He's written better since, too.)
I destroyed the book because not a single line of it made me believe he cared about even a single character in it.
Funny. I read that one under my textbook in 5th grade and loved it. I've read it a dozen times since. I suspect if you gave it another go you'd find a different book than you remember.
I was actually recently idle and one piece of craftsmanship from a book I haven't read in a decade or more flitted through my mind. After the driveway blowjob there's a dark cloud over the story for, like, fifty pages before it gets explained. It was sufficiently well done that I noticed it as a standout even now, forty years after I first read it.
@Uair Oh I never doubted his considerable craft.
Yes, could have been just where I was at back then. I didn't cancel Irving, and have read most of what he's written since, with no issue.
It's a long and very dark story, but then, so is Mistry's _A Fine Balance_ or Styron's _Sophie's Choice_. I didn't throw those away, cuz their author's loved their characters greatly, even as they went through the hell of the story.
I don't generally use the word or concept of "evil" any more. I guess I've seen too many awful things done by good people since then.
But at the time, I believed it was a horrible thing.
Some folks are responding with a) non-novels, and b) novels whose *writers* hold disgusting socio-political beliefs or perform disgusting behaviors IRL. I note that I happen to agree that those are disgusting sociopolitical beliefs and/or behaviors, Rowling, Card, Gaiman, Adams, and Rand.
But that's not *quite* the thing I was looing for.
That's not quite it.
@GeePawHill I’ve forgotten the details, but I remember someone relating that someone they knew thought a particular book was so evil that they threw it in the river. The person telling the story then went out and bought another copy, soaked it in water, and put it on the shelf where the other copy had been. I guess that really freaked out the other person and reinforced their opinion that the book was evil.
@GeePawHill I do this to jk rowling books I find in free book libraries