We all know the evils of censorship: not ALLOWING people to read the books of their own choice.
But have you ever owned a book that was so BAD that YOU didn't want to be responsible - in the slightest way - for it to fall into other hands? A book that you'd rather burn or rip to shreds than donate to a charity shop... or even risk somebody else' pulling it out of your rubbish bin?
"If people WANT to buy it, I'm certainly not going to stop them. But I'm not going to FACILITATE their reading such a load of:
crappy plot;
evil values;
godawful writing style;
(other)."
Please give examples and reasons. Be as nasty as you wish.
I'll start off with a non-fiction book: "Duérmete, Niño" ["Go To Sleep Child"] by Eduard Estivill and Sylvia de Bejarby.
This is a cruel piece of shit that assures new parents that the best for their child is to cry themselves to sleep until they get used to the idea that nobody's going to come comfort them. ("You've got to keep firm. If you give in once and pick up your crying child, you set the whole learning process back by weeks.") They reassure parents that it's healthier for children to rock themselves back and forth rhythmically, banging their heads against the wall or the bars of the crib, than to be "spoiled" by being cuddled past their official bedtime. They KNOW that they couldn't convince parents to try this method for their own convenience, so they tell them that it's better FOR THE CHILD!
I first read about this book in Carlos González' EXCELLENT "Bésame Mucho: Cómo Criar Tus Hijos Con Amor" ["Kiss Me!: How to Raise Your Children with Love"], the BEST book on child-rearing that I've ever read. I later found the Estivill/de Bejarby book in a 2nd-hand shop. It was quite cheap, so I bought it... in order to burn it.
Reason for burning: a book of pure EVIL!
Aside from that one small quibble, an excellent comment from you.
Kate: You do know that if your latest comment here were a "shared work", Lorraine and/or I would pick you up on the following?
"I survived (just barely) the phase when all child-number-one wanted to read was written by Daisy Meadows (not a person, but a sweat shop of writers with a corporate name, I think). I could happily have used them in a fuel crisis at the time, though there wasn't anything terribly wrong about them. Just tedious and repetitive."
Do the 2 "them"s refer to the "writers"? Structurally / grammatically speaking, they must do. Are you really suggesting burning writers??? Or how else could you "happily have used them in a fuel crisis at the time"?
This thread is about whether or not writers would be willing to destroy books. I do feel that you are taking things a TRIFLE too far. Just because a writer is "tedious and repetitive", I hesitate at condoning burning him or her.
@ Renee Paule (2 days ago: "Absolutely, I have destroyed a few and for the same reasons I did this I won't name them. I've done the same with some DVDs as well.")
Renee, as a BIG fan of Ursula K. LeGuin's "Earthsea" trilogy (now a series of 6 books: 5 novels and 1 book of short stories), and having read an interview with her in which she criticised the film "Legend Of Earthsea" and lamented the producers' refusal to remove her name from the credits ("Among her complaints was the "whitewashing" of her characters' ethnicities (in the novels, few of Le Guin's characters are white*). Le Guin also resented a statement published by director Robert Lieberman which indicated that she approved of his take on her story." - from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407384/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv), I started watching this crap. I switched it off, in GREAT disgust, after 10 minutes. This was a DVD belonging to one of my sisters. If it had been MINE, I would have ceremonially pissed on it before burning.
* LeGuin had made a VERY conscious decision to have non-Caucasian heroes in several of her books, not just this series. As the daughter of an anthropologist, she wished to combat a White-centred cultural monopoly. In the film, the main character - whom LeGuin had written as particularly dark-skinned (even among dark-skinned people) became a blue-eyed blond.
Also, a priestess vowed to celibacy became a whore-priestess using sex to gain power. (In the book, she was already more powerful that that country's monarch. Religion was more important than secular power. in the film, she had to fuck the monarch in order to manipulate him. In the book, any wish that she expressed would have been complied with speedily. One guesses that the director couldn't fathom a universe in which women are powerful without using sex to manipulate poor, weak males... I mean powerful men who are unfortunately slaves to their sexual drives. How this arsehole thought that "she approved of his take on her story", that he was being "true to the essence of the original book" is anybody's guess.)