SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion
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If you had to burn a book...
Gary, that's the thing about beautiful things and beholders and such & so forth.
Based on these comments, I think we’re going about this the wrong way. Instead of burning innocent books, we should be burning authors. #pitchfork
Mod
Before this gets out of control, SFFBC does not actually believe in burning people who don't want to be burned. Unless, I guess, there was something that required they be burned to survive, like some sort of alien infestation.
Look, we've read a lot of books, I'm not going to say that sometimes fire ISN'T the right answer.
Signed,
The mods
"The Quest" by Wilbur Smith. What a load of tosh.There was also a book, I forget the title and author now, about a guy who sold his soul so that he could be a great author, except the characters in his book that died turned out to be real people who died in real life. He also kept blacking out and getting possessed and doing some extremely gratuitous things, described in loving detail. I'm only a little ashamed to say that I actually binned this one, though I think I at least put it in the recycling.
Lord of the Flies I hated this book with every bone in my teenagers body. First I had to read it for school and then we went on the watch te movie. I lied about the first and felt disgusted about the second (maybe I should've read the book first). Even at that age I knew children could be horrible and bad things happened to good people all the time. Seriously I did not needed that conversation.
Even now I'm enraged, want to buy the book and burn it.
all fiction that is classified as non-fiction
Oh if we're going with books we were forced to read in school then my top pick is Where the Red Fern Grows by a country mile (get it?).Having to read that while my mom was feeding me Bradbury and Vonnegut was pretty surreal.
Raises a toast to mothers feeding their babies Vonnegut and Bradbury !!!
just so we're clear I mean the literature not the people.
Tom, the book sounds like something Stephen king wrote.
I'm going back and forth on Gone With the Wind. I'm not American and read it when I was 9 or 10, and got the bizarre idea that the horrors of slavery were overrated that lasted until I actually read real books about slavery. I'm not sure that it should be burned, but I find it kind of depressing that so many people still love it. (and just so that it's not just an American thing, I also read many horrible books about "Indians" as a Canadian child).
So amazing how some books people hate and other people like the same book. I have had to accept this over the years as I have two sisters and we all read completely different styles of books.We are all retired now and try ( I emphasis try) to read books the other suggests so we can discuss it. I would gleefully burn a lot of these recommendations.
I like sci fi and fantasy, one sister likes historical styled fiction, the other likes books that make her "think".
However we all hated 50 shades!!!! Twilight was mmmm just a kids book really. Although I like anita blake so much more
Allison wrote: "I do actually have a book that I legit want to burn (besides some old school texts) except I can't remember it so I can't name it.It's got a talking cat, and a stereotypical French ghost who somehow becomes corporeal enough to have "relations" with the MC who's like some sort of guardian against demon uh...portals?
And also a goth chick who is one of those demons, and just so many fucking puns and bad florid language that even I, master punster, wanted to find the computer that allowed this to happen and cleanse it. "
This is your burnable book Allison *waves hands with a fancy flourish*
. ... which I read and found to be goofy fun. I do wish my cats could talk (some times) but I also agree with you about the French ghost being, um, ... no thanks.
Mod
It's got a talking cat, and a stereotypical Frenc..."
You're a wizard!! Okay, now make a magical fire so I can burn at least my copy please :D
I will add to the conflagration Ariosto supposed to be some fantasy classic but I could not even finish and still get mad thinking about the ~50 pages I did read. (I very very rarely DNF),
and The Silver Metal Lover, which, just ugh, I can't believe there was a sequel.
we've got a crackling blaze here... If we can get Jen to throw in "Gone with the Wind" I going on a graham cracker, chocolate, marshmallow run !
has anybody tried roasting Peeps ? They've got to be good for something.
Don wrote: "has anybody tried roasting Peeps ? They've got to be good for something."I know a guy who had the Peeps retirement account for Fidelity Investments and - as is typical of such interactions - the company gave him a tour of the factory and then some gifts to take home, which in this case was a deluxe assortment of Peeps. After seeing how they’re made and hearing how long they sit in the warehouse before being shipped to stores (up to a year), as soon as he got to the airport he dumped them all in the garbage.
I've read the Mission Earth Series by L. Ron Hubbard up to book 8 as a teen and found it hilarious. It's a kind of funny trash.
Actually I think it's like it has been said here, one person's book to burn is another person's treasure. I have a friend who told me that 50 shades saved her marriage. I consider it trash and would never read it, but I have read other books with vampires that I would nowadays consider total garbage too. Lord of Flies is a hard book, but it has artistic value. Pity that it's pushed on teens at school though, I must say that I read it also as a teen but it didn't weigh so much on me, but then I was living in a poor region in my country and saw enough abandoned children on the streets as it was. It's mainly a book for adults searching for a sad view on humankind. I've read a couple of other classics, both American and Brazillian and some need a lot of stomach too, but they all have an artistic value due to being the inspiring and original source of many other stories that came later on.
Personally, I would be happy to burn anything labelled "Chick Lit" and not feel it to be a great loss to the world.
Hahahahah how did I miss this topic, so many of you guy's made me laugh!I'm jumping in the twilight and 50 shades train! I hated those years! I actually finished twilight because one of my dear friend recommended me and I hated it, as someone here said I want my old vampires, not with glitters!
Want to add : The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, I hated this book as a kid, it was the meaningless 200 pages I've read, I don't know how I finished it, it must be the book's promise that something will eventually happen and guess what nothing happened.
By the way, I mostly own everything in my ebook reader and as audiobook so I can't burn them like you :( I wonder whats the equivalent of burning in my way lol, deleting from my library seems not enough :/
Paulo Coelho is the most internationally loved Brazilian author, but we absolutely have better authors lol. Now I'm going to be completely polemic here. I wouldn't go so far as burning, so don't hate me, but I don't like Stephen King.
Sedat-writing a strongly worded letter perhaps and then burning that?
Renee wrote: "Sedat-writing a strongly worded letter perhaps and then burning that?"While recording it and then sending the video to author? Yeah that might work :)
Renee wrote: "Tom, the book sounds like something Stephen king wrote."Possibly, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't King. King can be gratuitous when he wants to be, but I've never known him to be as violently, sexually graphic as this book was.
Mod
While recording it and then sending the video to author? Yeah that might work :)"
lolol
I just stopped reading 1Q84 at 22%. I hate it.ripping it up into little pieces and burning it would be satisfying, and worth the library costs .....( hmmmm ..... I would have to pay money to replace it, and I would feel sick about having to support the existence of another copy of this thing)
in the mean-time I'm deriving great satisfaction from binge-reading 1-star reviews .... turns out sharing the hate is rather therapeutic :)
Sj wrote: "in the mean-time I'm deriving great satisfaction from binge-reading 1-star reviews .... turns out sharing the hate is rather therapeutic :) ..."So true! I did this with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two
That's the book I would toss on the pyre.
!"ouch, oooch, hot, hot"! as he pulls the unpleasant but important book ""Lord of the Flies" out of the fire.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell because it will keep me warm for a very long time and anything written by Robin Hobb (yes I know I am going against the grain here)
Don wrote: "!"ouch, oooch, hot, hot"! as he pulls the unpleasant but important book ""Lord of the Flies" out of the fire."lol
Hank wrote: "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell because it will keep me warm for a very long time and anything written by Robin Hobb (yes I know I am going against the grain here)"They were all soo long and what was the point?
Can I toss my Norton Anthologies of *insert adjective here, including but not limited to World, English, Ancient and Medieval, American, Irish, etc* Literature onto the pyre? Not because of their contents, I mean, they had their good and their bad and their meh, but because lugging around between 3 and 4 of these bricks per semester for 4 years caused irreversible knee and back damage? I'm also curious as to if their tissue paper pages would cause them to burn super fast, or if they'd burn extra slow because of their density.
It would be great if they would make ebooks of the anthologies then.
Jen wrote: "I'm going back and forth on Gone With the Wind. I'm not American and read it when I was 9 or 10, and got the bizarre idea that the horrors of slavery were overrated..."[CAUTION: History]
That's because Gone With the Wind is part of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy ideological movement which portrays the Confederate cause as a heroic struggle against great odds despite its ultimate defeat. It includes hyping the virtues of the antebellum South and claims the American Civil War was an honorable struggle for the "Southern way of life," minimizing/denying the central role of slavery.
Near the city I live in (in the state of Maryland), there was a small skirmish that ended up stopping the only planned attack on Washington, DC by the Confederates. The two generals in that battle (Battle of Monocacy) were Jubal A. Early (Confederate) and Lew Wallace (Union).
After the war Jubal A. Early was the most important proponent of the Lost Cause movement, penning articles in the 1870s for the Southern Historical Society. These article basically solidified that revisionist ideology.
Lew Wallace, on the other hand, went on to author the novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.
[/History]
Go figger.
I’ve always hated Gone With the Wind for that very reason.The biggest fight I *almost* got into was at a custom car show in Hara Arena in Dayton. This guy had a wood-inlay bed on his pickup that featured the stars-and-bars. He saw me looking at it and said, “One of these days the South is gonna do it again.” To which I replied, “What’s that, lose?”
We were outnumbered 5 to 2, but just then a group of security guards rounded the corner, saving us from a beating.
Leticia wrote: "It would be great if they would make ebooks of the anthologies then."They have e-books of them now (I believe), but they didn't the 20 odd years ago when I was in college.
Leticia wrote: "It would be great if they would make ebooks of the anthologies then."there are at least two on Amazon in Kindle format: English Literature Volume 1 and Volume 2 (2016)
Cristin wrote: "Leticia wrote: "It would be great if they would make ebooks of the anthologies then."They have e-books of them now (I believe), but they didn't the 20 odd years ago when I was in college."
I still have a couple of those, lol.
IMO, the tissue-like paper will allow the Norton to combust mightily. Though the density will allow it to burn longer than most tissue paper.
Trike wrote: "I’ve always hated Gone With the Wind for that very reason."Agreed.
Also, regarding Things that Peeps are Good For, and the posibility of roasting them,* really, you all have to witness the Majesty that is Peep jousting.1. Put two Peeps on a plate, about an inch or two apart, facing each other.
2. Arm the Peeps with toothpicks, a la jousting lances.
3. Put plate of Peeps in microwave. Nuke 'em. ** (marshmellows embiggen in microwave)
First Peep to puncture the other with toothpick, wins.
*Note: Peeps do not burn very well. Though they are made of lovely flammable marsh-mellow, that pure-sugar and artificial dye exterior coating takes too long to catch. Source: I was that Girl Scout who tried roasting them
**Second Note: Use paper plates. Melt-y nuked Peeps are messy.
Mod
ETA we can try different marshmallow warfare, too!
Sarah Anne wrote: "... which book would it be?.... "Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker.
Getting Out of Jersey. This was an arc ..... it should have stayed that way.... yuck
Sj wrote: "I just stopped reading 1Q84 at 22%. I hate it.ripping it up into little pieces and burning it would be satisfying, and worth the library costs .....( hmmmm ..... I would have to pay money to repl..."
I had the weirdest relationship with that book. I'm normally not at all hesitant to put down a book I'm not enjoying, but 1Q84 had me hypnotized or something. I still don't know why I finished it.
Topic: at first I had a hard time coming up a book I'd want to burn. I thought about my old college nemesis, Gravity's Rainbow, but I'm still more confounded by it than anything. Part of me thinks that someday I will read it and it will make sense.
starts pulling Parents out of the fire, "! No Ruth, Bad Ruth !"
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"Communist Russia bad, America good" isn't exactly a hot take anymore, but I guess from her perspective people were being naive about the USSR at the time. Her characters are laughable though. No defending that.