character who throws away pages as he/she reads them

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

I must have read this book in the last 6 mos. to a year, but thinking back I still can't pinpoint which book it was in. I don't know if it was fiction or nonfiction, if the character was invented or a real person. But the character/person would read a book and tear out each page and discard it as they read.

[vicki_girl]

I remember the main character in this book doing that exact thing...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66...

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Thanks! It's not that one though, as I haven't read it.

[drowningmermaid]

That sort of thing happened in "Mirrormask" but that would pretty clearly be fantasy.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Nope, haven't read Mirrormask either.

[[deleted user]]

Did you read Shadow of the Wind? http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12... Some memory tugged my brain there when I read your post.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

No, I haven't.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Bump.

[Liralen]

Anne Fadiman mentions that in one of the essays (Never Do That to a Book) in Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. It's a small point, though: What would Belloc have thought of my father, who, in order to reduce the weight of the paperbacks he read on airplanes, tore off the chapters he had completed and threw them in the trash? (38)

[Debra]

Cheryl Strayed burns pages after she reads them while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, as mentioned in her memoir "Wild"Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Thanks Debra, it's not that as I haven't read it.

Liralen, thank you, I have read Ex Libris but I don't actually think it's that book. For some reason I feel like it was happening in the action of the book rather than being told as an anecdote. Also I don't remember Anne Fadiman writing that in the book, and in order for this to have registered in my brain as a memory I had to have taken notice of it as I was reading it.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

I still don't know what this is, however, I found today another anecdote on this theme. Gore Vidal in Italy in 1948 visited George Santayana in his hospital cell in the Convent of the Blue Nuns. "The only books in Santayana's cell were his own - and a set of Toynbee's recently published history, which he was reading characteristically; that is, he first broke (or foxed) the spine of the book and undid the sections; then, as he finished reading each section, he would throw it in the wastebasket."

[Bargle]

That happens in one of Isaac Asimov's autobiographies. In his teens or later he remembers reading a book as a small boy and asks his mother what became of it. She explains that it had been thrown away because he tore out each page as he was reading it. I don't remember which part it was in.
In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954
In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954-1978

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Thanks!

These are not the books I was thinking of however as I have not read them.

[Justanotherbiblophile]

This isn't your book, but isn't there something like this in a Stephen King short story? Author, who nobody reads - or something, and his editor? Manuscript of great American novel gets trashed?

[Andy]

Something like this happens in Maugham's "The Razor's Edge"

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Andy wrote: "Something like this happens in Maugham's "The Razor's Edge""

Thanks. I think that's on my to-read list. Haven't read it yet though.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Justanotherbiblophile wrote: "This isn't your book, but isn't there something like this in a Stephen King short story?

Very possible, I have not read anything by Stephen King.

[Justanotherbiblophile]

Hmm, well since you know it was a book you've read...

Aren't you keeping a list of books, as you read them?

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Yes but I can't remember which of them it's from.

I mean, it's one small thing that happened on one page. And I read a lot of books.

[Justanotherbiblophile]

Well, instead of guessing blind, we could go down the list of books - see which we've read and hope something rings a bell.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

I started doing that and gave up.

[Justanotherbiblophile]

Yes, you gave up. However we might have better luck with it.

Many eyes (hands) makes light work.

Recognition (you recognize all of the books you've read, so it's no help to you) and recall - but other people won't key in on all of them, and will be able to to look at some individually. ie: they've read several books recently, know the scene you're talking about, and only one or two books overlap, can give you a place to start reading/looking.

Keyed recall vs. trying to do it brute force.

If you only want to wait on one pier for your ship to come in, you may.

If you want the rest of us looking on other piers - if the ship comes into this port, probably more likely to find it.

If you're only going tell us which books you haven't read - we're apt to get discouraged, unless we too know (and remember) precisely which (minor?) scene you're talking about.

[☯ DαякєηRнαℓ ❛ ᶜʳᵒᵘᶜʰᶤᶰᵍ ʰᵘᵐᵃᶰ ; ʰᶤᵈᵈᵉᶰ ᵗᶤᵗᵃᶰ ❜]

bump

[Koji]

if on a winters night a traveler?

[Kris]

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino - Kojishi's suggestion

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Thank you but no, I have not read that one.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

The book is not A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin which contains the passage:

“Whenever Ter read a book, rarely—he would rip each page off and throw it away. I would come home, to where the windows were always open or broken and the whole room would be swirling with pages, like Safeway lot pigeons.”

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

This book is not Palimpsest, a memoir by Gore Vidal which contains the passage:

[Santayana] held up a section of a book whose binding he had removed. As he finished reading each section, he would drop it into a wastebasket. "I am reading someone called Toynbee. Do you know him? No? I gather he is some sort of preacher who involves himself with history. The footnotes are not entirely worthless."

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Oh, I see I mentioned that already in 2014. I must have read that in a secondary source as I hadn't read Palimpsest then.