Books to Burn

[francesco]

Taking bad inspiration from list of 100 better books and my bleak mood today:
Yes, like the Vatican or the Nazi, I think that some books must be burned for the good of humanity:

Salinger - Catcher in the Rye
Goethe - die Leiden des jungen Werther (but i love everything else by Goethe)
Garcia Marquez - 100 years of solitude
Keruac - on the road
Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being ... and everything else
Tolkien - Lord of the Ring
Coehlo - the alchemist

any other suggestion?

 

[infinite thought]

Excellent! now the 'art, literature and film' section has become the 'degenerate art, farenheit 451 and I'm-reaching-for-my-gun' section....

Nevertheless, in the hypothetical interests of the species, and future generations thereof, I suggest we burn:

Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation
Agree about the Goethe (but just that one)
Louisa May Alcott's Little Women + Little Men
Martin Amis's The Rachel Papers
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but it's really wretched)
George Eliot's Middlemarch (tho some other the others can persist)
E P Thompson's The Poverty of Theory
Roger Scruton's book on Spinoza and his book on (splutter) sex
Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motocycle Maintenance
Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull

...most of these are easy targets tho - dare anyone suggest something worthier...?

 

[anhhh]

i was thinking for something to burn and i began to think in burning the entire sections of self-help books (all of them at the same time), but probably it will by the end of this planet (sunrays can't traspass the smoke and the earth gets colder etc....) so i have to make some other choice, and i remembered something i read about a book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403968829/202-7492352-1182241

and its about the new type of men to come after the "metrosexual" one... it's great because the role models are people like... BONO!!! BILL CLINTON!!! ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER!! or even... DONALD TRUMP!!!

(i forget the name of this "new" man: übersexual)

(i think i need to take a shower after this post)

 

[jenks]

all sub bridget jones novels - the ones with line drawings of twentysomethings looking arch on the covers

all of tony parsons except the boy looked at johnny

andy mcnabb, the davinci code, robert harris

all obvious choices i know - was rather stung by some of the choices already made but that's why its rsather good we don't go burning books. there was a rather good essay on book burning in one of vonnegut's collections of speeches and miscellany can't for the life of me remember the title of the book.

 

[martin]

Max Stirner - 'The Ego and Its Own' - just pish. "Why should I feel bound to the State....what do I owe the church with its message of salvation.." ad nauseam.

"Mein Kampf" obviously, not cos it's some evil nazi bible, but cos it's so tedious -the Jews this, the Jews that, zzzz...

Anything written about Iggy Pop

 

[JimO'Brien]

Jamie Whyte - Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking

A truly annoying and offensive book available in your the philosophy section of your local bookshop.

 

[mms]

any word ever written by nick hornby -
that prozac nation book
len deighton as he's so bloody boring .

 

[owen]

Salinger - Catcher in the Rye
Keruac - on the road
Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being ... and everything else
Tolkien - Lord of the Ring
QUOTE]

francesco, you are a man after my own heart...
can i nominate for the pyre-

anything by Alain de Botton or Julian Baggini
Francis Fukuyama- The End of History
all novels by comedians
all rock biographies, especially the ones I own
the complete works of Anthony Giddens
David Malouf- An Imaginary Life
David Lodge- Nice Work (oh hell, complete works of)

hmmm sure i can think of more...

 

[baboon2004]

The circumscribed ire directed towards Martin Amis is rather offputting - the man along with his books deserves to be cast into the abyss for being such a pretentious c@nt. Although his non-fiction is quite good...

Salman Rushdie - those who objected wholeheartedly to the fatwa clearly hadn't dipped into any of his books. *

As for Kundera, 'Laughable Loves' is a terrific collection.


*I am joking. I think.

 

[simon silverdollar]

anything by John cunting Irving. soul-crushing chilly greyness...

 

[simon silverdollar]

soul-crushing chilly greyness...

and not in a good way!

 

[jed_]

VERNON GOD LITTLE - the worst book i've ever finished.

also The DaVinci Code. why the hell not?

but mostly VERNON GOD LITTLE.

 

[dogger]

[
Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being ... and everything else
Tolkien - Lord of the Ring
Coehlo - the alchemist

any other suggestion?[/QUOTE]

ok with the tolkien...as for kundera -- i really couldn't disagree more. the unbearable lightness of being is a superb novel: intimate, funny, tragic, elegantly composed. his lit crit is well worth reading too. very opinionated and hence occasionally utter bollocks but always laconic and stimulating. and i like his general scepticism of overly-politicised readings of literature.

books to burn: animal farm (kundera was right in saying that its contents could be better expressed in a political pamphlet --this could open up an intersting debate about the relative importance of form and content in literature, if anyone's up for it)

pilgrim's progress -- grace abounding is ok but pp is just stultifyingly dull

anything and everything by tom paulin. maybe the man himself too.

 

[henry s]

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

the 'effin footnotes have their own footnotes!

 

[baboon2004]

as for kundera -- i really couldn't disagree more. the unbearable lightness of being is a superb novel: intimate, funny, tragic, elegantly composed. his lit crit is well worth reading too. very opinionated and hence occasionally utter bollocks but always laconic and stimulating. and i like his general scepticism of overly-politicised readings of literature.

books to burn: animal farm (kundera was right in saying that its contents could be better expressed in a political pamphlet --this could open up an intersting debate about the relative importance of form and content in literature, if anyone's up for it)

Agree with the lit crit - fabulous stuff - but ULoB is surely his worst and most pompous novel....

Read the last sentence as "the relative importance of farm and content in literature", and was briefly amused.

 

[Helen]

All self-help books and how-to-get-rich books.
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

 

[owen]

kundera

but ULoB is surely his worst and most pompous novel....

mmm, my concurring with the discussion of its insufferability isn't a total slur on kundera- am quite keen on Identity and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting in particular, which have less windiness and general 'Milan-solves-mankind' moments (also fewer cringingly softcore sex scenes)

 

[francesco]

books to burn: animal farm (kundera was right in saying that its contents could be better expressed in a political pamphlet --.

What? Why? Animal Farm goal and strenght is to have been read by thousand of persons, not to have been read by ten academics (as political pamphlet are). Why you can't express political philosophical issues as a fable, because Kundera says so? Tell this to Esopo. Tell this to Swift. And who have discovered that fables, or grotesque allegories, does not have political philosophical meaning?

the unbearable idiocy of Kundera (never read Laughing and forgetting anyway, may it make me change idea?, it's more interesting that ULOB?)

 

[owen]

Laughter and Forgetting is much the same in lots of ways, Fran m'dear, just without the annoying bits (infantile liberalism, 60s chauvinism, pomposity, general pomonautism) i'm afraid its still pretty ponderous tho.
has some very good bits about the doctoring of photos under stalinism- amusingly, this photo

which he describes in the prologue he actually takes some dramatic licence with himself, thus perpetuating the general historical falsification...

(i agree about animal farm btw: am planning a defence of orwell against his fans for the blog at some point. really he was a pamphleteer, which is one of the things that make him interesting. orwell owned a huge collection of obscure political pamphlets, i think they're in the british library now)

 

[mms]

All self-help books and how-to-get-rich books.
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

apart from the book -how to write a self help book and become a millionaire - which i intend to write someday.