Post by Victoria on Feb 1, 2015 17:59:11 GMT -5
This is really more of a question for readers in general than for writers specifically, but I'd be very interested in your opinions!
Would you destroy a book, or throw one away?
In the course of my recent Internet wanderings, I came across this 2013 story about Anne Rice - and many of her fans - getting upset over this craft project undertaken by a blogger. In summary: blogger buys cheap second-hand copy of Anne Rice book to cut up and use for a craft project, reads it in the process and doesn't like it very much.
Rice's reaction (allegedly "siccing" her fans on the blogger) has been cited as part of the big furore over whether/how authors should engage with criticism of their work online. That's a topic for another thread, so I don't want to linger on it here.
What really struck me about the comments I read on this was that a lot of people seemed horrified by the fact that the blogger cut up a book. I thought about that again just now, when I was reading a forum thread about de-cluttering (why yes, I will do more or less anything to avoid work I'm supposed to be doing, why do you ask?). People were talking about having big clear-outs and throwing away all kinds of things, but many of them were extremely squeamish about just throwing out books. "Donate them! Give them away!" And I've heard it numerous times in real life, too. The idea seems to fill a lot of people with abject horror, as though destroying a book is about something much bigger than just recycling the pages.
Personally, I've destroyed a few books in my time. I found an artist whose illustrations of fairytales I like (Gustave Dore) and wanted to put up a bunch of his pictures on my walls but couldn't afford prints, so I bought a cheap, second-hand book of them and cut out pages to frame. I have a battered second-hand (second-hand is a theme in my apartment!) TV stand that I covered in pages from fairytale books from a bargain bookshop. Last summer, I actually did something very similar to the Anne Rice blogger. My mum wanted me to decorate these triangles to be strung together with others my sister and step-siblings made to make unique bunting to decorate her garden for a party. It was a really cute idea and looked great! Anyway, these were the ones I made:
oppositeofpopular.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/20140729_071228.jpg (picture way too big to embed and I can't be bothered to resize it!)
What you're looking at there are the mangled remains of a Harlequin romance novel.
As it happens, I too read it - or at least skimmed it - while I was cutting it up, and I found it both poorly-written and mildly offensive (heroine and others convinced that as she couldn't have children no man could possibly want her. Flipped to the end to see if she was proved wrong and found instead that the magic of True Love had made her pregnant and desirable). I just didn't make a blog post about it.
The first time I ripped up a book, it did feel weird. But I find it almost cathartic now. I mean, they're books I don't want. In the case of the Harlequin, I really started to enjoy destroying it! I have precious books, of course, that I would hate to even crack the spines of. But I guess what I'm saying is, I don't seem to recognise the inherent value that other people think a book has just because it's a book.
So, what about you guys? Would you ever deliberately destroy or throw away a book?
Would you destroy a book, or throw one away?
In the course of my recent Internet wanderings, I came across this 2013 story about Anne Rice - and many of her fans - getting upset over this craft project undertaken by a blogger. In summary: blogger buys cheap second-hand copy of Anne Rice book to cut up and use for a craft project, reads it in the process and doesn't like it very much.
Rice's reaction (allegedly "siccing" her fans on the blogger) has been cited as part of the big furore over whether/how authors should engage with criticism of their work online. That's a topic for another thread, so I don't want to linger on it here.
What really struck me about the comments I read on this was that a lot of people seemed horrified by the fact that the blogger cut up a book. I thought about that again just now, when I was reading a forum thread about de-cluttering (why yes, I will do more or less anything to avoid work I'm supposed to be doing, why do you ask?). People were talking about having big clear-outs and throwing away all kinds of things, but many of them were extremely squeamish about just throwing out books. "Donate them! Give them away!" And I've heard it numerous times in real life, too. The idea seems to fill a lot of people with abject horror, as though destroying a book is about something much bigger than just recycling the pages.
Personally, I've destroyed a few books in my time. I found an artist whose illustrations of fairytales I like (Gustave Dore) and wanted to put up a bunch of his pictures on my walls but couldn't afford prints, so I bought a cheap, second-hand book of them and cut out pages to frame. I have a battered second-hand (second-hand is a theme in my apartment!) TV stand that I covered in pages from fairytale books from a bargain bookshop. Last summer, I actually did something very similar to the Anne Rice blogger. My mum wanted me to decorate these triangles to be strung together with others my sister and step-siblings made to make unique bunting to decorate her garden for a party. It was a really cute idea and looked great! Anyway, these were the ones I made:
oppositeofpopular.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/20140729_071228.jpg (picture way too big to embed and I can't be bothered to resize it!)
What you're looking at there are the mangled remains of a Harlequin romance novel.
As it happens, I too read it - or at least skimmed it - while I was cutting it up, and I found it both poorly-written and mildly offensive (heroine and others convinced that as she couldn't have children no man could possibly want her. Flipped to the end to see if she was proved wrong and found instead that the magic of True Love had made her pregnant and desirable). I just didn't make a blog post about it.
The first time I ripped up a book, it did feel weird. But I find it almost cathartic now. I mean, they're books I don't want. In the case of the Harlequin, I really started to enjoy destroying it! I have precious books, of course, that I would hate to even crack the spines of. But I guess what I'm saying is, I don't seem to recognise the inherent value that other people think a book has just because it's a book.
So, what about you guys? Would you ever deliberately destroy or throw away a book?
