Books We Hate

[Peg Herring]

From time to time a book comes along that I not only hate but won't even pass on to others because I think it's just WRONG. This morning I got to the point in a book where I couldn't read any more of it, and I'm going to trash it, although I usually save books we've read to give away at my appearances.

The back of the book said it was "funny" and "sexy" and "splendid." I know enough not to believe everything I read, of course, but here's the thing. The intended sex in the book is with a child. (I didn't read far enough to discover if it actually happens.) The funny is apparently supposed to be the hillbilly cunning the molester employs to get her to a place where he can have her all to himself. The splendid? I never got that far, because I came to the point where I realized that he was going to succeed. The child is taken from her loving home and kept for years. Not funny. Not sexy. Not splendid.

My words for it would be "creepy", "perverted", and "wrong."

[Peg Herring]

Paper better used to publish your work or mine!
Good line on Nabokov, I.J.! I guess it's all in how much class you can inject into the situation.

[J. F. Juzwik]

I'm with you, Peg. If I'm not really crazy about a book, I will donate it to the library in the hope that perhaps it's just a matter of taste, or stick it in a friend's garage sale or some such thing. But there was one a few years ago, oh my. I read the thing from cover to cover, then walked calmly over to my kitchen trash can and dropped it in and never looked back. Absolutely horrid 'thing'. What made me really angry was somebody actually accepted that and published it and stores agreed to carry it and they took money for it. Talk about a waste of good paper...

[I. J. Parker]

Yikes! I thought at first you'd been reading Nabokov. :) Anyway, I agree. There are books that are just wrong. I had that problem with the Dexter books.