Throwing a book in the bin !

growing up in a hostile family, where the main rule was obey and learn,i became a slave to books,For many years i believed everything i read, doubting my own judgement,very sad as i look back.It took me many years to trust myself and now if a book is really bad it goes in the bin!

I once read a Wilbur Smith book that was in a holiday home we visited and it was so full of gratuitous violence and torture that I really felt sick. I burnt it on the open fire in the cottage.
Please don't imagine I'm a prude but it was just hideous.

I love US crime/forensics/pathology fiction and have read all the usuals including Patricia Cornwell, Tess Gerritsen, Alex Kava etc and love them. Really enjoyed one series of books by Karen Slaughter, featuring two main characters, which I absolutely loved, but the ending of one took me so much by surprise and shock, that I actually burst into tears and found myself shouting ‘No no no!’ I couldn’t believe an author would have done that and couldn’t bring myself to read any more in the series after that. I still have the books though, and couldn’t bin or pass them on, even though I will never revisit them.

lovebeigecardigans1955

Now that was like trying to push treacle upstairs.

That is a fantastic expression !!

The only book I have ever binned, and I own thousands, was ‘Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ because it was so disturbing I couldn’t bear to have it in the house. This was around 20 - 30 years ago. It is a truly horrible story of some children tying up and torturing their babysitter. I didn’t enjoy reading it at all but a sort of horrible fascination kept me going, and then I wished I hadn’t.

Fairislecable

I was once recommended a book called ‘Shantaram’. It was a very thick paperback book. It was a really rubbish story of one persons life in India (I think). Sort of, then I did this and then I did that.

At that time I had never stopped reading a book until the end.

A couple of years later I met a chap poolside reading the same book we discussed it and he said he always finished a book so would plough on.

I knew he had finished it as I heard a grunt of disgust, he tore the book in half and threw it in the swimming pool!

(He did retrieve it and put in the bin).

Oh dear! I enjoyed Shantaram, and so did my father. We'd lived in Bombay when I was a child.

Never thrown a book in the bin myself but plenty of books I’ve read that have been a big disappointment so they have gone to one of our local charity shops

Even if I dislike a book thoroughly, I would put it in the bag for the charity shop. Everyone likes different things and what one person thinks is rubbish will give someone else enjoyment. I may make an exception for something that is extremely racist or bigoted etc.

I would rather donate books to a charity shop than bin them. That just goes against the grain.
But there are some books people love that I can't abide.
I was given Middlemarch to read when I was 10 at primary school, class sizes were much bigger in the 1960s and as a fast reader I don't think my teacher knew what to give me. I hated it! got it out of the library about 4 years ago and still hated it and thought it totally inappropriate for a 10 year old.
I am an avid reader and can't resist 2nd hand bookshops...some take me years to get round to but there's always something to try....currently 80 around the house, I get antsy if I have less than 30. You can take one on holiday and leave it wherever you are staying or take to a new charity shop.
If you really feel you can't donate then tear out the paper and shred for the compost bin, or I put in the bottom layer of potato grow bags; and put a cardboard cover in recycling

Yes, years ago I bought a novel about Noah's Ark, where Noah had been turned into the animal world's version of Dr.Mengale.

I was so horrified by the book that I certainly never considered either continuing to read it or giving it away. It went down to the bin in the bottom of a bag of kitchen rubbish in the hope that no-one else would read it.

I don't think I could ever bin a book. There have been lots of books I've disapproved of or been unable to read but binning them feels like a step too far for me. I give them to Oxfam and leave it to their judgment as to whether they put it on their shelves or in their recycling pile.

I heard of someone finding a first edition Black Beauty in a charity shop dumpster, so please be careful!

I’ve read Shantaram and it was quite hard going. If it’s the true story it’s supposed to be the author had a very interesting life to say the least. It’s been made into a series on Apple TV. I watched it because I’d read the book but, Charlie Hutton played the lead character and he’s not the best actor in the world. Pretty underwhelming although the book is apparently very popular with students. Maybe the India - gap year vibe.

The only time I have thrown books away en masse, was when clearing a relative's house about 15 years.

He still had all the text books he had bought as a student in the late 1940s. They were all on social science topics and most were so out of date, they content was almost, no, sometimes was, embarrassing.

I sorted through them, 4 big book cases, and as I had studied an associated topic I was able to rescue all those that might have any relevance to anyone and give them to the specialist Oxfam bookshop in Oxford, but Oxfam would have done to the rest what I did, pack them in the back of the car and put them in the paper recycling skip at the tip.

I rip horrible or rubbish books apart, put the cover in the bin and shred the pages to feed my composting worms

I once attended a book-folding craft session and needed a book to fold all the pages into an Christmas angel design. I just couldn't bring myself to deface a book, so I went to the charity shop and got a book about the Kardashians!! I had no problem defacing that!!!
On a serious note, I always give my books to charity. The only ones I've ever thrown in the bin are those that have seen better days - it's awful getting a book from a charity shop to find some pages have dropped out!
And I've come to the conclusion that if I'm not enjoying a book, don't carry on! They are so many (excellent) books out there, why waste valuable reading time reading codswallop?!! And for me, that seems to often mean books that have won awards or extolled as books that you MUST read!!!!

I am reading Where the crawdads sing by Delia Owens . I am only reading it because it was brought for me by my best friend . I am hating it but will read it to the end because she choose it for me. It's driving me mad. Each chapter is a different year but it keeps bouncing back and forwards between years. Err. If I don't like a book I stop reading but if it's brought for me rather than loaned I feel I have to read it.

It read Philip Pullman's Amber spyglass trilogy years ago and did enjoy them. But his Dust trilogy is far superior read the first 2 quickly and looking forward to getting the final one when it's published in September. It's more about the people rather than weird creatures etc. Both books are over 600 pages but well worth the read.

Only books I have binned where some of my late husband's books he had as a children that had got mouldy in the garage I forgot I had left them in there and found them before I moved house.

The worst book I (started) to read was ‘The Slap’ by Christos Tsiolkas.

I’d watched and enjoyed the TV series despite all of the weird sex.

But the book was absolutely packed with gratuitous weird sex; constant swearing; and the most unsympathetic characters you can imagine.

It went straight back to the library

rubysong

I put 'We need to talk about Kevin' on the bonfire. I was so freaked out by it I didn't want anyone else to read it.

I loved that book!

At our Probus Club we bring books and swap them once a month. I always pick up a couple but I bring more. Good culling exercise. We have also started a table for unwanted goods and sell them very cheaply - all monies go to the club. It is proving to be very popular, where else could you get an electric whisk for 5 bucks ?

I read a book about marital abuse that was just plain nasty and gratuitous, Musicgirl, nor was it well written.
It was on my Kindle so I could delete it but I put a poor review on Amazon and got a nasty response from the author. It was quite a rant!

The only book I have ever literally binned was a copy of Mein Kampf printed in that impenetrable German Gothic script so beloved by the Nazis. I would not have inflicted it on a charity shop and would not want it attracting any attention from neo-Nazi sympathisers.
Don’t ask me why I still had it, years after clearing out my parents’ Scottish house, but I suspect my Mum had to have a copy in Germany in the 30’s and probably didn’t know how to dispose of it either.

I read a book last year, a murder mystery, which is usually my favourite genre. I cannot remember the author or the title, thankfully, but it was set in Devon. It was very far from the cosy mystery or police procedural l was expecting; in fact it was just plain nasty. I ploughed through to the end, mostly skim reading, but wish I hadn’t. I put it in the recycling bin as I didn’t want anyone else to read it. I almost felt defiled after it.

I mean the one on Trump, Mom3

lovebeigecardigans1955

Sorry to say that I found Don Quixote (despite the humour) almost unbearable and I threw it away after I'd trawled through it. Giving hints about the contents of the next chapter took away much of the excitement of 'what happens next'. I'm sure I'm dissing someone's favourite here, the same could be said of my next choice.

I can't recall if I kept Middlemarch or gave it to charity. Now that was like trying to push treacle upstairs.

Throw Middlemarch in the bin! Its an amazing book.....not just Dorothea learning the hard way about love and what respect and self respect mean as a woman, but the theological arguments of the time.

I was about to say I'd never throw a book in the bin (let the charity shop decide) till I read Mom3 above. Straight to the bin.