Throwing a book in the bin !

I Afraid I throw pbck books in the bin with no compunction if no daughter wants them. And I join the Martin Amis throwing group via my DH who on holiday binned The Rachel Papers for the same reason as others.

I couldn’t bin it, since it was a library book, but there was one I wanted to hurl across the room. Turned out at the end, the whole previous 150 odd pages were what shot through the main character’s head - the ‘what might have been’ in the few seconds before she died in a road accident.

Can’t remember the author - possibly Anita Shreve.

To the pps who hated Middlemarch, that’s one of my very favourite classics! I re-read it just recently.

Harry's book went in the bin.

I put Spare in the bin.

Like many others on this thread I find it really difficult to throw books away so I try to give them to a charity shop or free library. Nowadays most of my reading is done on my Kindle and I really hate giving up on a book I have started but Middlemarch is still languishing in the ether and is unlikely ever to be finished. The only books I don't mind deleting unfinished are the ones which are so badly written that it detracts from the content, and there have been a few of those.

M0nica

terribull I have never (to my knowledge) met your DH, but we have something in common. I too chucked Martin Amis' Money in the bin. yes, it was the language, also its lack of any discernable plot.

I have often extolled the works of a 19th century woman writer Mrs Oliphant. When she is good, she is very very good, but when she is bad ........Oh, my God. I recently downloaded one of her books onto my Kindle and a few days later delated it because the plot was so ridiculous and far fetched.

Yeah Terribull I’m with your old man on any books by Martin Amis.
His Dad was a good writer tho a misogynist and a bigot of alarming proportions.
The only book I ever put into the bin was a Stephen King one, called, I think The Outsider as I found it sickening.

As I won't be buying Dorries' work of political fiction I won't alas have the satisfaction of throwing it in the bin or giving it to the dog for his delectation but I enjoyed John Crace's paraphrase of it in today's Guardian.

i had to start using a kindle a few years ago as i need large print, i read about 3 books a week so get them from amazon, some free and some payed for, i look at the reviews and then make my mind up, if i get to about chapter 3 and it is not holding my attention, i just delete, too many books out there for me to waste my time on a rubbish book.

yes - well to start the fire, making them useful 2! copies of American Psycho, shudder, came in a box of books,
The Good Earth, awful needed a firelighter,
Hardacre which was rubbish but 10p from brownie jumble

Lady Chatterlys lover which I thought banal and embarrassed to have in the house
although having a book of DH Lawrence short stories,
‘The Woman who rode away’ bizarre unsettling, prose perfect.

Witzend I read that book too! I felt quite cheated as I had invested a lot in the characters to find out none of it was real, if you see what I mean. I have recently tried again to read one by Kate Mosse and couldn't finish it. I really enjoyed Labyrinth but this one was so similar in style yet boring. I can't remember the title!

I actuAlly burned a book on the garden bonfire. It was a gift but we found that the person who had given it was convicted of a disgusting crime. I couldn’t bear to have it in the house and felt passing it on would defile someone else’s. I have Shantaram on the book shelf and can’t get into it. I read Crawdads and lost patience with it,knowing exactly what was going to happen in the end. Covid reads were forgettable and I’m rereading and deleting. We’ve far too many books.

There's something intriguing about the book I'm currently reading. I bought it in a charity shop and it was obvious from the condition that it had been read by more than one person. However, three quarters of the way through, the pages suddenly seem new and untouched, as though no-one has read beyond that point. I wonder if it's for the seem reason as me. The story was depressing but credible until the author had a police unit using a machine gun to slaughter innocent women and children. The story is set in Britain in modern times, so that event simply wouldn't happen.

Ive started The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo as EVERYONE said how wonderful it is !!! What ? Awful ! The writing is robotic, the storyline is ridiculous and the twist at the end was a damp squid ... I am going to hurl it in the Bin and I have never done that to a book ....I simply cannot understand how everyone is all over it ...

I'd read the whole of Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta series and thoroughly enjoyed them; until I got to the 8th one. I struggled on to the last chapter and ended up chucking it in the bin.
It was the most ludicrous and implausible ending since Bobby Ewing had a shower in Dallas! Never read another of her books.

Yes. American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis. It was the first book which made me seriously consider the responsibilities which an author must acknowledge when producing popular (or even unpopular) fiction. I threw my copy into my Aga. (Burning books?! Oh horror!) It was set reading on a college course and when I expressed my horror to my supervisor, she actually laughed (yet she fancied herself as a big feminist thinker, what the .....?). I don't advocate bland, anodyne writing but, really, there is nothing funny about the rape and sadistic abuse of women, told in a jokey, ha-wot-a-nutter voice.

I felt quite traumatised by reading American Psycho.

I had to take regular breaks, where I closed the book and put it out of sight for a day or two.

Hetty58

I read 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy ( as it won the Pulitzer prize) but then I swiftly binned it - as I didn't want my children to read it.

Still, decades later, those images of the cellar 'food store' and spit roast baby haunt me.

They haunt me too Hetty58 oh how I wish I’d never read that book, and yes I swiftly binned it too.
I also binned a Stephen King book that was just too dark, stopped reading it and threw it out.
Boring books just go to the charity shop.Including a couple by Martin Amis, too clever by half and pretty unremarkable, strange really as his Father was such a readable author even if a not very pleasant character.

Oh, I loved American Psycho - and The Road. I've never yet found a book 'too dark'.

😂 just realised this is an old thread that I had already commented on this very page.
The Stephen King one was called The Outsider I noticed, yet tonight I couldn’t recall the title.

I have * MissInterpreted* I had the feeling they were defiling my home just by sitting there on the bookshelf.😲

Ellet

I have only once binned a book, it was by Martina Cole. It was horrific. I love a good murder/mystery/thriller but this was just gratuitous violence. I binned it because I didn’t want anyone else to read it.
I once took a bag of books to a charity shop, Barnardo’s, they refused to take them. Our local hospice shop took them gladly. Guess who gets my business now?

I am finding that my q local hospice shop is getting very picky about books, and other items. I thought charity shops were glad of anything they can sell on, but the shop (in Kent) turned its nose up in no uncertain terms! I should add that the items were clean and looked like new so I don’t know what their problem was. Perhaps they just didn’t like me!

I love a few Martina Cole books.
They're all much of a muchness, though, really.

I have felt like throwing a few away as they are so bad, one was Angela's Ashes, so depressing. You couldn't pay me to read Jilly Cooper or Jackie Collins. I pass unwanted books to a charity shop as others might like them.

I have on occasion ‘returned’ a book on my Kindle and received a refund. I try to download a sample first to get a good idea of whether it not I will like it. I agree with he contributor above - Middlemarch is dreadful I took it into hospital on one occasion and it was the only book I had with me so I had to plough on.

Oreo

I have * MissInterpreted* I had the feeling they were defiling my home just by sitting there on the bookshelf.😲

Oh no, the darker the better for me...