Throwing a book in the bin !

There is a difference between a sad book, even a desperately sad one, and a depressing book, don't you think? Something about whether the courage and resilience of the human spirit features at all, or whether there is a curmudgeonly, grudging sort of gloom pervading everything. I had a lot of difficulty finishing "Gone Girl", "the addictive no 1 bestseller" by Gillian Flynn. Not that it was altogether grim, but the sheer spite of the Girl in question was chilling - as it was meant to be - and it wasn't too difficult to guess the twist before the ending. It's still on my shelf, but I definitely don't intend to pass it on. Chilling!

I was reading an excellent book that had been a real slow burner.

I'd got to the point where it was absolutely gripping, when it fell down behind my exes chest of drawers, then life took a series of twists and turns, and I never found out what happened.

I don’t throw books in the bin, but give them to charities. My bugbear are those books ‘written ‘ by celebrities. The last I was given as a gift , Shirley Ballas ( plus one other) ‘ Murder on the Dance Floor ‘. Badly written, dreadful plot and characters.
I feel so sorry for new writers who have no real hope of a good publisher, as all seem to go for the ‘celebs’ and therefore high sales.

Allsorts

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 think I'm going to have to come and get Angela's Ashes out of your bin Allsorts, I really liked that book even if it was a catalogue of misery. I'll let you keep Jackie Collins in the bin though her stuff sounds like trash so probably where it belongs. Not sure about Jilly Cooper, I'll read one and reserve judgement as to whether that gets lobbed as well.

Crossstitchfan

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!

Charity shops are donated so many books that their store-rooms are flooded with them.

Thanks.
I didn't know that.

They made a film based on the novel MissA. It was a very bleak, dark watch.

I've never read The Road.
Might have to now, though.

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...

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.

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

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

😂 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.

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

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.

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.

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'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.

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 ...

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.

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.

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!

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.