Should I burn these books?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

My ex-girlfriend's sister's mother-in-law has a tenant who insists on giving her books. A lot of books. I end up getting a lot of these books in much the same way.

They come in two basic varieties: (1) vaguely lefty, running from Naomi Klein through the likes of Pilger and Chomsky, and back round to George Soros; and (2) screwball paranoiac "(lizardmen / black helicopters / UN / crypto-communists / aliens / etc.) have infiltrated Merka, need to be smoked out," and so on.

I forget they're lying around - I have a lot of books and other crap lying around that I just don't see any more. But other people see them.

Now, the category(1) books, while not really my cup of tea, at least constitute something I have read and found some merit in at some point. The other stuff I figured I would sell, both to make some space and maybe a little money (they're in good nick, never having been opened).

But - leaving aside the likely embarrassment of taking a David Icke book into a used book store - how much money is enough for releasing these memes back into the wild?

I mean, shouldn't I just burn the fuckers? Or will Ray Bradbury try to sue me, the same way he went back in time and tried to sue Hitler?

― Qin Shi Huang Di, Saturday, 30 October 2004 07:11 (twenty-one years ago)

dude, just sell it online

― Sir Kingfish Beavis D'Azzmonch (Kingfish), Saturday, 30 October 2004 07:14 (twenty-one years ago)

I have long said that only Nazis burn books. However, after living with someone whose books choke everything in our home like an invasive species, cover every surface, clog every doorway, stack along every wall, endlessly forever and ever and in a totally limp, useless, messy, and unbearable way, I'm now ofr burning books. Burn them all. I will giggle. I never thought I'd say it, but I hate books.

― Kenan (kenan), Saturday, 30 October 2004 07:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Are you any good at just making one of your eyes go cross-eyed? If you are do that and then sell them at a used bookstore. Either that or get a wheelchair and pretend to be mentally disabled and sell them in a used bookstore. It'd be funner that way and you'd have a ready excuse for having those books in the first place.

― Bryan (Bryan), Saturday, 30 October 2004 07:17 (twenty-one years ago)

I guess it's not really the embarrassment - I could, as noted, just sell them online.

I can't imagine I'll get much for them and, in light of that, why not just burn what is essentially mental pollution (albeit almost endearingly mental pollution), instead of putting them back out where they can do little good?

(Disclosure: Potentially tipping the scales is the bastard gas company cutting me off yesterday...)

So, reasoning aside, the current tally reads:
Sell 2
Burn 1

― Qin Shi Huang Di, Saturday, 30 October 2004 08:08 (twenty-one years ago)

give them to charity - may the salvation army forever be scourged with the sin of profiting from the lizard queens

― Queen Gone now, Saturday, 30 October 2004 09:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Can I have them?

― Cathy (Cathy), Saturday, 30 October 2004 10:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Maybe.

Why would you want them?

― Qin Shi Huang Di, Saturday, 30 October 2004 10:59 (twenty-one years ago)

I love all that stuff, the more screwball paranoiac the better.

― Cathy (Cathy), Saturday, 30 October 2004 11:20 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, i love that shit too.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 30 October 2004 11:39 (twenty-one years ago)

You shd stick w/john a keel - "aliens live in the bits between the frames of the movie of reality" IIRC was his thesis, which was actually delivered quite convincingly during the time you actually read the book. IE if you read "ufos; operation trojan horse" late at night, it had the powah to really spook yer fucking brain out. It is undoubtedly one of the most demented things I have ever read.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 30 October 2004 11:45 (twenty-one years ago)

oh i've read plenty of john keel. i love that (maybe not so?) crazy bastard. also jacques vallee, who argues similar views from a more 'scientific' perspective.

i just love the illuminazi/lizardmen stuff because it's really amusing!

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 30 October 2004 11:54 (twenty-one years ago)

'"aliens live in the bits between the frames of the movie of reality" IIRC was his thesis, which was actually delivered quite convincingly during the time you actually read the book. IE if you read "ufos; operation trojan horse" late at night, it had the powah to really spook yer fucking brain out.'

Also Communion by Whitley Strieber has to be for this reason one of the most terrifying books I've ever read.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 30 October 2004 11:58 (twenty-one years ago)

what both disch and i got from Whitley Strieber was that he needed a cock up his arse really really badly...all of the probe imagery there has to be sublimated homoeroticism. (so, of course, i found it hot.)

― anthony, Saturday, 30 October 2004 18:17 (twenty-one years ago)

hahaha otm

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 30 October 2004 18:19 (twenty-one years ago)

How sublimated can homoeroticism be if anal probes are involved?

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Saturday, 30 October 2004 18:28 (twenty-one years ago)

He's trying to run away from the fact that he liked the probing.

― j.lu (j.lu), Saturday, 30 October 2004 18:30 (twenty-one years ago)

well the thing is the entity in the book that is "supervising" the probing is female, so make of that what you will.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 30 October 2004 18:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, and the religious implications of the title "Communion" are interesting in conjunction with ass-f***ing.

― j.lu (j.lu), Saturday, 30 October 2004 18:32 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.rotten.com/library/cryptozoology/aliens/

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 30 October 2004 18:44 (twenty-one years ago)

David Icke sublimates his rimjob fixation by writing about lizardmen with flickery, forked tongues.

Cathy - pay for p&p and they're yours. Otherwise I'm composting them.

Should that be flickerish?

― Qin Shi Huang Di, Sunday, 31 October 2004 11:49 (twenty-one years ago)

solution: www.bookcrossing.com

― Captain Obvious, Sunday, 31 October 2004 11:51 (twenty-one years ago)

I like David Icke books. *ducks*
No really, I find them very entertaining.

― dog latin (dog latin), Sunday, 31 October 2004 11:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, I would like them, but won't postage and packaging be really really expensive (I am in the UK, and I'm assuming you are not)?

― Cathy (Cathy), Sunday, 31 October 2004 12:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Hmm... might be.

Give me a few days and I'll try to come up with a rough quote, along with titles and such. Unless you're sure you won't want to spend any money on such pap? Hey, I wouldn't blame you.

dog latin should be banned from owning small reptiles. I keed, I keed...

― Qin Shi Huang Di, Sunday, 31 October 2004 12:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Thanks!

I will spend money on pap, just not lots.

― Cathy (Cathy), Sunday, 31 October 2004 13:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Dude some books like this can be big moneymakers- I mean like $15 for a few minutes of work- do them all on Hamazon!! Get bubble mailers real cheap off ebay DO NOT get them from an office supply store or right at the post office.

― seedy poops in the woods (Queen Electric Butt Prober BZZ), Monday, 1 November 2004 01:09 (twenty-one years ago)

i don't know about lizardmen, that stuff might be worthless unless it's small press, but the chomsky/naomi klein stuff has tons of demand, that's a big thing I look for while hunting books for resale.

― seedy poops in the woods (Queen Electric Butt Prober BZZ), Monday, 1 November 2004 01:11 (twenty-one years ago)

eleven months pass...

you can kill my family tree but you cant kill me! a. hitler

― anthony hitler, Sunday, 16 October 2005 16:44 (twenty years ago)

As opposed to The Hitler?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 16 October 2005 16:47 (twenty years ago)

you can kill my family tree but you cant kill me!

Bummer.

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Sunday, 16 October 2005 16:53 (twenty years ago)

I just recently sold David Icke's "Children Of The Matrix" for more than I bought if for originally. I thought it would be a fun read, but it turned out to be unbelievably fucked up. I had to stop in the dead center of the book and give it up.

Naomi Klein? Didn't she write NO LOGO? You're embarassed to have that in your house? Is your name Thurston Howell III?

It has become fashionable to mock the left again, hasn't it? It's all about lumping sensible lefties in with crazy conspiracy theorists, which was probably a political manuever by Karl Rove.

― Botanist, Sunday, 16 October 2005 17:40 (twenty years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.