When I saw this thread, I instantly knew that Twilight would make up about 50 percent of the posts, and I wasn't far off. Also, I agree with that.
Wow I'm surprised that it took this long for Mein Kampf to get mentioned.Sansha said:Mein Kampf
The Bible
Twilight
*buys plane ticket to Britain*Furburt said:Well, I believe that destroying books is a true sign of an intellectually stunted culture, but that's just me. However, when asked what books would I prefer didn't exist, I'm going to say Tony Blair's recent book. Reading it actually made me feel physically ill. He's one of the most callous and opportunistic politicians out there, and I honestly would be glad if someone killed him. Or at least just punched him once.
You and I clearly had opposite reactions to Gladwell's core thesis. And if you'd read the book and understood it you'd know why Gladwell's time-of-year theory works.Blind Sight said:The title pretty much explains the thread, name some books that were just so bad that you want them to be eliminated.
This mostly comes as a response to the Outliers: The Story of Success, a new book gaining alot of praise. The author, Malcolm Gladwell, basically argues that factors such as what time of the year you were born can determine how successful you are in some fields. I hate this book with a passion, mostly because it acts like what I call faux academia,where an author pretends to use scientific data to back up their claims, when in reality all they're using is broad statistics that they can use to make themselves appear right. Gladwell just dumbs down a ton of sociology in order to come to his conclusions, and what drives me nuts is that people are actually going along with his ideas, despite the fact that they have no real evidence behind them. Also, this might make me sound like a university elitist, but if you claim all the shit he does in the Outliers, I expect a fifty or sixty page bibliography at the end. Most editions of the Outliers don't have any pages devoted to references.
So what books do you want thrown on the burning pile?
EDIT: Because satire is hard to convey on the internet, let me make it clear that I'm not saying we should go out and start burning books we hate. This is more a discussion on terrible books then anything else, so please, no more quoting and empty moralizing on how 'burning books is anti-intellectual and wrong, blah blah blah.'
Speaking as someone who actually does a skill for a living, I find the 10000 hour rule to be really enraging. There is so much wrong with that theory that there's almost no way to approach it.SimuLord said:You need to spend 10,000 hours reading. Maybe you'll get better at it.
The former is paced like a stroke victim wrapped in chains and suspended in molasses, sports a number of uncomfortably detailed author-appeal-laden sex scenes, and has a plot that couldn't be more predictable if you had a working crystal ball; the latter was bland, depressing, bland, redundant, bland, and frankly rather dull; and both of them use two hundred or pages to do the work of a nine-year old with a piece of notebook paper and half an hour on a Saturday morning.Blind Sight said:Why, oh why, would you want both those excellent dystopian books destroyed? Especially when you could just go back in time and get rid of WE, by Yevgeny Zamyatin in 1920, which both Orwell and Huxley openly admitted to ripping offHT_Black said:...and as an afterthought I'd add George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
The Eye of Argon is close, but gets a pass for the same reason as Rocky Horror and Ed Wood movies. The world needs literature that bad.![]()
*strokes goatee*Furburt said:If you or anyone had the balls to actually do that I'd worship you as a fucking god.Macgyvercas said:*buys plane ticket to Britain*Furburt said:Well, I believe that destroying books is a true sign of an intellectually stunted culture, but that's just me. However, when asked what books would I prefer didn't exist, I'm going to say Tony Blair's recent book. Reading it actually made me feel physically ill. He's one of the most callous and opportunistic politicians out there, and I honestly would be glad if someone killed him. Or at least just punched him once.
*punches Tony Blair*
*gets arrested*
You owe me big time, man.
Hey i want to burn that too! but in addition to what you said i would like to add that it is actually very poorly written and the arguments are hollow, Dawkins should never have written this book, if anything it is appealing to pepole's poor understanding of theology and philosophy and manipulating them into believing arguments that are poorly conceived and easily countered are well thought out and hold water. He uses every single logical fallacy in the book and somehow manages to convince pepole that he is right, and any one who has ever thought for themselves can see the error in his logic, he is as irrational as he claims religious pepole are!The Austin said:[HEADING=1]Anti-religious bullshit incoming! Take cover![/HEADING]
Anyway, now that that mandatory thingy-majigger is over, I'm going to go for the exact opposite of what I just warned about. I think that Richard Dawkins' The God Dilemma needs to get burned. Why? Because I'm allowed to believe what I want, and having a book calling me a dumbass isn't going to change my mind.
Is it really so wrong that I believe in something rather primitive? No sir, no it is not. It may be primitive, silly, all around unlikely, but you know what? It makes me happy. So I reserve the right to believe that there is an invisible man in the sky.
Edit: It's actually called The God Delusion. I apologize to any fans, readers, or devout worshipers of this piece of literature that I may have offended.
58 posts. It Took 58 POSTS TO GET THIS MENTIONEDSansha said:Mein Kampf
Name one war that wasn't Religiously driven or Politically driven (I.E. DEM R TEH COMMEIZ SHEWT DEM!).Skullkid4187 said:HA! War would exist ether way, and don't destroy books, It's monstrousWakikifudge said:Any religious text. Seriously, the world would be a lot more peaceful without religion.