Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

A meme of sorts…

If you were to attend a book burning, which books would you take to put onto the pyre? Why?

My reaction to this question is perhaps unusual, I think it sounds like a great idea, mostly because burning books is associated with government oppression and control of media, if it were reclaimed by the populace as a statement of distaste at the kind of rubbish they try to feed us with that could only be a good thing. Clearly it has a long history, in the days when books were written by hand I imagine the act itself was a very powerful statement. These days, though, cheap paperbacks are frequently pulped by the publishers when their sales estimates were out by an order of magnitude, so while the symbolism remains the act itself is not very costly in terms of either time or money.

For me there are a lot of bad books out there, but mostly they’re just a bit of a waste of time, not that many really get me angry enough to want to commit that kind of heresy. Indeed, there are only two I can think of:

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (John Grey) – the classic of the ‘relationship self help’ genre, but it contains nothing you don’t know already. And it spends most of its time justifying dreadful behaviour by guys in terms of primitive cultures. Things have moved on since then, and while I still don’t really understand I *know* that this book isn’t helping.

Prozac Nation (Elizabeth Wurtzel) – a load of self-indulgent twaddle that has set back the introduction of better living through chemistry a number of years. Antidepressants make you think things like this are publishable, don’t do it kids, stick with making music, at least that sometimes sounds good, and even if not it only lasts four minutes.

And a couple of runners-up, Linus Torvalds biography and Emma, the bane of my life, neither of which I actually own so it’d be a little inconsiderate to add them to the inflagration.


Categories: Memories.

/ 35 Comments

35 comments

  1. pjc50

    The idea of having a symbolic burning of Ayn Rand’s books has often occured to me, as they seem to be very bad at turning impressionable adolescent geeks into libertarian sociopaths.

    I’d also like to burn a copy of the Terrorism Act.

    Book burning *is* heretical, though :)

    Reply
    • neilh

      Oh, in the technical sense…even better…does that mean we can get arrested for it?

      (one of the suggestions I heard was the Satanic Bible, for its pure inconsistency, but I suspect that is just a side-effect of its relationship with the ‘real’ Bible, I wonder if they’d consider that heresy?)

      And, yeah, Terrorism Act would be a good one – though I fear that could be a conspiracy of some kind.

      Reply
    • neilh

      hehehe, I thought I did…I’m glad I read it because it gave me a better understanding of what Linus is about, but he’s fuelled almost entirely by ego and hardly at all by ability. The fact he is worshipped as some kind of god by a large chunk of the geek crowd is very disturbing for me.

      Reply
      • sciamachy

        Shit, you’re right – it is here after all.

        God? I wouldn’t say so. Hero maybe, de-facto leader maybe, but not god. Essentially all he’s done is bring people together and create a free alternative that enables people to do what they want with their PCs on their terms. I’d say that’s a pretty good thing. He’s done a lot of work that benefits a lot of people, for not a great deal of reward (though his income is now starting to reflect his contribution to the world). The man’s no saint, and he’s not infallible, but he’s done pretty well.

        Reply
        • neilh

          But he’s done it in a typically arrogant Finnish way. Indeed, I heard a theory that the-powers-that-be had encouraged its development to distract all the controversial thinkers onto a project that needed more work than necessary and avoid them thinking about the problems that really affect society.

          I’d be less bothered if he’d spawned a generation of good coders, but he’s not a good role model for coding style. …I know kernels are always going to be ugly, but they don’t need to be that ugly.

          Reply
    • neilh

      But why is it awful? I’m not going to have time to read it until I’ve gotten through my next shelf-full of books, save me the effort.

      Reply
      • mr_flay

        The author treats myth, history, legend and conspiracy with the same respect that oil companies treat Alaska, strip-mining for whatever fun-sounding story he can string into his tedious hokum. The writing is appalling, the characters are uninteresting, being there purely to propel the story from one uninspired set-piece to another, and the whole thing was dull. Dull, dull, dull.

        Reply
        • neilh

          But, like with television, to some extent keeping the masses occupied while the rest of us get on with the interesting stuff has got to have some value.

          Reply
          • mr_flay

            I couldn’t disagree more. Herein lies the crux of the whole difference between the public getting what the public wants and the public wanting what the public gets: there have been many excellent books written that are literate, entertaining, inspirational and popular – To Kill A Mockingbird, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Brighton Rock, Lord Of The Flies and Good Omens (yes, I’ll put Pratchett amongst these luminaries), to name but five off the top of my head. And before you accuse any of these books as being too intelligent for the average mouth-breather, at least two have been on pre-GCSE curricula, and only Cuckoo’s Nest is A-Level standard. If you write for morons, then only morons will read, but if you write for everyone, then the intelligent aren’t insulted and the moronic are stretched while still being entertained.

            Sorry, rant over.

          • neilh

            I’m guessing morons make up a large enough percentage of the market that the extra effort involved in writing for the non-morons isn’t made up for by the extra sales acheived.

            Onto the pyre it goes.

    • neilh

      Seems a little harsh to burn it for being purple, that would take out a reasonable percentage of my friends too….erm, but, that said, I don’t consider them to be particularly long-winded or annoying.

      Reply
    • mr_flay

      Hmm. Yes, up to a point. I found the middle section to be quite engaging, but the last third went on forever, and it was such drum-banging misandry that it was a chore to read after a while. On the other hand, some of the imagery and ideas were rather good.

      Reply
  6. ingaborg

    I’ve got one – or rather, I haven’t

    There’s a Thomas M. Disch novel which is so appallingly grim that I binned it instead of taking it to a charity shop. It is a pointless and depressing sci-fi novel that ends with the last few humans dying inside giant invading plants. The clinching factor in my decision that I did not wish to allow another person to read this novel was the bit with the sausage machine.

    If only Disch had had the sense to write “Camp Concentration” and then stop while he was ahead.

    Reply
    • neilh

      Re: I’ve got one – or rather, I haven’t

      the bit with the sausage machine
      You can’t leave us all in suspense like that.

      But thank you for saving the rest of humanity from that abomination.

      Reply
      • ingaborg

        Re: I’ve got one – or rather, I haven’t

        Oh, it’s just what you’d expect starving humans to do with a sausage machine. It was the way that it could be heard grinding all night that bothered me. And the miserable pointlessness of the entire work, by an author who could have used his time so much better.

        Reply
        • neilh

          Re: I’ve got one – or rather, I haven’t

          Pointlessness is a far greater crime than miserableness. But the two together are truly disappointing.

          Reply
  7. aperrott

    I once shredded and then burnt a small collection of science fiction short stories on the grounds that they were all utterly depressing.

    Reply
    • neilh

      Everywhere I go there are budding Emma wannabes trying to convince me to hook up with some thoroughly inappropriate floozie.

      Reply
      • ingaborg

        Doh! Sorry, I completely forgot that you had personal reasons for disliking the book. I was thinking purely in literary terms.

        Maybe you should break the hearts of the floozies and then you can tell the wannabe Emmas what a terrible mistake they made?

        Reply
        • neilh

          It is fine literature, its the legacy it has left that is my problem.

          Not sure theres much chance of my breaking anyones heart, mostly because they (the Emmas) tend to spend time convincing me that X would be interested if only I paid her a little attention, when X clearly has far better things to be doing with her time.

          Reply
  9. neilh

    Its a great documentary. In the same way my livejournal is a great documentary of my life…but that doesn’t mean it needs to be unleashed on the world at large.

    Reply
  10. ex_lark_asc

    Wicked meme.

    Antidepressants make you think things like this are publishable, don’t do it kids, stick with making music, at least that sometimes sounds good, and even if not it only lasts four minutes.

    Unfair to those cases in which ADs geniunely help an illness, but yes, cosmetic SSRIs are not a clever idea..

    Reply
    • neilh

      The “Don’t do it” was aimed at the ‘writing a book’ not at the ‘anti-depressants’…but, sure, I don’t think I agree with recreational SSRIs.

      Reply
      • ex_lark_asc

        AIUI it’s not so much recreatonal as “hypochondriac Ladies Who Lunch” types getting Prozac because their vague sense of discontentment must obviously mean they’re deeply depressed..

        Reply
        • neilh

          …and their doctors give them prescriptions to make them go away without actually having to spend time dealing with them. I know (of) the sort.

          Reply
  11. purple_peril

    I’m going to disagree with you I’m afraid.

    I learned a lot I didn’t know already from Mars/Venus, and it has helped me enormously to understand the opposite sex in relationships, romantic and otherwise, since I read it. It actually helped my (male) boss and (female) colleagues to understand a problem we were having together just last week.

    I have never read Prozac Nation. I do know, however, that many people have found solace in this book, that it has helped dispel the dreadful sense of being the only one to feel like this, that comes with depression. Your throwaway comment about antidepressants above is naive and unhelpful and best. “Antidepressants make you think things like this are publishable” – no, antidepressants save lives. Antidepressants saved my life, along with books like this that made me realise that other people have this medical condition too, that I’m not being wilfully self-pitying, that it really isn’t that easy to ‘just snap out of it’ like everyone says I should. What is self-indulgent twaddle to you can be quite literally a life-saver to those of us who suffer from the killer illness that is clinical depression. Hot button I’m afraid.

    Reply
    • neilh

      I’m going to disagree with you I’m afraid.
      Don’t be afraid of disagreeing….

      My problem with Mars/Venus is that it was written with a very male perspective – so you’re right that it might help women understand men more but it almost certainly doesn’t help men understand women more. I’ve read more than my share of this kind of book (and I’m still something of a social no-hoper), and they all suffer from the same problem, pushing the agenda of the sex of their author. This is one of the worst, though. Sure, it contains some useful mind-tools, but then so does the Bible and I don’t agree with that (but don’t want to get into the kind of heresy arguments I could land in by suggesting burning it…).

      As for PN, it was recommended to me by someone who was going through such a depression (but I’d not realised at the time quite what her circumstances were). Despite the flippancy of my comment, I feel very strongly that antidepressants have a place as part of the way out of some of these kinds of mental situations. They are not *the* answer, just a part of the answer. The recommender later gave up her antidepressants without medical help (you’re supposed to cut down slowly but she just stopped overnight), flipping her into an extremely bad place, and nearly taking me down with her. It wasn’t entirely her fault, but if I’d known about her situation with her pills I would’ve been able to give her better support, she was too afraid of me to tell me what was going on.

      So…it probably *did* help her, but I felt that she’d (Wurtzel) made a drug hell for herself and then was surprised that she wasn’t happy there. People have ‘coping strategies’, things they do to deal with particular situations in their life, for a lot of people that is cigarettes or alcohol, or other drugs. Often these coping strategies, while helpful in the short term, are damaging in the long term. Helping people to find effective, and long-term constructive, coping strategies is a key to lifting their depressions. This isn’t an easy thing to do, they’re some of the most difficult habits to break. And, worse than that, often at the time of need there isn’t time or inclination to break the habit, you need something to cope *now*, the long-term can wait.

      As a slight aside, there was a study on one of the antidepressants (not sure which one) which suggested that, while it made life generally better for those taking it, it actually increased the suicide rate. I don’t know how true this is, of course, it might just be a company wanting to sell a different drug.

      Reply
  12. bobmonster

    What I’d want to burn…

    The bloody phone book.
    I keep getting these bloody useless things and use them for nothing but keeping the living room table from floating off into space. Give me it on CD and maybe I’ll use it. I mean, I have the internet, WTF do I nead this paper dinosaur for?

    Besides, book burning has a rather distasteful feel to it. What about a mass recyling? Everybody bring bad books and chuck them in the big bin while everyone cheers.

    Reply
    • neilh

      Re: What I’d want to burn…

      Besides, book burning has a rather distasteful feel to it

      Thats the point, its punk in all its suburbia unfriendly glory. But with an intellectual twist.

      And I’ve got to agree with the phone books, I’ve recieved three of the damned things since I’ve been living here, and only used them once when I was too lazy to walk upstairs and use google.

      Reply

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