Nominations are opened for the true trash book. I nominate Weapons of Choice World War 2.1, John Birmingham, which has only survived because this is the Trash Library. It is nearly 800 pages long; the writing is acceptable in that there are no errors so bad it is put aside; the form is narrative juxtaposed interludes with different protagonists from among the characters featured in each. It claims to be a thriller/science fiction, and it keeps just creeping along well enough to make the reader decide to give it another five minutes after lunch, and then waste an hour; a book constructed to be picked up in lacunae of the day. The construction, at a secondary level, is not quite skilled enough to not draw attention to itself, but it is interesting to look at construction techniques, so even that is passable. So it meets every criterion for trash I can think of and I've put it on the shelves.
Other criteria for trash? Other nominations?
5 comments:
i think there should also be a category for the book that people have been most happy to find in the trash library - the book that they perhaps had not heard of or would never have normally picked up but came across by accident and got sucked in by when looking merely for something to pass the time... i can't think right now of what i would like to nominate here but i'm sure this is a category.
Some of the best books have discouraging or even off-putting starts; steadily down hill for 20 pages is a good hint to put it back (not counting Russian novels that need a good 50 pages).
Then there is Austen, out of the trap like a greyhound and worthwile to the finish; not many like her. I wonder how many novels she simply threw away?
Trash are books that one enjoys but is a bit ashamed of enjoying.
What you call the trash library contains lots of them, but it also contain a lot of non-trash. At one extreme, there are the classics. At the other extreme, there is crap.
The book you consider exemplary trash is obviously crap, its presence in any library is not justified at all except as part of a virtual “bonfire corner” of the library (as argued last month). Trash is the middle range of the library, it is allowable to include under trash something that at least one person considers trash, but to stamp as trash books that at least one person does not regard as trash is offensive to that person. There are also books that nobody in her right mind would consider trash, e.g. all the beautiful art, poetry, theatre books that are also on your shelves. This is why I have always been against branding all books in the library as “trash library books”.
To regard all the books on your shelves as part of your trash library is a form of self-deprecatory, and therefore apologetic and insincere, attitude to your reading. It is also a form of obscurantism, for it debases valuable reading, often without even reading it.
Therefore you have two possible courses of action: one is to rename your trash library, call it “trash and non-trash library”, or better “classics, trash and crap library”. The other is to split what you now call the trash library into a trash library proper with all trash books, including the crap/virtual-bonfire corner, housed in a single room, and the rest – non-trash, better defined positively rather than negatively, say good books - housed in a different room or rooms. You would not have to rename the website accordingly, but the original misrepresentation of the library on the website will linger on.
I feel so strongly about this issue that, should you not rename nor split the trash library, I will cease to visit and contribute to this site completely – at least in my present incarnation. I might reappear under a different name, but only to comment on the very nice threads that have nothing to do with books.
Pispolo, you cannot go on strike, no matter your political belifs, but you are wlcome to fume as you have here. I will think how to shelve with discrimination. Is that enouigh to keep you reading and contributing?
A temptation; elsewhere we are choosing our hundred best books. Or at least our top ten. See, we are discriminating.
Sorry about the typos, eating merenda and commenting are inimical.
Post a Comment