The Justification of Book Burning

[Kim]

Ever since I was a child I have loved reading. I can honestly say that they have made my life better, made me wiser, and given me an escape when I needed it. In this way, I see book burning as evil as dumping black paint over a painting.

A couple days ago I was talking on the phone with a friend of mine who said, "Kim, you would be so proud of me!" Her friends were having a bonfire, and she had brought two copies of Twilight and burned them.

Now, I don't like Twilight, but I did at one point, before they were very popular and I was still in early high school. However, I was also into fanfiction at the time, so I already was in the mindset of loving stories of cheap romance written in bad quality, so it made sense that I liked it at the time. However, the fan base and the undeserving popularity of the series has lead me to dislike the series.

But that's not to say that I was happy with my friend. To me, it sounded equivalent to her saying "Remember that girl we didn't like a couple years ago, how she used to annoy us and follow us around?  I just beat her into a coma." I may not like Twilight, but burning the book didn't seem justified in my eyes.

 

Am I wrong for thinking that? Is there a book deserving to be burned in this world, or should all books be allowed to exist, or if they don't should they be recycled?

Also, this makes me think of the movie "The Day After Tomorrow," where they're trapped in a library and must burn books for warmth, so the librarian would only choose books worth burning. What books would you choose in that case? For me, it'd be Twilight, Adult Romance novels, and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. :)

[Hunter]

Who was it that said they didn't care if their books were burned, they got many out of them anyway. Was that JK Rowling, or someone else?

[Steven Olson]

Maybe Mein Kampf? If we're looking for books that deserve burning... I think that is an "evil" book if almost any are evil...

 

[Alexis Rivard]

Mein Kampf, despite having a lot of antisemitic material, had many good ideas in it about economy and various other related subjects. Considering the current economic crisis, it should not be burnt.

[Adrianne G]

I don't think burning books is a good decision in any case. It wastes money and perfectly good paper, not to mention it's just ethically wrong and would, I assume, hurt the author's feelings (if he/she/it were still alive). I feel as if recycling a book you hate is equally effective (affective? sorry I haven't mastered that one yet) but not as wasteful.

 

Either that or give the terrible book to someone you hate. Although by that chance they'd probably enjoy it and then your life would suck.

[Alexis Rivard]

Although I agree that Twilight is really an awful series, I feel that perhaps the editor and publisher should be burnt (dark humor ftw?). Okay seriously, book burning is a form of propaganda and as a lover of the truth, I'd say propaganda is a bad thing. Books document what was important to people at a certain time, sure Twilight will not be important ten years (more life five years) in the future but to look back at how certain social settings and times cause such an uproar about a book that was really shitty. For anthropologists it may be useful and you don't want to mess with those anthropologists, they'll shank you. Besides if you remove all copies of Twilight you're really no better than Stephanie Meyer for writing it and we all know that she deserves to be shot.

[Chip, A Former Ningmaster]

While I am morally against book burning, I have a hard time getting properly angry about it because it's not practical. With the invention of computers and the internet, everything you could possibly want is online, somewhere. That's what my thought was in your story about Twilight. I just went "Well, there are another billion copies out there." And yet despite that it's not really that useful, it's still a really powerful symbol. When that thing happened in Florida where people where threatening to burn the Quran I was like "You assholes! Don't you dare!" I don't know.