Booking through Thursday asks: What reading skeletons do you have in your closet? Books you’d be ashamed to let people know you love? Addiction to the worst kind of (fill in cheesy genre here)? Your old collection of Bobbsey Twin Mysteries lovingly stored behind your “grown-up” books?
I don't believe I have any current skeletons in my closet. I do, however, have a box of books containing detritus from my old life: a score of Tom Clancy books, books by Oliver North defending his role in the Iran-Contras affair and historical fiction by the same, which were about a group of Real True Christians embedded inside the US government and military that kept the world safe from Muslim Arabs; fawning biographies about Ronald Reagan and his divine influence; hyperreligious books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye (touching is bad) and Every Man's Battle (Avert your eyes from looking at women lest you sin!); and Civil War histories which exalt the Confederacy. These were the books I read during my high school years, when I was a fundamentalist Pentecostal, a die-hard Republican who used "liberal" and "democrat" as jeers, and who earnestly believed the Civil War was about States' rights. I probably would have been a Teabagger in those days. *shudder*
They now sit in a box in my hallway, as I am unsure what to do with them and I know I haven't gotten them all out. Somewhere there are books on UPCI history and books that defame science as the tool of the devil. I don't know what I'll do with them once they've all been found and removed: destroying them is out, given my contempt for molesting books; and I don't want to sell them and become an promoting agent of all that which I left. I could bury them, I suppose, and allow nature to convert them into fertilizer. They'll go that way eventually, and isn't that what Christians used to do? Throw accused witches into lakes and claim that if they were innocent, God would save them? Well, if the books don't rot, obviously God likes `em.
The funny thing is, I've never read most of those Tom Clancy novels or the Reagan biographies. I'd pick them up from the library bookstore, but the only Reagan bio I ever read made me dislike him. It was his autobiography, and when he wrote of his valiant role in saving Hollywood from the Communists, I regarded him with disgust: the man admitted to being a McCarthyist witch-hunter who made his bones through political persecution.
If you liked those books at one point, there might actually be people out there who like them too. I'm sure you could find some on the internet who might want to read them if you don't want to sell them or burn them (I completely understand your reluctance to do that, I wouldn't even do that to books I hate).
ReplyDeleteIt was an interesting answer to a pretty good question.
Here's mine if you're interested.
I wouldn't object to selling Clancy: I associate him with those years given my then-obsession with all things military.
ReplyDelete(I'm still a softy when it comes to old planes and ships, though!)
There's nothing wrong with a bit of military though! I have a Tom Clancy one floating around somewhere come to think of it... Don't ask me what it is because I have no idea. But there's a lot of movies adapted from his books aren't there?
ReplyDeleteI don't believe that those are skeltons. You learned something from them, right? So they're not 'bad'. Interesting BTT!
ReplyDeleteHere's mine: http://harrischanningauthor.blogspot.com/2010/10/booking-through-thursday.html
Does not seem you have any books to be ashamed of or need to hide. I am sure someone, some where would love to read them.
ReplyDeletewww.thesocialfrog.com
Interesting........ I used to read a lot of military fiction & non-fiction too back in the day....
ReplyDelete