Theres also the point that Dahl himself reedited some of his works after initial publications to correct his own potentially offensive missteps. The oompa loompas were originally African pygmies for example. Its interesting to think what he would think if he were alive. Of course he’s not so we cant ask him.

There are subtleties here. His words aren’t sacred. If he’d included a few words that we now consider really offensive slurs but weren’t at the time, I think most people would be okay with publishers removing them. Its really the specifics that seem overreaching and somewhat arbitrary.

Its also the issue of passing off these changes however slight as his work. Publish a totally new reimagined version if you want recontextualize, adapt, etc. but call it something new.

Read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.”Its about how euphemistic language is used subtly to change historical narratives.

I don’t think this is exactly whats happening in publishing. Thats more capitalism run amok, the invisible hand of the market distorting art to sell children’s books. But still choice of words with specific connotations that have the same basic meaning can be used in subversive ways.

"Where they burn books, they will, in the end burn people"

Serious answer: no, never. Because even hate filled rhetoric needs to be documented. Example: Mein Kampf. Unserious answer: Atlas Shrugged.

Euphoric.

About the only reason I would burn a book is if it was that damaged and unreadable on a physical level, and that I guess I needed the warmth.

Otherwise even with "harmful" books, I can see their use if at least as an example of something. I studied Holocaust denial in grad school (the phenomenon and how to debunk it), so even hateful garbage like that I wouldn't burn.

We were lucky to have him as long as we did. He suffered much in his final years and sadly his writing did as well.

Quick answer is none, because that’s a slippery slope. I agree that there are books out there with harmful ideas, but maybe we need to talk more about how a lot of people aren’t able to critically appraise information very well and often just accept what they read as “fact”.

Joke answer is the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy because the writing is just SOOOOO bad.

No. Even books I abhor. As with anything dealing with freedom of speech/expression, hypocrisy rears its ugly head pretty quickly if I make even one exception.

If you believe a book is harmful or awful, don't read it. But that has to be an individual choice. It's really that simple.

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The Alchemist.

Not burn, but there's definitely some books that are offensive and I wish wouldn't be read uncritically, especially kids lit where you know chances of critical reading is very low. I'm thinking of things like Peter Pan or Pocahontas. There are some seriously messed up things in those. Maybe they can be available for adults as a part of our history and the harmful views that were commonly held.

Personally, any copy of the protocols of the elders of Zion I came across wouldn’t survive, and someone gave my kids a biblical study guide to dinosaurs once that went in a trash pile rather than goodwill, but mass bonfire, nah. It’s a bit too on the nose, even for tucker Carlson’s drivel.

Can't think of any books. Can think of a few authors...

To Train up a Child by the pearls would be one of them. I agree.

No not really, but there was one that I threw in trash can without feeling guilty about was Created to be His Helpmeet by Debi Pearl.

Depending on how vague the title is, it is also probably being checked out by people just innocently looking for ways to deal with their trans or genderquestioning children, and then possibly corrupting their mind with these ideas. That may be even worse.

Shit you're gonna have to go a lot further than 2 of the multiple Abrahamic faith holy books to get that done.

Divergent. I had to do an assignment for school and my group had a month to read it before we even started the writing portion. I ended up reading it sixteen times while the person closest to finishing stopped at page nineteen. They all failed, I passed. That, is why you always put aside money to buy Halo books.

I can think of a few local books from politicians that are widely known to be written to whitewash their political sins of the past. It's a biography/memoir of a long standing politician where I'm from.

I live in a country where media control is literally an open secret experiment within us citizens. There's literally an activist and writer (a Nobel Peace Prize winner I might add) who explicitly said that our country is a petri dish of blueprints as to how the rest of the world would do the same thing in their respective countries.

While I believe books and its forms of art are crucial to the world, artists and writers are not infallible geniuses that are incapable of spreading misinformation in their own way.

Like Bjork said, "You should never let a poet lie to you". If a writer lies explicit and seek to do harm, I think that can be burned.

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The Giving Tree- a “how to” book promoting, guilt, codependency and resentment. I detest this book. Should be called the blackmail tree.

I'm in two now, and I've been in others in the past.

In the two of that I'm part of right now, we take turns hosting in groups of 2-3 at someone's house. The hosts provide food and wine. We spend about 20 minutes talking about the book - sometimes more, sometimes less - and spend the rest of the time socializing.

I suspect a book club in a library will have less emphasis on food and socializing, and more book discussion. But no one will be quizzing you about how much you read or understood. It's generally all very lowkey. People are just there to have a nice time.