I hate getting books for Christmas in general because I’m such a mood reader, and I’ve plastered a fake smile on my face many a time and repeated internally ‘Its the thought that counts.’ as I unwrap a book I will not read.
But the worst one by far, given to me by my own Mother , who I know loves me, when I was fourteen years old! was >!Men are from Mars Women are from Venus.!< I am sitting there horrified thinking what is she trying to tell me? As my sisters are flat on the floor laughing to the point of puking. We eventually came to the conclusion she just saw an attractive cover on a bestseller table and grabbed it. Love to know your terrible gift stories.
My MIL loved giving me right wing propaganda books. 🤢 no thank you. If your blurb is from Rush Limbaugh, I’m not reading it.
The only time I read a work by him was that one time I found the first three instalments of his Rush Revere series in a thriftstore. Well, I didn’t know anything about this dude when I bought it, considering that he’s not that popular in Germany compared to the US, but well…
I should’ve guessed that somethings odd with him when the foreword of the first book openly talks about that it will show kids how great american exceptionalism is. IIRC, it also had a weirdly naive outlook on US history, always stressed that the country is the land of the free but kept looking over all the bigotry. Oh, I think the last one I read was also weirdly pro-war/pro-army, because one of the main characters had to come to terms with the fact that is father is a soldier or something?
Whatever, I probably wouldn’t have bought the set if I knew more about him before.
On the plus side it does make good fire wood!
My abuelita used to get me the new Bill O’Reilly book of the year. She really didn’t mean any harm, she’s just a very old school catholic Mexican lady who just accepted whatever she’s told (by the church usually) to accept. She knew I was interested in “politics” and thought I might find them interesting. Unfortunately, the politics I was/am interested in are leftist literature like Marx, Engels, Bakunin, etc among myriad others. Eventually, she started watching Colbert and thought he was so funny and silly (I’m still not sure if she realized it was satire) she started getting me his books. I had a lot of fun reading those. But ultimately, my abuelita is the best and she could get me a pile of shit for Christmas and I wouldn’t love her any less.
Oh, and onetime my fascist uncle got me Atlas Shrugged unironically…that one was pretty bad too.
what’s abuelita? And I don’t want to know.
What a sweet lady. I’d forgive her, but not my MIL. She hates that I’m progressive. 😂
I had an ex-girlfriend that keep giving me Ayn Rand to read. She said how they changed the way she looked at the world. In retrospect I’m glad that relationship ended.
Was one of those books a short little sucker called Anthem? I had to read that in high school and I guess you could say it changed how I looked at the world. I was imaginating triplets joined at the head before I finally figured out everybody was using the royal we (as in Queen Victoria’s classic statement “We are not amused”). Had to work WAY too hard to get that little piece of information and I’ve never read Ayn Rand again. (In fact, when somebody asked me about that book years after graduation, I had to look on the fiction shelves at the library and go through all the Ayn Rand books they had because I’d blocked the damn title out of my brain.)
As far as I’m concerned, the only good thing to come out of “Anthem” is that it inspired the story on Side 1 of Rush’s ‘2112’ album.
My local library is bursting at the seams with donations rn. They had LGBT books and conservative books like one from Rudy Giuliani for sale to help make room. They also had different books available for free. One of the many free books was from Pat Robertson.
When I was leaving the library I laughed in my head thinking 'I wonder if Rudy ever though his book would be priced the same as an LGBT book (or even near one), or if Pat Robertson ever thought that a library would view his book as material to give away for free, while they put a price tag on LGBT books because they were seen as more valuable.'😂
The books only costed 25 cents, but I found the fact that they were giving away Pat’s books for free, unlike the LGBT books, and Rudy being given the same price as hilarious.
I do worry about them selling some of the LGBT books, fortunately they still have a lot in circulation. They were selling two completely good copies of ‘Lawn Boy,’ and I looked into their catalog for it, it’s no longer in circulation. However, they do have the very libertarian ‘Tuttle Twins’ books still in circulation.
That makes me want to reread The Miseducation of Cameron Post.
Those books I won’t even donate. Straight to the trash. I don’t want them out circulating in the world. My MIL gives me “biblical roles for women”type books which also go straight in the trash.
Ha, this year you should give her “A Year of Biblical Womanhood” by Rachel Held Evans and “The Making of Biblical Womanhood” by Beth Allison Barr.