So I’m working on a bigger piece on a recent report about incels, but in the meantime I found myself a little distracted by a thread on Twitter about harmful “Airport Books” — that is, those non-fiction books usually with one big and possibly very bad idea that are waiting to snare unwary passengers at the airport bookstore.
Some suggestions from the thread that followed include Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, Neil Strauss’s The Game, JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, Rachel Hollis’ Girl, Wash Your Face, “all those New Atheist books,” and of course The Art of the Deal by that guy whose name we’re all very tired of hearing.
So are there any “Airport Books” (or just popular books in general) that you think have made the world a little (or a lot) worse? (Fiction is fine, too, especially if he has a didactic side to it.) Let us know in the comments!
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“The Way Things Ought To Be” by Rush Limbaugh. How could we forget that waste of dead trees?
And while I’m at it, how about “How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must)”?
Fully agreed, and this is literally the message of the film Inside Out.
All sympathies, Elaine, regarding your dog. It is one of the promises we make to them, to protect them from pain as best we can.
You don’t hear so much about The Rules anymore– I think it was drowned by the wave of PuA books that gave men much the same advice: “act awful and uncaring to the other person, that will trick them into wanting you.”
I actually did pick up some Ayn Rand book in the airport to read on the plane home. (*Anthem*, maybe?) I’ll cop to having enjoyed *Fountainhead* and *Atlas Shrugged* ,at the time I read them, as some sort weird capitalist-realist version of econ-based sci-fi; but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that her writings have made the world a worse place.
The DaVinci Code. A book whose entire premise was thoroughly deconstructed fifteen years before its release by Umberto Eco.
I don’t know if it’s popularity lured more people into believing in conspiracies and pseudo-history but I’m sure it didn’t help.
@ specialffrog
You might find this interesting. It goes into quite a bit of detail as to how Dan Brown writes his books.
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2006/719.html
In fairness, he was quite open that he just makes stuff up and it’s not meant to be taken seriously. He was as surprised as anyone that people did.
@alan: That makes sense. And the DaVinci Code clearly didn’t require any research because it just stole it all from Holy Blood, Holy Grail. That book is also nonsense, of course.
Nevertheless, I don’t think inclusion in this thread requires that the author intends any of their work’s resulting negative effects.
Some guy who wanted to date me gave me some sort of apocalyptic religious fiction book to read. It had angels, demons, heroic clergy, and all female characters being evil except the obedient hero/pastor’s wife. I threw the thing in the trash and never spoke to him again. This was pre-Left Behind, which I’m sure he has the entire collection of.
I haven’t flown anywhere since 1999 and don’t remember seeing nonfic in the airports, but maybe I was blind to it b/c I only read novels back then.
@Elaine: That is rough, and a tough decision to make.
No suggestions for the worst book ever list. A lot of what I’d have picked has already been brought up.
Maybe Alan Moore’s Watchmen? I love this comic, but it’s hard to deny that its influence ran counter to what it intended to do. So many people read it and see only the violence and the darkness, get lost in the aestheticm, and draw the conclusion that mature = ‘dark and grim’. Or worse, see a character like Rorschach and think ‘aspirational’ as opposed to deeply disturbing and kind of sad at best.
Elaine, I am so sorry, had to make the same decion for our old boy a month ago, so hard but it is our last act of love for them, to let them go before the bad days outnumber the good.
I agree on so many of the books already suggested, the first book that came to mind was the Men are from Mars crap, which I also haven’t read, but which one didn’t need to as there was so much crap written around it. Very crappy.
Yes too on all the “self-help” books that don’t and that put all of the responsibility on the reader rather than considering the probabillity that there are societal structral reasons why so many lives are shit.
I’ll add The Artist’s Way, a different kind of self-help book, but with the power of god as part of the process, just NO.
@ elaine
Oh that is so awful. I really feel for you. As HMQ said “Grief is the price we pay for love.”
@Elaine
I’m so sorry. I know it’s never easy to tell them goodbye, even when you know it’s the right thing to do.
Regarding big popular books … we’ve heard about the Left Behind series (bad theology and bad writing all wrapped up in a big bag of money!), so I’ll contribute This Present Darkness by Frank E. Perretti. Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Bad Christian fiction, no biscuit. This is where I have to restrain myself from writing a few thousand words about Christian writers who seem to think that as long as you work your way down the list of “Christian values,” the book will be good. NO.
I enjoy the Narnia books, and Fr. Andrew Greeley’s mystery novels, and of course GK Chesterton is right up there, but Lewis, Greeley, and Chesterton did the courtesy of taking their faith(s) seriously, and the thoughtfulness comes through in their writing. YMMV as to how well each of them did it, but even their worst output is better than This Present Darkness.
@ specialffrog
HBHG actually gets a lot of mentions in DVC. But the defence was partly that HBHG had been put forward as a non fiction book; and you can’t copyright facts. It also transpired that they’d both ripped off the same earlier work.
The case though worked out well for all concerned.
There’s actually a secret code in the judgment; if you like puzzles.
@Elaine
I’m terribly sorry for your situation. I’m looking at the same for my pittie in a few months or less.
It is possible to get an at-home euthanasia for most animals in most places by googling around for it. This option can be less stressful for the animal, as they will remain in familiar surroundings with their best people. The vet can usually recommend cremation options as well.
I just realised I used a phrase I hate when attached to the word rape: “legitimately raped”. I apologise for that. I was using it as a casual turn of phrase, not to imply that some rapes are not legitimate. But I didn’t proofread my comment before I posted it and now I hate it so much I can’t let it pass.
@Battering Lamb:
Imitations usually focus on the superficial aspects of the original work, because they’re easiest to copy.
Which is why <i>Watchmen</i> spawned more violent cynical comics than comics with hyper-detailed page layouts based around the nine-panel grid.
@Moon Custafer: Yeah, sadly. Again, I love that graphic novel a lot, and the level of detail and thought Moore puts into his scripts (not just dialogue/captions, but how the images and the details should look) is just overwhelming sometimes.
Now a comic that was similarly influential from a similar time period that I’d consider both damaging and bad is Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.
But compared to most of the other books mentioned here, ‘had a negative influence on comic book writing’ is fairly small potatoes.
In all my years I never bought a non-fiction book at an airport. Rarely I have bought a fiction book in one.
When I think of airport bookstores I think of the “blockbusters” that were always best avoided. In 1974, John Jakes’ The Bastard was a huge deal. National Lampoon later announced that Jakes’ next books would be The Cocksucker and The Motherfucker.
Sadly, I never saw them anywhere.
It’s done. She’s gone
@Elaine the Witch:
Rest in…is the Rainbow Bridge good for you?
Oh Elaine, I am so so sorry for you.
Supposedly there’s a Native American belief that when we die there’s a bridge. That bridge is guarded by every animal we’ve encountered in life. And those animals decide whether we get to cross the bridge or not.
If that is indeed the case then I’m sure you’ll do fine; and your pupper will be waiting for you.
@Elaine: I am so, so sorry. It always hurts even when you know it’s the right thing to do. I am not over losing one of my cats a year and a half ago.
As a very smart robot said, “What is grief if not love persevering?”
As for bad airport books, every single “self-help” and “positive thinking” book, ever, by anyone of any political leaning, gender, ethnicity but the ones by SWM most.
This spans fiction and nonfiction, since he “writes” both, but I can’t stand how James Patterson jots down barebones outlines and hires a small army of ghostwriters so he can be credited with churning out 20 books a year. He’s boring, there’s too much, and I fervently wish for him to retire.
Edit: he writes the Alex Cross books alone, so credit where it’s due, but my overall sentiment still stands. I work in a library, and I’m just incredibly tired of the Patterson onslaught.
I do not understand how so many fundie Christian books become New York Times bestsellers. Some are fairy harmless like the self help books by Joyce Meyer and Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life, but others like John Hagee’s debunked nonsense about the moon are pretty dangerous. Even NASA came out to debunk that one.