As you may have guessed, I am not what you would call a voracious reader. Don’t get me wrong. I like reading the labels on whisky bottles. But books? Whoa, slow down there, mister. That’s a lot of words, many of them big and fancy.

Books are very thick, and therefore intimidating. I like lots of books I’ve read, but I’ve also been so traumatized by the books that I was forced to read in school that I approach them now with a good deal of trepidation. Will this book transport me to a whole new, enrapturing world that holds me in its thrall? Or will it be “Great Expectations”?

/shudder

We had a book draft earlier in the year, in which we all pretended to be crazy literate, and Ufford referred to his writing as “his prose”, which is rather high-minded nomenclature for dead stripper jokes. One reader, PBNW11, who might be some sort of robot beta model, even compiled our choices (and many commenter choices) into this Amazon list, which was damn near the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for us.

But now it’s time to explore the other side of the coin. Oh, I like me some books. But I also hate a great deal of them of them as well. Now, I don’t normally admire Nazis or crazy Midwestern preachers, but I do like me the occasional book burning. Books are plentiful, and highly flammable. I see no reason no to use the shittier ones as an alternative fuel source. The time to switch from oil to Coulter is upon us. These are books you’d pick to throw into a bigass A&M-style bonfire.

THE RULES: Pick one book at a time. All editions of the book you pick will be incinerated, and can never be republished. Once a book is selected, wait 10 choices before selecting another. Once an author is selected, all their books are off the board. Sorry, Otto Man. Only one Bill O’Reilly book for you. I get first dibs, so I’m picking the single worst piece of shit foisted upon me by the English staff at Exeter.

“Herland,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I’ll let Wikipedia describe “Herland” for you:

Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of Aryan women who reproduce via parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). The result is an ideal social order, free of war, conflict and domination.

Racist? Yep. Reverse sexist? Yep. Demonstrative of pushy, annoying, extreme liberal ideals? Oh, yes. Worst of all, there were no Cliffs Notes for it. Guhhhhhhhh.

Your turn. Will Leitch, Bill Simmons, and Buzz Bissinger await your picks with horror.