I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.
Helene HanffI have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon / Middle English by a friend who had to take it for her Ph.D. They told her to write an essay in Early Anglo-Saxon on any-subject-of-her-own-choosing. โWhich is all very well,โ she said bitterly, โbut the only essay subject you can find enough Early Anglo-Saxon words for is โHow to Slaughter a Thousand Men in a Mead Hallโ.
Helene HanffI despair of ever getting it through anybody's head I am not interested in bookshops, I am interested in what's written in the books. I don't browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it.
Helene HanffIt looks too new and pristine ever to have been read by anyone else, but it has been: it keeps falling open at the most delightful places as the ghost of its former owner points me to things I've never read before.
Helene Hanff