The only book I've ever thrown away unread - nay, unopened - is a guidebook a Norwegian travel agent forced upon me when I set off on my life's biggest journey back in 1988: the Trans-Siberian train trip to China.
When I arrived in Beijing I found backpackers walking the streets, their noses so deeply buried in the Lonely Planet that they were crashing into lamp posts and falling down open sewers. They seemed to stick so rigidly to what The Book said that they missed all the good bits. I decided to never get a guidebook again.
This principle stood me in good stead until last year, when I, E and K planned to travel from Lanzhou to Xiahe on the Tibetan Plateau, home to the famous Labrang Monastery. For some idiotic reason I visited the Lonely Planet website to check for alternative routes, as I dreaded falling victim to the 'have a copy of your passport made for exorbitant prices hundreds of metres from the bus terminal before catching the 7am direct bus' scam run by enterprising locals.
To my delight I read that there were buses leaving every half hour from Lanzhou South bus terminal to a town quite near Xiahe, and from there to the lovely little mountain town with its Tibetan monks and pilgrims and green rolling hills polka-dotted with sheep, undisturbed by passport nazis.
The bus left Lanzhou at 8am as promised and arrived in the little town of Linxia two hours later, also as promised.
But that was it.