Books, Buildings & TrashFollow

In a story you may or may not have heard back in May, the owner of a used bookstore in Missouri staged a book burning, incinerating a portion of his stock as a protest against the decline of reading and the fact that people just aren't interested in buying books. At the time, I read a thread on another forum where you had a good number of people outraged by the notion that these books, many of them out of print or even antique, would be destroyed.

You also had those who said that people iconize the written word too much. People are loathe to destroy books simply by virtue of them being books and not because the books themselves are valuable. Even something such as the "bound report from the Fourth Pan-American Conference held in Buenos Aires in 1910" described in the article is probably more interesting in theory than in the actual practice of reading it.

I was thinking about this yesterday as Flea and I wandered around a large antique shop, filled with books of varying age and value. It also called to mind (I'm making a jump here) of another article talking about historic building preservation in Chicago. While it's hard enough to gain preservation for some ornate structure from the turn of the 19th/20th century, buildings from the 1940's and 1950's are being torn down because they are simply "old" and not antiques. As a result, architectural gems built in the Art Deco and Modern style are being destroyed with little in the ways of protection.

So, back to books, I was looking at things such as a "History of Modern Warfare" from the Vietnam through Gulf War 1 and thought "This book is pretty expendable. It's obsolete now and not old enough to have value as a curio." But, like the afore mentioned buildings, destroying it will guarantee that it never has value for its history. On the other hand, it's a shitty out-of-date book that no one with an interest in the topic would select to read over a more contemporary volume. On another shelf was a medical tome from the 1870's. While it had some amusement value for reading about what soothing liniments to apply to combat the croup, it didn't contain any medical information we don't know now. It probably didn't even contain new insights into life in the 1870's. Was it really valuable? Did its rarity make it more of a loss to destroy than the "Modern Warfare" book?

Typing this, I am a hypocrite. I have an old dictionary where the "list of presidents" ends with Johnson and the "new words for this edition" page contains "Laser" and "LSD". It's just a crappy, out of date dictionary but I hold on to it. I have old novels which could go into the bin without a loss to mankind. I still hate to do it. Maybe because, so long as the pages are there, the book is still 'useful' and it seems a shame to get rid of it.

How about you folks? Do you hold onto books long after they're "obsolete"? How do you get rid of them? Is there value in a book simply because it's a book? Should there be?

As a final note, one of my favorite bookstores, a used bookstore in a basement location, closed up. At least they went online rather than out of business but gone are the days of browsing for hidden and surprise treasures.

damn you for making this post 10 minutes before I have to leave this temple of boredom...

Although I'm afraid I can't contribute the way you would like constructivly being that my bedroom resembles a used bookstore....



yup..


Edited, Aug 13th 2007 12:49pm by Kelvyquayo

I can never bring myself to throw away a book. Every so often when hubby and I have garage sales, I'll sell the books I don't want anymore (and I inevitably wish I kept a couple of them to read again) and then donate the rest to the library for their used book sale.

My most favorite used bookstore was actually pretty organized and owned by a lady who used every moment of her spare time encouraging anyone to read. She would take a lot of her old books and give them to the homeless in the hopes that they would read. But they needed the pages of the book for other purposes.

Heh, I was at a country club before and leafed through a couple of their "shelf books". They seemed like fairly abysmal reads, typical potboiler fiction, redeemed only by their moderate age and fairly attractive bindings.

I keep all my old books. Habit from my parents. Shoot, I think we still use a Funk and Wagnall's dictionary from the 80's when we play Scrabble.

I ended up rereading the first book of the Belgarion the other weekend after dusting off the cover.

See if you're still using it...then all is golden eh. We still use an old websters paperback for scrabble. The 'z' entries have all been dismembered from the back of the book, so z words are free-for-all.

Books, as personal items, are just like any other object. Their worth is all our own. We may hang on to them or discard them or stab them or hug them or smell them or read them or stare at them...as we see fit.

When I was a kid, at one point I lived out in the country and there was this small bridge on the main road that crossed over a stream and we called it the "Elephant Crossing". I don't think any elephants were left there to be picked up though.

We had a bookcase like that near the elevator of my old apartment but it was constantly filled with old romance novels which, near as I could tell, never circulated.

I once dumped a crapton of old potboiler fantasy novels by the lending rack at the train station. See you in Hell, Dragonlance Preludes!

Same here. When we first moved into our house, one room was designated the library. We still call it that to this day, despite the fact we downsized from 6 to 2 bookshelves. All the books not in this room are carefully packed and stored in our closet or basement.

Every once in awhile I'll go through them and drive them over to our local library. But I just can not, no matter how awful or trashy the book may be, throw one out.

I've wanted to get rid of my Eddings (Belgariad and Mallorean and one book from another series) for years now, but alas I've been carting them around from apartment to apartment for about ten years now. I should just put em in a bag and toss em on the doorstep of the bookstore in town like an abandoned baby.

I live about 20 minutes from powells Used books. The largest used book repository on the planet. There are a huge number of other used book stores in the area. It's great. I have to rotate books in and out due to space constraints, but if I had the room I would definitly have a full fledged library. But burning books? Come on. only if Kevin J Anderson wrot ethem.

I keep every book I read, unless I lose them, or give them to a mate, or forget them on the underground/plane/bench/shooting gallery. So, really, I don't keep them all, but I don't throw them away either.

Anyway, none of this matters remotely.

I think it's an incredible shame to burn/throw away books. Even old and seemingly pointless books can be extrememly valuable for research purposes. That Army Manual Joph mentionned could be of great use to future military historians. You just never know. Historically, science in Europe in the Middle Ages might have advanced a lot quicker if the Alexandria Library hadn't been repeatedly raided and its books burnt.

It's the same for historical buildings, especially in a new country like the US. Knocking down Art Deco or Art Nouveau buildings should be a crime, as anyone who's been in Barcelona can testify.

And anyway, books today are an endangered specie, like scrolls before the advent the printing press.

I have no compunction in routinely tossing books I haven't looked at in a couple of years. I keep the ones that I enjoyed, or that have some reference value to them, but when I buy a $7.99 novel at Dominick's, I know when I pay for it that that sucker'll be in the trash come next year.