Comments

• 

  Cherry Knobloch

  3 years ago

  Z

  2Z

  Reply

  I am on the board of a Friends of the Library group with 7 branches. We have monthly sales to rehome books that are removed from circulation and donated by the community. The books are priced from $.25 to $2, and the sales usually bring in over $2,000, moving hundreds of books. The proceeds go to the libraries to pay for literacy programs.  A sale will start with about 350 boxes of books and we'll still have about 150 boxes left. Like most FOLs, we have to get rid of the leftovers. Hundreds of these are donated to the community but there are still a lot of leftovers. We don't keep them because more donations are on the way! FOLs all over the country struggle with what to do with leftovers. We have given them to thrift stores to the point they are overwhelmed. Now our group pays a company to take them. I don't know what happens to them then but there are thousands of books waiting to be sorted by topic and then boxed to go to the next sale.                                            I own thousands of books that I love. I bought many of them from the FOL, sometimes just because they were old and I didn't want to think about a future where they might be shredded or incinerated. I like to hold books, smell them, rifled through the pages, think about where they were before I bought them. But being an old book doesn't make it a good story and a stack of printed paper, held together with glue and string, doesn't make a book precious. 

  !Report as spam
• 

  Matt Levine

  3 years ago

  Z

  Z

  Reply

  This is kind of silly to me. I understand the aesthetics of it, but you don't need to do this. Just Print high-resolution decals (Muuuch cheaper option, from any decent sign shop) and apply them to panels and place them in front of the actual books that can remain blissfully, in topical and alphabetical order. 

  !Report as spam
• 

  Max Z

  3 years ago

  Z

  Z

  Reply

  I would not call this recycling. A book can be recycled over and over, many times by passing on to new owners that want the book for what it is. Sure, it can be hard to find the right new owner, especially if it is pulp books.
  But the owners that want book for this purpose do not care at all for the book, so they have very little to no interest in letting the book go on to someone else after them. After all, the book is only worth the color of the spine for them. When they tire of their latest indoor decoration craze these will most likely end up in a dumpster, like most stuff from interior redecorations.
  So this is not recycling, rather downcycling. The book is reduced to something less.
  And I do not agree with your last statement: "The fact that people who don't really want to read their library are using books as decoration: at least they have some books at all." For them these are not books, they are set props. Perhaps set props to give an aura of something they aspire to, but set props nonetheless.
  I too have books that I bought partly because they look good (mainly coffee table art/photography books) and see nothing wrong with liking the beauty of the book itself, but as someone who loves books and knowledge, I cringe when I see this kind of interior decoration. It is just something someone concocted and spread through cheap indoor decoration magazines.
  A person that do not care about books and live that way, without any books in their life, I respect more than one that pretends to like books but do not actually care for them. For them it is just to uphold a fake facade. And no, this is not limited to books, this goes for any kind of hypocrisy.
  

  !Report as spam
• 

  Joshua Terrell

  3 years ago

  Z

  Z

  Reply

  Is it offensive to bibliophiles? Perhaps. But consider what is actually being sold here: to be blunt these are pulp books. The cost of hardcover printing is so low in the modern world that many hardcover books end up in the bargain bin. This is ingenious because this entity is selling you the service of handling thousands of books and sorting them. I could compare this to the price you will get paid for selling your bulk Magic the Gathering cards. There are two prices, the price paid if they are all delivered in a box, oriented and facing the same way, versus the price you will receive for cards all facing and oriented in random directions, stacked or not. This is essentially recycling. The fact that people who don't really want to read their library are using books as decoration: at least they have some books at all. I love reading and I still make a point to look at "decorative books". It's still a book....
  

  !Report as spam
• 

  Max Z

  3 years ago

  Z

  Z

  Reply

  For a bibliophile like me this is cringeworthy beyond words. If you want a book rainbow on your wall, get a photo wallpaper. Just caring about the color of the spine is IMHO extremely shallow and just shows how little appreciation you have for books.
  

  !Report as spam