I don't know why, but I've become mildly perturbed by the way we hold books as sacred. Buying them is always alright, and destroying them is teh evils.
But books are just consumer goods, and they're not magically exempt from our materialistic, over-consumptive North American lifestyle. Just because you can donate them somewhere after doesn't mean they don't harm the environment. At least half of the books donated to thrift stores go straight to recycling (or a discount center and then recycling) and the ones that don't sell follow. Just because you're donating a book doesn't mean someone's going to buy it. It's not going to live for 1000s of years.
In the book industry, the paperbacks that aren't sold and need to be returned to the publishers are not even returned whole. They rip off the covers and recycle the rest.
I take in donations for a thrift store, and at least once a week someone says "I just hate to throw out books" to me. This is usually before they bring me their 1976 encyclopedia set. I've had to explain over and over that information from a 1970s encyclopedia is no longer useful. You can't do a school report on South Africa using 1978 information. And no, neither can children in Africa. And no ma'am, shipping encyclopedias would be prohibitively expensive. Not to mention people in developing countries have better and cheaper cell networks than we do.
No one wants your Jacques Cousteau series. Your Readers Digest condensed novels. Your 20 year collection of National Geographics. Your Microwave Cooking Made Easy. Your 20 year old nursing text book. No one wants your Time Life cook books, except The Gallery of Regrettable Food.
If I sound bitter it's because I recently cut my collection down from about 2000 books, to 500. Maybe less, hopefully less. I'll make another pass at it. Do you know how time and muscle consuming it is to cart 1500 books out of your home?
Don't believe the propaganda! (sobs) (Or at least just switch to ebooks. No one can see my mp3 hoarding.)
Coming Soon to a Home Near You...
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3 comments:
So true. I'm really truly terrible about stockpiling books. I've been working on it for several years now. For my entire life, books were the place where I could get away from whatever was bugging me. Having a stash of unread books was like an alcoholic having a bottle stashed away on top of the armoire in the guest bedroom--just in case you run out. I'm really working on getting better about this. There's always the library (which in this digital age is now available 24 hours a day). I don't need to own every book that has meant something to me --and that is a really big mental hurdle. Good post. thanks.
Yeah I'm even revisiting the "favorites" pile. I know I'll reread maybe 5 of those authors (Wodehouse, heyer, Austen...) but others I won't reread, even if I loved them. Time to go! Sigh.
Oooo, I'm a fabric hord ... erm ... stasher. But in my defense I do eventually use all the bits and pieces ... usually.
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