Book burning

[CFTraveler]

It's on cracked.com but not funny at all.
http://www.cracked.com/article_19453_6-reasons-were-in-another-book-burning-period-in-history.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fanpage&utm_campaign=new+article&wa_ibsrc=fanpage

[eyeoneblack]

Actually, Beek, I can sympathize. I acquired hundreds of books from an aunt mostly dating from 1900 - 40s. When I moved to a much smaller house I had to divest myself of about 2 thirds of them. It took me forever to look ea one up for approx value.

About half went to a used book store which threw them away because they were in bad shape (had silver-fish dirt etc). Half of the remaining half went to another book store. These were the better ones. Many of them went to the dumpster.

After many hours of googling I arrived at the books I could keep (many signed first eds). The bottom line is books are not worth much if anything. Sure you look a book up say on AbeBooks and there it is being sold for $40. Ya' think 'I ought'a keep that!' But no. These sellers wait forever listing their books and only by sheer numbers (listing thousands of books) do they profit. For me to sell a book, or fifty books, is just not worth it.

Anyway, I gave this bookseller hundreds of books and I wondered if he would decide to give me any money for them. He didn't or hasn't, but I'm not too shy to see a book in his store that I want and ask for it. He's been helpful though. He's seems to be OK with that arrangement - maybe. His store is piled to the ceiling with thousands of books. He doesn't need anymore.

So, it is sad, but old books are not unlike old songs - who cares, anyway? [Books are heavy and hard to keep any order too.] Maybe I do and you do, but that's hardly a market. lol

edit: It's like this penny collection I have. Twenty pounds of old U.S. pennies. There might be a valuable one in there, but consider the time it takes to even inspect one penny and you quickly realize that even if there was, it wouldn't be worth the labor to find it. I can appreciate the library's economics. Collectors are prob fine with it. The fewer copies out there, the more each one is worth.

[CFTraveler]

I just think of all those poor people out there who could be benefited by them. Maybe I'm just a romantic.

[eyeoneblack]

the poor reading ,... that's a romantic notion for sure :lol:. I can see little blue-birds with garlands and ribbons in their little beeks above the heads of Dickensonian factory worker children reading a tatered number of Shakespeare. Yes, heartwarming, but...... Hello?!?!

(just a wise-crack, dear CF)

[Beekeeper]

It must have been precognition, Eyeoneblack.

I think this is a problem to some extent easily solved by some enterprising individual. Certainly I've sold some coffee table books at garage sales and had professional book buyers come around and take the best of them at a very good price at the very start of the sale. If they're enterprising, good luck to them - less dusting and more room for me. Surely, there are people who could set themselves up so as to take precious books off the hands of libraries if they're only going to be destroyed anyway - the books, not the buyers.:D

That said, second hand books often make me sneeze and wheeze if they're really old and mouldy. :D

It would be nice to see the content of these books saved, if not the actual books themselves.

I tend to give my books to the library so I don't end up with too many of them. They, of course, are happy for them because funding is tight, but will only take the new ones. Fair enough. Then, if I feel a desperate need to re-read them I still can. Occasionally I've picked one of my books off the shelf and been pleased to see how many times it's been borrowed.:-) (I don't give them certain books, however). Now I wonder if my donations have hastened the demise of some other poor old books.

[eyeoneblack]

Maybe we're just nippin' at the edges of the real problem. Books are being mass produced by the millions every day. Most of them are damn lame, but they fill the shelves at the library. The library is throwing out the good stuff (Faulkner, Dovstoyevsky, Wolf etc) to make room for contemporary trash. That's the evil of it all! :mad:

[CFTraveler]

Maybe we're just nippin' at the edges of the real problem. Books are being mass produced by the millions every day. Most of them are damn lame, but they fill the shelves at the library. The library is throwing out the good stuff (Faulkner, Dovstoyevsky, Wolf etc) to make room for contemporary trash. That's the evil of it all! :mad: At the very least.