Rescuing Books
Jul. 13th, 2004 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalakEvery year in August I feel like Father Baskerville from The Name of the Rose. I go, sometimes with friends, to the last day of the Littleton Public Library book sale to save what I can. You see after they're done selling what they can they dumpster the rest of the books.
It's work, often more work than it is monetarily worth to the club, but I save books. I've sold thousands of books on behalf of the Denver Area Science Fiction Association, but even if I were not making a dime I'd still do it. I wish I could do more, but since there is only so much of me to go around I limit myself to things that are in some way plausibly of interest to science fiction fans. I even rescue L. Ron Hubbard books to give them a chance to find a reader, because though I personally despise his writing there are people who like it.
Part of it is the fact that I just hate seeing good things go to waste. It has always distressed me that what takes one man time to make can be unmade so much faster. Or even things that man has not made. It is the work of less than an hour to cut down a tree that may have taken a century to grow. And if I don't have some good purpose what a monumental waste that is. I've taken away all the potential for that thing to serve others in my selfish act. How much less work would have to be done if people didn't go around destroying the works of others?
The other part is an over generous dose of the bibliophile genes. Books are very special to me, because they are so close to touching the thoughts of another person. Through the bookbinder's art and sheaves of paper words from men long dead can come as clearly to me as they did to the first man who read them.
To destroy a book is to impoverish future generations by some small amount. Often books are produced in a small run in the hardback edition and once done there will never be any more of that book. Someday my copy of The Night Inside or Illusion may be among the last left because there were only about 1000 printed that way. The poor ephemeral paperback just does not hold up so well.
Though even then I give a good chance to it. There are people out there in need of cheap, even free, reading material. Why shouldn't they have a chance to follow the adventures of Jack Ryan? I got started with Tolkien by my mother reading to me from a much used paperback copy that I later years I read quite a few more times before I got my red leatherette "collector's edition". And I had to search a long time before I could find a copy of Search the Seven Hills because it was only published in paperback form and so many people threw them away rather than passing them on.
As a book owner I feel that ultimately I am a caretaker. I am obligated to every reader who could come after me to care for my books and to pass them on when I've no further use for them. People who love books understand this.
It's work, often more work than it is monetarily worth to the club, but I save books. I've sold thousands of books on behalf of the Denver Area Science Fiction Association, but even if I were not making a dime I'd still do it. I wish I could do more, but since there is only so much of me to go around I limit myself to things that are in some way plausibly of interest to science fiction fans. I even rescue L. Ron Hubbard books to give them a chance to find a reader, because though I personally despise his writing there are people who like it.
Part of it is the fact that I just hate seeing good things go to waste. It has always distressed me that what takes one man time to make can be unmade so much faster. Or even things that man has not made. It is the work of less than an hour to cut down a tree that may have taken a century to grow. And if I don't have some good purpose what a monumental waste that is. I've taken away all the potential for that thing to serve others in my selfish act. How much less work would have to be done if people didn't go around destroying the works of others?
The other part is an over generous dose of the bibliophile genes. Books are very special to me, because they are so close to touching the thoughts of another person. Through the bookbinder's art and sheaves of paper words from men long dead can come as clearly to me as they did to the first man who read them.
To destroy a book is to impoverish future generations by some small amount. Often books are produced in a small run in the hardback edition and once done there will never be any more of that book. Someday my copy of The Night Inside or Illusion may be among the last left because there were only about 1000 printed that way. The poor ephemeral paperback just does not hold up so well.
Though even then I give a good chance to it. There are people out there in need of cheap, even free, reading material. Why shouldn't they have a chance to follow the adventures of Jack Ryan? I got started with Tolkien by my mother reading to me from a much used paperback copy that I later years I read quite a few more times before I got my red leatherette "collector's edition". And I had to search a long time before I could find a copy of Search the Seven Hills because it was only published in paperback form and so many people threw them away rather than passing them on.
As a book owner I feel that ultimately I am a caretaker. I am obligated to every reader who could come after me to care for my books and to pass them on when I've no further use for them. People who love books understand this.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-13 07:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-14 02:15 pm (UTC)In bright of day, in dark of night,
No book shall escape my sight.
Or maybe:
Book Rescue Society
We aid books in need...
Something like that.
I've found that I can find homes for most of the books I've rescued just by selling them to science fiction fans. Though a few have gone on to either the dumpster (really bad shape/several copies) or thrifts.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-16 08:33 pm (UTC)neverrarely throw any away. Working in a used-book store after reading Fahrenheit 451 only contributed to those tendencies, I'm afraid.Back in the 1980s, one fan sent boxes of SF to Eastern Europe, willy-nilly. Good or not so good, the stuff was very hard to come by then. I like the idea of the women's prison book project too, and literacy projects everywhere.
I've also attended a couple of fannish book swaps. People bring books, browse others' offerings, and whatever's left at the end gets donated to the charity of the host's choice.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-13 08:35 pm (UTC)The small run books are really important for older books still under copyright. In several cases the copyright holder, SFAIK not the now deceased author, has blocked the electronic "reprinting" of the books a la Project Gutenberg. Libraries often pick old, unpopular books for sales and discarding; the rescue of even one copy of such a book may be the seed for it's reappearance in the future.
I have several paperbacks and pulp `zines I picked up in "10 cent" bins, all in poor shape. None of these are great literature, but they were early presentation of ideas that later writers reshaped into a much better story. Someday I hope to break them down into loose pages, scan and OCR them, and have them saved for some time when they can be release with a note such as "when you read so-and-so's terrific novel X, this is where he said he got the original idea".
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-14 02:15 pm (UTC)Maybe the books I'm rescuing won't be important in 100 years. But I can't help but think that a few might and the best way to sort those from the rest is to give them all a chance.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-13 09:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-14 02:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-14 07:53 pm (UTC)Make sure you get your landlord to take care of those wasps. The 'sting' isn't even bothering me, so I suspect it was but a glancing blow.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-14 02:10 am (UTC)I'm a bibliophile myself (though several years of moving has made me pretty ruthless about which books I keep) and my doctoral research is veering towards book history - specifically, Victorian three-volume novels. I pretty much chose my graduate school because there was a copyright library in the same city....
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-14 02:16 pm (UTC)I've been in the same not so great apartment for over five years now because I dislike the prospect of moving more than a ton (literally) of paper. The last time I estimated (I stopped counting at over 800) there were around 2000 in my apartment. And there are more that I need to do something useful with in my parent's basement. Time to get that account on ABEbooks.com!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-14 04:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-14 02:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-14 08:04 am (UTC)Save the good stuff. Let Hubbard lie.
Sounds like fun, though. When is it?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-14 02:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-14 08:22 am (UTC)I'm very much that way. I wish there were more places that "recycled" useful, usable stuff, but there's no, or not much, money in it. However, our local Value Villages, run by ARC of Hennepin County (an association for people with mental disabilities and their families), seem to be thriving. They use lots of volunteers, but also have a number of paid employees.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-14 02:18 pm (UTC)