Are books sacred to you? What makes throwing them away such a sin?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by THIS thread, which I decided not to hijack but start a new subject.

Time and time again I keep hearing it. “NEVER throw away a book!” … “I keep every book I’ve ever bought, even if I have no intention of ever reading it again”… “even if you thought it was shitty, someone else will love it” … and this is just my immediate family.

I seriously need to clear out a ton of my books for both clutter-proofing my apartment and to clear up some shelf space. Over the next couple days, I am going to throw out probably half of my book collection. I’d estimate I have about 1000 books, 90% of them I haven’t touched in the last 5 years. There’s already a thread going about what to do with them, but this is the IMHO question - what is the big deal about throwing away books?

Keep in mind I’m not talking about rare or irreplaceable books. I’m talking about paperback, and occasionally hardcover books which can easily be found new or used. I’m sure there’s no shortage of Piers Anthony or Robert Jordan books to go around. I would even consider leaving a box in front of the local library and running away, except I live in a Polish neighborhood which doesn’t even stock english books (plus, as mentioned in the thread I referenced, THEY throw most of their donated books away too). If I were to throw them all into a clear recycling bag and leave for the garbageman, am I committing a mortal sin? If so, why? How is throwing a book away any different from throwing away a magazine, newspaper, or even a box of cereal?

2

What if other people would enjoy those books? Can you find an English speaking library? What about a local school? Or a homeless shelter might be able to distribute them to its patrons.

3

I’m a librarian, and…it depends. A ratty old book that nobody wants–throw it out. I’ve thrown away books. But in most cases, when the books are not falling apart or total junk or outdated textbooks, it’s pretty easy to find someone who wants them. If your library doesn’t do anything useful with donations, you can take them to:

another library
a used bookstore
a shelter
a prison
Goodwill/Salvation Army/thrift store
even a third-world country (OK, not Robert Jordan books though)

If they really are just old beat-up Piers Anthony paperbacks, they’re probably not worth getting all worked up over, but these days there are people looking for old paperback cover art if it’s interesting or retro enough. I scour the donation tables at my library looking for old pocket paperbacks with neat covers, which I then sew into bookbags.

4

[QUOTE=dangermom]

If they really are just old beat-up Piers Anthony paperbacks, they’re probably not worth getting all worked up over, but these days there are people looking for old paperback cover art if it’s interesting or retro enough. I scour the donation tables at my library looking for old pocket paperbacks with neat covers, which I then sew into bookbags.
[/QUOTE]

That is an amazing thing to do. VERY GOOD JOB! :slight_smile:

To the OP - for me, I do not pitch very many books, I hold onto a lot of them. I’ve thrown away old disintegrating paperbacks that aren’t worth much, but most hard covers and a few soft covers I know are worht something either monetarily or sentimentally, I generally hold onto. Many books I never have an inclination to open again, but in the off chance I need to reference it I know it’s there. I love the smell of books, the sound, the imagry, everything. We have so many bookshelves, book areas, book nooks, book tables I loose count…and to be honest, I LOVE THAT! :slight_smile:

5

But the same thing could be said of anything else that gets thrown away that isn’t utter garbage. I’m sure other people might find a use for my old software CDs or hardware, clothes (which is taken care of because there IS a dropoff bin near my home), VHS tapes, or various knick-knacks which I’ve held onto for way too long, but I never hear people preaching about the sins of throwing away THOSE items in the same way I do about books. Most of these books I paid for or acquired through other means which make them mine. Why should I be obligated to make sure that every book find a new home, like it’s a litter of kitties? The way some dopers are talking in the other thread (which between the time I started writing the OP and now has already managed to hijack it with the same subject I am writing about), you’d think that every book publisher has gone extinct and there is a severe shortage and unless people get MY books, they won’t ever have a chance to read.

I will also open for discussion my dad’s view on the subject - why is it that some people have such a hard time toning down their book collection? He PURPOSELY keeps every book he ever buys, even if he hated the book or never plans to look at it again. He even built extra bookshelves into the walls of his home in order to store them all, and keeps tabs on every single book he lends out. Another reason I want to tone down is to condition myself to NOT turn into him. Nobody, not me or anyone else, is ever going to need a copy of Photoshop 4 For Dummies from this point forward, and Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris was pretty much universally hated, so why would I want to subject another reader to it?

6

I love to read and I read a lot. I love books and I own a ton of them.

But I’m not the least bit anal about getting rid of them, either. I go through my shelves once or twice a year and cull out stuff I don’t want to keep. I sell some things on eBay – if a check seems to indicate that the book would sell for enough to make it worth bothering with. Everything else goes to either the local senior center or to the Friends of the Library.

And I’ve even thrown away a couple of books, if they were too tattered to be worth passing on.

7

I would donate them to some cause just to keep them out of a landfill. Where I work, we have a customer waiting area and we made a book exchange. We bring in books and people take them. Some of our customers bring in books and people take them. Over the last few years, it’s become somewhat of a phenomenon and the shelf stays full, but there are always new titles. You could donate them to a homeless shelter, battered women’s shelter, literacy program, Big Brothers/Sisters type program, a school…etc. There are lots of ways to lighten your load and give someone something as well. If nothing else, take them to be recycled.

8

A book is potentially immortal – except that it is incapable of defending itself.

9

[QUOTE=fusoya]
But the same thing could be said of anything else that gets thrown away that isn’t utter garbage. I’m sure other people might find a use for my old software CDs or hardware, clothes (which is taken care of because there IS a dropoff bin near my home), VHS tapes, or various knick-knacks which I’ve held onto for way too long, but I never hear people preaching about the sins of throwing away THOSE items in the same way I do about books. <snip?>

I will also open for discussion my dad’s view on the subject - why is it that some people have such a hard time toning down their book collection? He PURPOSELY keeps every book he ever buys, even if he hated the book or never plans to look at it again. He even built extra bookshelves into the walls of his home in order to store them all, and keeps tabs on every single book he lends out. Another reason I want to tone down is to condition myself to NOT turn into him. Nobody, not me or anyone else, is ever going to need a copy of Photoshop 4 For Dummies from this point forward, and Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris was pretty much universally hated, so why would I want to subject another reader to it?
[/QUOTE]

Ok let me shed a little more light on this subject. You see, if I have a favorite porceline penguin that has been sitting facing southeast for several decades in my sun room and I one day decide to throw it away…it would be a devastating loss for a little while until I found some other niknak to fill it’s place.
However, if I throw away a 1900 first edition Moby Dick or The Whale as it was called then, and lost that forever. I’d be losing some actual history, as those books by that publisher had very special meaning and were very much prized…There is a special foreword, and appendix that was never printed again, so unlike my porceline penguin which I love so much and do miss, I’m not really losing anything but memories and a piece of porceline. Not that memories are not priceless, as they are, but I can’t flip through and smell a memory now can I?

Book carry special meaning because they hold things that cannot be found anywhere else. Especially when you have a rare book.

I am not talking about text books like my 1985 highschool science book with a Ladybug on the cover…or boosk that are in shambles…I’m talking about really nice books.

For instance, I have a lot of architectural books and treehouse books that are priceless to me because I remember the places where I got them and the people who entered or exited my life when I was reading one of them…I have notes in many of my books that only I would understand. I didn’t write on my porceline penguin.

Do you see a little bit of what some of us are talking about when we say we can’t get rid of this book or that?

10

I cannot bring myself to throw books away unless they’re irreparably damaged. I have a ton that I will be donating to a second hand book store shortly in preparation of moving, but … nope… books are old friends that I can’t simply toss into a bin.

11

I can’t throw away books. Right now I’ve got several shelves’ worth of them in my storage locker (I really should go back and take a look at them, and swap them in for some of those in my house). Even though I don’t have that much time to read these days, I still consider my books old friends–especially the ones from my childhood, teen years, and college years. A book to me is more than just some bound pages and a cover–rereading it brings back not only memories of the story itself, but of what I was doing the last time I read it (assuming anything of particular interest was happening), who my friends were, where I was living…books are like little nostalgia trips for me.

For instance, one book that I reread fairly often (okay, it’s Atlas Shrugged–no flames, please :slight_smile: ) has a scene in it where some of the characters are having Thanksgiving dinner–and I happened to be reading that scene several years ago at my parents’ house on Thanksgiving. When I reread the scene years later, I can still picture the scene, smell the turkey cooking…it’s a nice memory. And some of my childhood books remind me of when I used to get these little order forms and go through them ordering big stacks of books (my parents valued reading, and bought me lots of books), then waiting the several weeks until that magic box arrived on the teacher’s desk and she handed them out to us. Those were great days!

12

The thing about books, as opposed to clothes or software CDs or toys or whatever else, is that books can potentially survive an extremely long time without losing any of their usefulness. Clothes will get worn out, software will become obsolete - but as long as a books pages are still bound, and its print is readable; then its value to a reader is potentially the same 50 years down the line as it was on the day it was published.

This isn’t the case with all books obviously, but it just seems a waste to think of a decent novel rotting in a garbage dump, when someone could have just as easily been enjoying it on a rainy day somewhere

13

Wooo. I do something that I’ve been told it HORRIBLE many times:

I get most of my reading done in bits and snatches – on buses, waiting on line, etc. It used to be that I had a whole pile of big thick paperbacks beside my bed that I just never got around to reading. See, they were too heavy to want to tote in my purse for however many days/weeks it would take to get through them.

Then, one day I took a box cutter to one of them. I opened the book to page 201 and sliced off the first 200 pages. Then the second 200, and so forth. Instantly a book that had been sitting there for years was suddenly ‘totable’ and finished in two weeks or so.

To compound my ‘crime’, after each reading session I rip off and throw away the pages I read. No lost book marks for me, no hunting for 'now where have I gotten to?" If the top page is 371, then that’s the one I’m on. :wink:

Yes, I’m ‘destroying’ the book, but come on, most paperbacks are printed in runs of tens of thousands – I’m not exactly burning the Library at Alexandria am I?

And isn’t an unread book languishing in a dusty pile a bigger waste than one that gets read once?

14

I’d have no problem throwing away mass market paperbacks – especially (as mentioned in the other thread) a 17th printing of Dune.

But I’m really, really glad that somebody held on to good books that have gone TOOP – Tragically Out of Print. That Amazon seller probably thought he’d never find a market for his Don Robertson titles, but I snapped 'em up.

15

[QUOTE=Phlosphr]

Do you see a little bit of what some of us are talking about when we say we can’t get rid of this book or that?
[/QUOTE]

Yes, and as I said in the OP, I’m talking about books that have been published within my lifetime, and can always be replaced. And some of you are still talking like books are something that have gone extinct, and new ones can no longer be produced or bought…that’s the thing I really don’t get.
Also, if you throw out the penguin, it will be lost to the ages too!

16

We are SO bad about this; my husband and I seem to be physically incapable of throwing out a book, whether good, bad, or indifferent. He has been known to pick up and bring home boxes of books that other people – in one case the Salvation Army – had left on the curb to be picked up with the trash. It’s just, somehow, wrong.

Few years back I saw our daughter with a paperback that she’d picked up around the house. “Don’t bother with that,” I told her. “It’s a really poorly written book.” She thought a minute, and then asked me and my husband, "So, neither of you wants to re-read this? " No. “Is there anyone you would recommend this book to?” No. “Then why is it taking up space in our house?” We have no good answer. That one I think we did throw in the trash, but it hurt to do so.

17

Not sacred, exactly, although I’ll admit to finding StarvingButStrong’s post a little horrifying. I’ll get rid of books that I disliked, but if I got any enjoyment from the book at all then I will keep it. It simply makes me happy to know that I can reach out and pick it up again if I want it.

The only time I have thrown books away is if they’re in such low demand that the used bookstore won’t take them in trade. Oh, and that one Philippa Gregory book that I hated so much I didn’t want anyone else to read it.

18

[QUOTE=StarvingButStrong]

And isn’t an unread book languishing in a dusty pile a bigger waste than one that gets read once?
[/QUOTE]

I’d agree with that. Personally, I have no problem with your method (as long as it isn’t my book!).

As to why people get more upset about books–I’d say that it’s because for centuries, we’ve revered books as repositories of ideas. Until quite recently, books were precious items that you took very good care of. And those of us who love books love them much more than we love our clothing or our VCR tapes. We absorb books into ourselves more than most things.

Now, I do think your father has a problem. I try to only own books that I think are important to own or that I can’t get at the library and that I want to re-read. I still have more than I can reasonably handle, but I get rid of some now and again.

19

The experience of moving apartments about, heck, it must be something like fifteen times by now, has made me come to think of books mainly as heavy things that must be lifted and lugged about a lot if I don’t get rid of them fast. I’ve gotten into the habit of instantly giving away the books that I like as soon as I finish reading them, usually to random people at work or at school. Pretty much the same goes for DVD’s - they usually hang around the house for a while longer than the books, but if I’ve enjoyed a movie, and it’s one that I think other people should see, I usually end up taking it outside and giving it away. Hey, it’s all just stuff, and books and movies can usually be bought / borrowed / rented again if the need arises.

The result of this, of course, is that the books and movies that I actually end up *keeping * - with the exception of academic stuff that is so opaque that I don’t expect that anyone would want it - are those that are just so bad that I don’t wish them upon anyone else. Actually, by now I have shelves full of the stuff - there’s hardly a readable book or a watchable movie in my entire collection. If you were to analyze my personality based on the books and movies that I own, you’d actually pretty much end up with an exact negative of the real thing. Why don’t I just throw the rubbish away? Yeah.
:smack:

Actually, I’m in the process of moving again right now, and damn it - this time a lot of that stuff *is *going into the recycling. In fact, thanks for making me come to that conclusion.

20

might i suggest http://www.operationpaperback.org/ ? the writers you mentioned are in demand.

think of a person in a tent, boat, ship, or base, miles and miles away from a bookstore. quite a few of the people on the address lists are in iraq. they could use a brief respite from the day and night job.

between operation paperback and friends of the library i have no trouble at all finding new homes for books. i only toss into recycle ones that have been horribly messed up, (stretch the superduper claims he can read through his claws) or have been slated for trash from the bookstore, (front cover torn and sent to publisher, we get to take 5 a day from the heap. employee perk!).