I find that very irritating. We saw an episode of Fixer Upper the other day in which Joanna put blank white bookcovers on some of the books she was piling on a mantel with candlesticks and such. Seems to me that if the books aren’t to be read, you could just use a couple reams of copy paper.
Of course, if you do get a strange hankering to read something, you could just look at the wall, where it usually says “Love” or “Family”. :rolleyes:
Reminds me of an old Dilbert strip, where Dogbert is selling “art” for the office environment. “How much is your art?” “Six dollars a pound.”
First thing that came to mind when I read the OP was The Last Bookstore in LA. They have a neat tunnel made of books and also some shelves where books are sorted by color.
There’s a Flann O’Brien story that advertises a service that makes it look like said books have actually been read. Dog eared pages, margin notes, that kind of thing.
I think it would be fun for a group of friends to each buy a set of books (each in a different color), read their set, then meet to discuss.
As for myself, I don’t need no stinking broker in order to entirely decorate my apace with books.
Don’t forget about Danielle Steel! It wouldn’t surprise me if her books are the reason why they do this.
This sounds like a great way for them to clear out their warehouses, and make a little cash at the same time.
The library in my old town priced their books at 50 cents an inch (measuring the spine), and then after much hand-wringing decided to raise it to $1 an inch. Some people thought we would lose sales, but we didn’t.
Won’t make the edit deadline: And I see that Half Price Books pitches this service to, among other things, the hotel and hospitality industry. When I stayed in a hotel last month, they had their version of a Little Free Library in the lobby. It had a few shelves with a small sign that said, “Take a book, leave a book.”
My wife has a book up on the shelf titled, “20,000 Years of Fashion”. There is a stuffed Bumble Bee sitting on top of it.
You should have a look at that book, Gato. Not because I am worried about your fashion sense, but it may be where she’s hiding the cash or her stash.
I briefly sold books to decorators in my teenaged years. Many of them asked me for fake sets that were just a bunch of bindings stuck to a frame. I refused to sell those, and openly shamed them for asking.
We had about 20 different “packages” for various types of households. I only ever pitched the three packages which included the Harvard Classics and Encyclopedia Brittanica. All of my customers also got the complete works of DuBois, Baldwin, Frederick Douglass, Tolkien, and several others.
My parents seldom read their books, but I did. I always liked to imagine the children of those houses immersing themselves in great literature.
There is a restaurant/bar in the Pittsburgh suburbs somewhere that we visited for a beer/dinner pairing. Before it was a restaurant/bar it was a bookstore, and the new owners went with the books motif.
From our table I could easily reach bookshelves, and did examine a few random books. My gf put an end to that (no books/phones at the table), but I could see it being fun.
There used to be a hotel in my area that was considered THE place to stay, or to have things like wedding receptions. It was also a fine dining establishment back in the day. Eventually, the owners sold the facility to someone who didn’t take care of it, and before it was demolished, the public was allowed to come in and buy the contents. I heard they had a big library, and being a book re-seller, I decided to check it out.
99% of what they had was worthless to me, or anyone else, because it consisted of A) Reader’s Digest Condensed Books; B) other books, mostly vintage law books, that were infested with black mold; and C) RDCBs that were infested with black mold.
The Habitat Re-Store, which sells building supplies to raise money for Habitat for Humanity, made a small fortune from some of the stained glass they harvested.
Those RD books must have been in everyones houses. Must have cost pennies. I see them at every used book store or flea market I go to. I bought a large box of books at an auction one time. Got it for a song. More than half was RD. Disappointing.
At the least, you could construct a sturdy little fort for yourself. Try doing that with bindings.
Several years ago, a British resale shop did this with their donated copies of “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
The library in my old town used RDCBs as a table base; once in a while, somebody would want to buy one, and they could if they wished.
Wasn’t there a BritCom about a surly bookstore owner … where a customer came and wanted “real leather” bound books. I thought I was going to be the next Blackadder. Talented people … but only a few episodes, then it just fell flat.
“Black Books”, season 1, episode 1:
I babysat my brother-in-law’s kids for three days once many years ago so he and his wife could go on a getaway weekend by themselves. I slept in their bed, over which was a book shelf with the only books in the whole (large) house. They were a matched set of about twenty English and US “great” novelists like Hardy and Twain and Dickens. They were nicely bound and not one had ever been opened as far as I could tell. They were probably thirty years old. Maybe he still has them.
Belasco never struck me as much of a reader.