From my days at the secondhand store I remember that half the books that came in were recycled. There is a lot of pulp. Many books are quite damaged. Also, schoolbooks from 20 or 30 years old are not very much in demand.
At the same time, I enjoy buying books secondhand. Preferably at a shop, but an internet marketplace is fine too if I am looking for something specific.
For me, books are fungible. I only keep them if I am not planning on reading them again and not looking anything up. I guess a lot of people treat books this way, which is all the more joy for secondhand buyers.
I have a large digital library but that does not mean that they approach the value of an actual bound book. Especially one with fond memories attached.
I am not a boomer but i found your remark teeming with ignorance and misplaced emotion.
You'll see this same attachment in people who keep drawers full of old phones or just keepsakes from old trips and adventures that an outsider would only see as garbage.
Really, it just seems ironic to come on here being bitter and hateful while complaining about boomers...
>owns 12,000 books, mostly fiction, kept in 19th-century wooden cases with glass doors in her New York apartment
Maybe I should write it from "privilege" point of view. Many people do not have their own rooms, sleep in their cars, or stay with abusive partners just for housing. They do not haul around any books, but that does not mean, they are any less educated.
I really do not see why people expect congratulations or sympathy, for their book hoarding. Rich people problems!
A few years ago, I helped a friend move an entire book collection that he'd bought from the seller's house to his house, and while waiting I flicked open one of the books, when I noticed a little insect crawling around. That's when I learnt about booklice. I can never look at old books the same way again, knowing that there might be bugs living in them.
> Booklice are rarely damaging inside homes and are harmless to people or pets. Booklice usually feed on molds, fungi, grains, insect fragments, and other starchy material, including glue from bookbindings. In homes, psocids typically are found in damp, warm, undisturbed places where mold and fungi are growing.
Certainly having a yuck factor, but seems harmless? Perhaps even good if it eats mold?
If someone is sure they want to get rid of their paper books, if they can find a library that will stock them, that might minimize regrets.
After grad school, it was looking like I'd have a lean move (ended up only owning two suitcases, a few boxes, and a futon), but I was a books person. At work, my office had neat shelves of technical books, and at home, my living room had neat shelves of fiction and other non-work topics.
Since I felt I couldn't haul my books on this next move, I ended up selling some of my more rare technical books, and the rest of my books I donated to a branch of the local public library.
I later heard that libraries often don't have much use for donations, and often sell them.
A few years later, I was in the mood to read some science fiction, but no longer owned a collection, and wasn't about to start building a new one. So I went to the public library branch. I find they have a collection of well-worn books, and... it's pretty much my old collection, which was like-new when donated (I read without cracking the spine, etc.). Which meant that a lot of people got some use out of the books, and maybe it was positive formative for some kids.
I decided that was a good use. And every time I wish I had some technical book I sold, I remember the donated SF books that got read, and I don't feel bad.
I only recently resumed buying books (as ebooks): https://www.neilvandyke.org/ebooks/ Ebooks aren't going to be a conversation-starter in my office or living room, but I can read them, and they don't further complicate the crazy rental housing situation here. Ebooks also won't be a burden to my heirs (hopefully many decades away) to dispose of, though an unresolved question is how to let heirs inherit ebooks that they want to.
The economics of books were always weird. $15 for a new paperback that you can barely even give away when you’re done reading it, so it costs more than the book is even worth to most people to send it in the mail.
It makes it hard to get old books to the people who want them.
It's probably been a decade since I last used them but there were two book swapping services, I used to belong to that would handle matchmaking of people who had books the other wanted and then you could print a shipping label at home if you had a printer (they were still common at the time). For small paperbacks, you could even print out the postal details on a regular sheet of paper and then wrap it around the book and tape it up, ready to be picked up by the post office. Using the media mail rate kept things reasonable, especially for standard size books.
Bread is very cheap. Despite that, in my country (Poland), many people believe that throwing bread away is wrong. When it gets stale or moldy, they will either eat it anyway, feed animals with it, leave it next to a trashcan so someone else can take it (which never happens, no one wants moldy bread) or burn it. I want to stress that it's just about bread, they don't care about wasting the other kinds of food.
This is not unlike how some treat books. They can't accept that the overwhelming majority of old books are worthless (at least monetarily) and easily replaceable.
I don’t know. Some of my fondest memory as a child was roaming the old childhood libraries of my mother and uncle while staying with my grand parents. It looked to me like a treasure trove which would never deplete. I don’t buy as many books as I used to nowadays and most of my reading happens on screen but I still feel something special when I hold a book.
One of my first jobs was throwing out literally tons of bound periodicals at a college library. They were already in JSTOR and other databases, and other libraries had many copies. The whole campus had 6 months to grab whatever they wanted from the list. Other libraries and institutions had years.
Nevertheless i filled a cargo container sized dumpster with the unwanted volumes and felt weird doing it. Some passerby clearly disapproved and i told them they were welcome to whatever they wanted, but in the end no one actually wanted a hundred pound set of obscure medical journals from the 1980s in their own home. I saved some of the older and more beautiful items, some from the late 1800s, but even those couldn't be given away in necessary volume and what i grabbed was just a drop in the bucket. They remain in my parent's basement. Perhaps now there is a more efficient way to crowd source saving such items.
Please see my top level post in this thread. I am willing to cover your postage costs to get your collection to the Internet Archive if you decide to preserve them with that org. Drop an email in your profile long enough for me to see it and I’ll reach out OOB.
PSA: The Internet Archive will work with you to pack, ship, and archive collections of books, audio records, periodicals, and other media. You can reach out to them at donations@archive.org to discuss the transfer of physical items or entire collections.
If you are interested in volunteering for collection sorting and packing ops, signup for Jason Scott’s ArchiveCorps mailing list. Low volume, a couple times per year.
Finally, if you work at, are associated with, or know of a library of any sort that intends to close for whatever reason, please point them to the Internet Archive. They’ll work with them to ingest their entire corpus.
Hah! Can't/won't read because paywall, but I can tell you what it feels like to utterly massacre about 250 linear feet of the residue of 42 years of a thoroughly enjoyed and carefully curated book collection.
We moved across the country and purposely downsized in anticipation of a quite light retirement a few years from now.
The first couple of book boxes to the Goodwill were a quite pleasant experience. Finally, we are in the process of losing significant accrued but debilitating mass!
The last half-dozen were an absolutely gut wrenching emotional desolation. A high proportion of our self-value in life were embedded in those pages, it turns out.
Now however we're over it. As far as we can tell, in our social orbit essentially no-one reads in a methodical way. We were pretty focused on personal enjoyment, which we have always found in the more difficult authors. So, for instance, when three years ago I picked up the 38 yo copy of Ulysses that I bailed on so many years ago, I decided that older me thinks that's the best book I have ever read. My social group though. They apparently considered such an effort (yeah it sure was) to be stupid waste of time ("I would never do that."). Oh well[1].
I kept that one, yep. And my technical collection is down to a nostalgic retention of the two volumes of Hairer et al's "Solving Ordinary Differential Equations". And Knuth. It was very hard to part with Stevens, but I did. We also kept 15 feet of cooking/culinary references. Even with those, my McGee's "On Food..." only lives in my calibre library, but I dislike how awkward it is to look things up.
So, on balance, it was the right thing to do, but it ended up being very, very hard.
[1] I'm not a snob! I have happily read galaxies worth of schlock. If Cosma Shalizi can fess up to it then I will too. But I can barely remember any of them. Joyce, I remember a lot of his stuff, not just Ulysses.
"galaxies worth of schlock": Robertson Davies in an essay on reading mentioned the old proverb "We must eat a peck of dirt before he die." He was arguing against too nicely restricted a diet of reading.
I love giving books away. There are so many options. Charities, neighborhood social networks, a box with a "free" sign, book crossing, public book shelves. I've used all of those. There are still some at my parents that I need to give away, but it feels great making sure that someone else gets more use out of them.
My mother has an impressive library at home and I wonder what I will do with it someday. Ideally I would have a library take it as it, including the fantastic and less fantastic books (some are rarities, some are worthless).
We were trying to talk her into that already with my brother, but first she looked at is as if we started to run naked in the street, and then kindly asked us to mind our business :)
We managed, after years of effort, to talk her into using a digital reader (I do not remember how we managed to do that). She was always against, and then tried for a week, which turned into two and it is now two years she is using this almost exclusively.
Which is good because she is reading one or two books per week and loves to build the queue of what is left. Least time I checked, it was 100 books.
My father once decided to put some order in her library, starting with a small set of shelves. He sorted the books by size (or alphabetically, I do not remember). It was at a time my mouth was at the hospital, we drove her back home and discovered with her the cleanup, and a proud husband.
We sat comfortably with my brother with some imaginary popcorn to watch the scene what my father was fleeced alive after my mother realized that all her mess (that she knew by heart) was gone.
So yes, books are difficult to get rid of for some people.
Two great arguments for digital readers for people like your mother and me: vision and size & weight.
You love to read, but it gets physically more difficult as your eyes age. With a digital reader, every book is a "large print edition" with good lighting.
And when you travel, you have to take several books because, well, duh! You have to have books when you travel. Obviously. But carrying heavy books is a (literal and literary) pain. And airlines are getting so stingy about baggage limits that I'm surprised they aren't yet charging extra if you want to wear shoes. You can put a whole library in a reader the size and weight of a shoe and take it when you travel.
Of course some books are precious physical artifacts (to me) for whatever reason. I MUST keep those, but they are a minority. Most of the books I want to keep are wanted for their content, not their physical form, and those I'll get rid of if I can keep the content in digital form.
Technical books need to be preserved. Most inventions are based on old ideas or discovering hidden structures that can be used in another domain. If we have not preserved Darwin's books, we may not have advanced in genetics now. The pity is there is a misconception that "you can find every thing in internet"- it is not true. Most African countries lack technical books. So, please don't through those books rather find a philanthropist who can build a library of technical books.Most teachers will find that not one text book is not enough to teach a subject and can find examples from other books. Is there a national institution to preserve technical books.
Think it was Kevin Kelly who said books will never be less expensive than they are now and he's probably correct. We have a glut of them now but once that glut is cleared out, the cost to acquire particular books likely will go up. This doesn't mean that hoarding or speculative investing in books is a good idea but if there are books that have special appeal to you in their physical form, now is a good time to get them.
There is a social club locally that has done a used book sale for years and years, with the proceeds going to scholarships for local women. It's a major event - takes up one of the largest meeting spaces in town and is so crowded they practically have to control access into the building. Raises a lot of money. I know we are just a small town (approx 35,000) but if we are any example, the rumors of book's death has been greatly exaggerated.
This fall, we lost about sixty books to a plumbing failure. This led to reflections along the lines of, Well, I definitely enjoy Peterer Schneider's The German Comedy, but will I really want to read it again? My estimate is that twenty or so I don't really want back. I suspect that the same ratio holds for the house generally; but a lot of the books are my wife's, and her and my criteria will be different.
I worked in libraries for 20 years before retiring. Getting libraries - and often the librarians - to get rid of old, worn, unread books and books with obsolete information in them is very difficult. Near the end of my time as a cataloger, we did a 'big weed' and got rid of tons of books - thanks to the gods for that! And that was only the first step. There is still plenty more to weed out.
Libraries can serve the twenty-first century public best by giving the people who don't have access to the internet the means to do so rather than cluttering the world with a plethora of unsustainable physical books. Let libraries maintain a minimal physical collection, and provide the general population with staff to support them in obtaining the information they need. Librarians can guide patrons to obtain access to the literary and audiovisual materials they seek online rather than purchasing and maintaining a physical collection that utilizes equipment that is becoming obsolete. Most librarians have degrees in (Library and...) Information Science. In this century, the emphasis is on Information Science.
36 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 80.0 ms ] threadAt the same time, I enjoy buying books secondhand. Preferably at a shop, but an internet marketplace is fine too if I am looking for something specific.
For me, books are fungible. I only keep them if I am not planning on reading them again and not looking anything up. I guess a lot of people treat books this way, which is all the more joy for secondhand buyers.
You certainly seem to have some.
I have a large digital library but that does not mean that they approach the value of an actual bound book. Especially one with fond memories attached.
I am not a boomer but i found your remark teeming with ignorance and misplaced emotion.
You'll see this same attachment in people who keep drawers full of old phones or just keepsakes from old trips and adventures that an outsider would only see as garbage.
Really, it just seems ironic to come on here being bitter and hateful while complaining about boomers...
Maybe I should write it from "privilege" point of view. Many people do not have their own rooms, sleep in their cars, or stay with abusive partners just for housing. They do not haul around any books, but that does not mean, they are any less educated.
I really do not see why people expect congratulations or sympathy, for their book hoarding. Rich people problems!
Certainly having a yuck factor, but seems harmless? Perhaps even good if it eats mold?
After grad school, it was looking like I'd have a lean move (ended up only owning two suitcases, a few boxes, and a futon), but I was a books person. At work, my office had neat shelves of technical books, and at home, my living room had neat shelves of fiction and other non-work topics.
Since I felt I couldn't haul my books on this next move, I ended up selling some of my more rare technical books, and the rest of my books I donated to a branch of the local public library.
I later heard that libraries often don't have much use for donations, and often sell them.
A few years later, I was in the mood to read some science fiction, but no longer owned a collection, and wasn't about to start building a new one. So I went to the public library branch. I find they have a collection of well-worn books, and... it's pretty much my old collection, which was like-new when donated (I read without cracking the spine, etc.). Which meant that a lot of people got some use out of the books, and maybe it was positive formative for some kids.
I decided that was a good use. And every time I wish I had some technical book I sold, I remember the donated SF books that got read, and I don't feel bad.
I only recently resumed buying books (as ebooks): https://www.neilvandyke.org/ebooks/ Ebooks aren't going to be a conversation-starter in my office or living room, but I can read them, and they don't further complicate the crazy rental housing situation here. Ebooks also won't be a burden to my heirs (hopefully many decades away) to dispose of, though an unresolved question is how to let heirs inherit ebooks that they want to.
It makes it hard to get old books to the people who want them.
This is not unlike how some treat books. They can't accept that the overwhelming majority of old books are worthless (at least monetarily) and easily replaceable.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040555
If you are interested in volunteering for collection sorting and packing ops, signup for Jason Scott’s ArchiveCorps mailing list. Low volume, a couple times per year.
Finally, if you work at, are associated with, or know of a library of any sort that intends to close for whatever reason, please point them to the Internet Archive. They’ll work with them to ingest their entire corpus.
http://archivecorps.com/
https://archive.org/details/marygrove
https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-donat...
https://help.archive.org/help/media-types-for-donations/
https://help.archive.org/help/does-the-internet-archive-have...
(not associated with the Internet Archive in any way)
We moved across the country and purposely downsized in anticipation of a quite light retirement a few years from now.
The first couple of book boxes to the Goodwill were a quite pleasant experience. Finally, we are in the process of losing significant accrued but debilitating mass!
The last half-dozen were an absolutely gut wrenching emotional desolation. A high proportion of our self-value in life were embedded in those pages, it turns out.
Now however we're over it. As far as we can tell, in our social orbit essentially no-one reads in a methodical way. We were pretty focused on personal enjoyment, which we have always found in the more difficult authors. So, for instance, when three years ago I picked up the 38 yo copy of Ulysses that I bailed on so many years ago, I decided that older me thinks that's the best book I have ever read. My social group though. They apparently considered such an effort (yeah it sure was) to be stupid waste of time ("I would never do that."). Oh well[1].
I kept that one, yep. And my technical collection is down to a nostalgic retention of the two volumes of Hairer et al's "Solving Ordinary Differential Equations". And Knuth. It was very hard to part with Stevens, but I did. We also kept 15 feet of cooking/culinary references. Even with those, my McGee's "On Food..." only lives in my calibre library, but I dislike how awkward it is to look things up.
So, on balance, it was the right thing to do, but it ended up being very, very hard.
[1] I'm not a snob! I have happily read galaxies worth of schlock. If Cosma Shalizi can fess up to it then I will too. But I can barely remember any of them. Joyce, I remember a lot of his stuff, not just Ulysses.
We were trying to talk her into that already with my brother, but first she looked at is as if we started to run naked in the street, and then kindly asked us to mind our business :)
We managed, after years of effort, to talk her into using a digital reader (I do not remember how we managed to do that). She was always against, and then tried for a week, which turned into two and it is now two years she is using this almost exclusively.
Which is good because she is reading one or two books per week and loves to build the queue of what is left. Least time I checked, it was 100 books.
My father once decided to put some order in her library, starting with a small set of shelves. He sorted the books by size (or alphabetically, I do not remember). It was at a time my mouth was at the hospital, we drove her back home and discovered with her the cleanup, and a proud husband.
We sat comfortably with my brother with some imaginary popcorn to watch the scene what my father was fleeced alive after my mother realized that all her mess (that she knew by heart) was gone.
So yes, books are difficult to get rid of for some people.
You love to read, but it gets physically more difficult as your eyes age. With a digital reader, every book is a "large print edition" with good lighting.
And when you travel, you have to take several books because, well, duh! You have to have books when you travel. Obviously. But carrying heavy books is a (literal and literary) pain. And airlines are getting so stingy about baggage limits that I'm surprised they aren't yet charging extra if you want to wear shoes. You can put a whole library in a reader the size and weight of a shoe and take it when you travel.
Of course some books are precious physical artifacts (to me) for whatever reason. I MUST keep those, but they are a minority. Most of the books I want to keep are wanted for their content, not their physical form, and those I'll get rid of if I can keep the content in digital form.
Libraries can serve the twenty-first century public best by giving the people who don't have access to the internet the means to do so rather than cluttering the world with a plethora of unsustainable physical books. Let libraries maintain a minimal physical collection, and provide the general population with staff to support them in obtaining the information they need. Librarians can guide patrons to obtain access to the literary and audiovisual materials they seek online rather than purchasing and maintaining a physical collection that utilizes equipment that is becoming obsolete. Most librarians have degrees in (Library and...) Information Science. In this century, the emphasis is on Information Science.