July 1, 2008
How to throw away a book
Tyler Cowen, blogging for Penguin, explains:
But isn’t it a horrible thing to throw out books? It just doesn’t feel right. Shouldn’t you donate the books somewhere? I think not, at least in many cases.
Here’s the problem. If you donate the otherwise-trashed book somewhere, someone might read it. OK, maybe that person will read one more book in life but more likely that book will substitute for that person reading some other book instead.
So you have to ask yourself — this book — is it better on average than what an attracted reader might otherwise spend time with? No I’m not encouraging “censorship” of any particular point of view, but even within any particular point of view most books simply aren’t that good. These books are traps for the unwary. A lot of books don’t make the cut of “above average to those readers they will attract” and of course since you’ve spent some time with the volume you ought to be in a position to know. (But note the calculation is tricky. Sometimes a very bad book can be useful because it might appeal to “bad” readers and lure them away from even worse books. Please make all the appropriate calculations here.)
As so often, Tyler is leaving some of his assumptions unstated (for example, that the environmental and financial costs of producing books are trivial relative to the time taken to read them) but this view seems reasonable.
Then there’s the question of how many books to throw away, which is not an easy one, either. This comment (via 43 folders) helped me a lot:
To some extent, I think de-cluttering involves recognizing that regret is part of life, and being OK with that. Yes, I’ve given away books that I now often wish I still owned. But I’ve also screwed up relationships, made iffy career choices, etc. — you suck it up and move on. If you try to cling to *every* *single* *thing* (material, spiritual, or emotional) that you might need one day in the totally hypothetical future, you’re going to end up bogged down in a lot of stuff.
I wouldn’t have put it quite like that. But clutter consumes time, space and attention. The optimal decision rule must be to throw things out before waiting until there is zero chance they will be missed.
What about such initiatives as BookCrossing? Why not print a few labels, stick them on books, pass them on to the world? This is cheaper and faster than searching where to donate them and lets others decide the true value of the book.
Posted by: Robertas | July 1st, 2008 at 3:45 pm | Report this commentA friend has a gîte not far from us and for the last two years we have taken up his offer to ‘offload’ unwanted books there. What I find interesting is that the books we thought were worse than trash (ie ashamed to admit we bought them) are the ones that get taken by visitors. The ones we weren’t sure we wanted to lose were still there for us to collect at the end of the summer season!
Where’s the economic reasoning in that?
Posted by: Derek Tunnicliffe | July 1st, 2008 at 6:33 pm | Report this comment“Bookseller encourages people to destroy old books, buy new ones. More at eleven”.
Seriously. The last thing Penguin’s accountants want is for books to be read more than once.
If anyone should be thinking, “does this book really enrich the world?”, it’s the publisher, not the readers. Are Penguin really telling us that their books actually *make the world worse*, and it’s up to us to stop this tragedy by buying them and throwing them away?
Send your old books to a second-hand bookshop (charity or otherwise). If someone wants to read them, they’ll buy them. If nobody buys them, they’ll be pulped. Who exactly am I helping out if I stop that happening? Sellers of new books and virgin pulp, is who.
Posted by: SteveJ | July 1st, 2008 at 10:14 pm | Report this commentI have several thousand books that no second-hand bookshop will take. They have sat in cartons for some years because, first, they are mine and I feel that things which are mine must have some value; and second, because part of that hypothetical “value” is that I might want to look at them someday. Recently, I have realised that I can now more easily look up a high proportion of those texts on the internet. Next time I pass by where the books are stored, I will throw them out. A reserve library a click or three away is much more valuable than a reserve library a jounrney and an hour’s unpacking away.
Posted by: David Heigham | July 2nd, 2008 at 3:32 pm | Report this commentYes, it is a horrible thing to throw out a book.
It makes more economic sense to recycle them. Enrich the world by saving a tree.
Posted by: Mike | July 3rd, 2008 at 12:17 pm | Report this commentBookMooch.com has an interesting idea. Trade your old book for other books you would like to read. This web site does take some real commitment and love of books. Since you have to pay to ship your books in hope of building up credits to ‘purchase’ other books listed with your accrued credits.
I have been meaning to do it for months and to build my personal ‘catalog’ of books to trade or barter within the system, but for my love of books, it is still easier and cheaper to go to the discount rack in front of Barnes & Noble and pick up a new steady diet of interesting titles.
Of course that doesn’t address the clutter and storage space issue of the books I want to get rid of that I refuse to throw away. Donating them to the local library and having them give them away occasionally as their inventory levels get high is probably the best solution.
Rare book collectors look through these titles for First editions and such and re-sell books found this way like a good garage sale-er finds bargains.
Posted by: Tim Nelson | July 4th, 2008 at 8:52 pm | Report this comment