Sigh

[altivo]

Don't want to actually read anything, but want your friends to think you're an intellectual? Now you can!

You can even fill your shelves with law books to make a room look really sophisticated and scholarly.

Of course they neglect to mention the fact that anyone who actually can read will recognize Readers' Digest Condensed Books for the schlock that they are. And old encyclopedias, randomly selected, are even less likely to impress anyone other than your interior decorator, who probably hasn't read anything that didn't have color pictures since leaving school...

Have a look here. And you thought I was kidding when I kept describing Americans as illiterates who are concerned only with appearances...

Comments

[herefox.livejournal.com]

And here I spend most of my time trying to figure out how I can squeeze another bookshelf in to combat the overflow of my current ones :-/

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Me too. But that sort of thing is why we are mutual friends. ;p

[linnaeus.livejournal.com]

"These books are carefully screened for content and contain no multiple copies."

I like that. Otherwise I'm picturing the appearance-minded nonliterate folks who are looking to impress people ending up with a bookshelf filled with old gynecological reference books and about twenty hardbound copies of "Lolita".

Granted, that would still be slightly less embarrassing than a shelf full of Reader's Digest Condensed Books...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised they don't offer a medical book special for those who want to look like a doctor. ;p

Yeah, Readers' Digest Condensed is the ultimate in pure schlockiness. Every so often someone will bring a whole box of them to the library and become offended that we won't take them even as free gifts. Even if put into our book sale, they never sell. We just have to pay to recycle them.

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

Toss in a well-thumbed (or well-fingered?) copy of Psychopathia Sexualis and you're like, so there!

[quickcasey.livejournal.com]

That would appear just awesome.
You know, a yard of 85% fiction with no duplicates might prove interesting. I'd take a couple yards.
As if I know what to do with the books I have. I need more shelves, myself.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh, but yours are probably all dog-eared (wolf-eared?) and jumbled, mismatched in size and color. You can have these selected to fit any decor and look just "stunning" (or was that "stunted"? I forget.)

[megadog.livejournal.com]

Books by the yard are common in .UK too; they tend to get used to decorate theme-pubs, questionably-pretentious restaurants/coffeeshops and suchlike.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I've seen that in restaurants before. In fact, I was really upset once. Some of the ruined books were actually valuable, but they'd been selected just for the color of their bindings.

[brokkentwolf.livejournal.com]

That's just... sad.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You said it. I agree.

Science Books

[keeganfox.livejournal.com]

So does my circa 1880 five volume set of "Science for All" count as cool or pathetic? I have actually read just about all of the first volume. I love the article on "electric candles". A "newfangled" eroding electrode arc lamp...

Why are my eyes itchy and burning?!?

@.@

Re: Science Books

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That one is definitely cool. So are really old encyclopedias (like a century or more old.) XD

[woodychitwn.livejournal.com]

See now... I think you're taking slightly too harsh of a look at this...

Yeah, most of these books will probably spend the rest of their lives sitting on shelves looking pretty... But these are books that couldn't be sold in their stores (One of which I passed by this very morning) and the alternative is destruction and recycling.

And I can't personally accept that SOME of those books won't eventually grab the owner's attention and be read, or loaned to friends. Thereby inspiring further research into other works by that writer...

If every home in America were required to have a bookshelf filled with random works of literature both great and small, this nation wouldn't be nearly as illiterate and concerned only with appearances as you feel it is.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I hope you're joking. Readers' Digest Condensed Books don't even qualify as books. They are hardly better than having ten years of bound issues of the National Enquirer. I'm really afraid that people who buy books solely as decorator objects are not likely to read them even by accident.

The stuff that won't sell in a used book store is really dregs. Old encyclopedias, compiled statutes, condensed books, and tired cookbooks. Even just making people look at yesterday's Sun Times would be a thousand times better for them and society. ;p

[swampy.livejournal.com]

A lot of my books are tatty, some are falling apart, all of them are generally well thumbed. None of my books are there to impress others. They are there because they serve me well, and I would be happy to be judged, or defined by them, however esoteric they may be.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I agree. In our old house in Chicago we had bookshelves lining the walls on the second floor, and they were visible from the street through a large plate glass window. A couple of people in the neighborhood actuall said to me that they were dying to get into my house and see what was on those shelves.

On the other hand, I've had a lot more people make really inane remarks about books. In my apartment many years ago, the spare bedroom was the library, with lots of bookshelves. The sitting room had stuffed furniture and the musical instruments in it (piano, clavichord, etc.) and there was a decorative shelf with various gadgets on it and just a few, maybe a dozen books. Some people actually walked in the door, laid eyes on that lonely shelf with its handful of occupants, and said things like "Gosh, I've never seen anyone with so many books. You must be really intelligent."

As you can guess, I had to struggle to keep from retching.

[ducktapeddonkey.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

Although I think it would even cheaper to go hit up your local used stuff shop and just buy a few armfuls there. The place that Dog and frequent has thousands of books of just about every description. Heck, they even have four big shelves of free books.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Books from a junk store are usually pretty badly beat up, though. Hardly suitable as decorator objects, no? From a used book store, you can get better ones, but they cost more.

[moth-wingthane.livejournal.com]

*hides his shelf of Halsbury's Statutory Instruments and the 1984 set of Encyclopaedia Britannica* hehe I guess it's ok as I've had all these from new and they've been used an awful lot in their lifetime :)

What exactly are the condensed books? Several books in one volume or books literally shortened for non-reader types?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

RDCB usually have three or four best sellers in one volume, yes. But they are edited to keep them shorter, usually about one third to one half the full length. If I were a best-selling author I'd never give permission for that, even though they undoubtedly pay the royalty for each copy.

It's sort of like those books "The Bluffer's Guide to..." or how to make your friends think you actually read the latest hot novel instead of just perusing the Cliff's Notes summary.

They have fake leather bindings with gilt lettering on the spine though, which is enough to impress some people who don't know any better apparently.

[vimsig.livejournal.com]

No!!

I'm speechless

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. I thought you'd have some sort of comment on this. You've read more books this year alone than most Americans read in their entire lifetime. Isn't that appalling?

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Once I stopped laughing, it all came off as kind of vaguely adorable. I'm not entirely sure what to think of this.

Eco's How To Justify A Private Library offers this guidance on books, which I'm copypasting off someplace for lack of the whole thing:

"[For] people who possess a fairly sizable library (large enough in my case that someone entering our house can't help but notice it; actually, it takes up the whole place.), visitors enter and say, "What a lot of books! Have you read them all?" At first I thought that the question characterized only people who had scant familiarity with books . . . but there is more to it than that. I believe that, confronted by a vast array of books, anyone will be seized by the anguish of learning and will inevitably lapse into asking the question that expresses his torment and his remorse.

In the past I adopted a tone of contemptuous sarcasm. "I haven't read any of them; otherwise, why would I keep them here?" But this is a dangerous answer, because it invites the obvious follow-up: "And where do you put them after you've read them?" The best answer is the one always used by Roberto Leydi: "And more, dear sir, many more," which freezes the adversary and plunges him into a state of awed admiration. But I find it merciless and angst-generating. Now I have fallen back on the riposte: "No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. I keep the others in my office," a reply that on the one hand suggests a sublime ergonomic strategy and on the other leads the visitor to hasten the moment of his departure."

Yes indeedy.

[vimsig.livejournal.com]

what a good riposte - although I feel that one could not keep a straight face in the voicing...

nevertheless I will give it a go

:O)

[kistaro]

As others have said- they're only doing this because they're books they can't sell any other way. I find this to be a good idea, actually- people are going to keep using books as decorative objects, as much as you and I might vehemently object, and we might as well have some system in place catering to that designed to ensure they get no or almost no books actually worth reading, leaving those within ciruculation. It's a goal that works well for both parties- if the decorators get books not worth reading, they also tend to be relatively unread, and therefore undamaged. So they get decorative objects, and take the rubbish off the shelves- and also out of the dumpsters.

That said, the fact that Readers' Digest Condensed Books sell as disturbingly well as they still do is what distresses me a great deal more.

Count me in also as someone worrying about book storage. Admittedly, I've got empty space on several shelves, but give me time; this is the first apartment for Rakeela and me, and neither of us brought all that many books in. We've only covered a couple shelving units so far, and there's space on several others- and I'm still planning how to shufflye around what's currently on those shelves so books can eventually be placed there.

When I run out of shelf space, I'll buy two more bookshelves. When those fill up, we'll move, because we'll be out of space for books.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Why not just buy an old schoolhouse or library and be done with it? I've asked myself that many times in the past.

Right now we have boxes and boxes of books taped up and stored on shelves in the horse arena. There just isn't anyplace else to put them.

[farhoug.livejournal.com]

I knew there was something missing here... *orders a couple of meters of tech books*

Well, at least those are real books, and someone might accidently even read one. And if nothing else, it makes a lovely nest for spiders and book scorpions. =)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. Well, I'm not sure there's much benefit to anyone if people accidentally read old law journals or condensed books. They have no content to speak of. The risk of accidental reading by anyone who considers books to be mere shelf filler, though, is negligible.

There is another aspect of this "books as decor" notion though. There are also so-called book clubs that offer to send you a volume of classic literature each month, each one done up in very fancy binding. You can select the bindings from several different styles to be sure you get the right color options and so forth. The books are real, always older classics that are beyond copyright such as Dickens, Austen, or Eliot. The prices are steep, as high as $50 US per volume, and I'm sure very few of these are ever actually read. They must sell though, because I get junk mail advertising them pretty regularly.

[songcoyote.livejournal.com]

Why put fake books on shelves when they would make perfectly good insulation? Grind 'em and blow 'em!

Not really, of course. It's a weird thing some people do.

Light and laughter,
SongCoyote

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Somewhere long ago I read that having shelves full of books against the outside walls of a building does actually increase the insulating properties of the wall. They should have mentioned that. ;p

[heavens-steed.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's astonishingly and simultaneously sad and hilarious.

But then again, it sounds like the perfect thing for me. I'm an idiot and I want to be smart but since I cannot be, the next best thing is to appear smart. I also like to have books. So yeah, as ridiculous as this all is, it's perfect for the likes of me.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'll take that as hyperbole because I know you do actually read books. This stuff is for people who don't know which way to turn one to begin, even.

[kaysho.livejournal.com]

Oh, come on, that's nothing new ... the creation of a large library as "scholarly interior decoration" dates back to the invention of the printing press. Besides, with the exception of the useless RDCBs, I rather like places that decorate themselves with random old books. Some of them are even decent reads, and the restaurant / pub / doctor's office / whatever usually don't mind if you just take them with you. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Those early libraries had real content, though, and usually the owners delighted in having others come and beg to read the books, even if they didn't read themselves.

RDCBs and old encyclopedias, mixed with obsolete law books? Not the same thing by any means.

Now as for the restaurants that use books as decor, the only ones I've been in that did that had glued the books down. ;p In one case, they had cut the spines off and glued them to panels so the books looked like they were on shelves but really were not even there.

The idea of making yourself look intellectual by displaying RDCBs is just so ludicrous though, I had to make fun of it.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Oh for F's
Why not just buy the fake books meant for displays in furniture stores?
My books may not be the absolutely intellectual material, but I've read all of them and most of them mean a great deal to me.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The fake books used in some furniture stores probably cost more than the real thing.