I have a love affair with books. I love the way they look, feel, smell. I am attracted to books with interesting covers. I have found many treasures by authors I’d never heard of because the jacket looked......whatever: bright, cool, dark, intriguing, whatever my mood is. I am drawn to covers with photographs that are stark and clean or spare and moody (gee think I am the perfect consumer, caught in the marketing trap of "pretty covers"?) I admit I sometimes judge a book by its cover. Or title, a good title will always catch my eye. "The weight of Water" "Peace Like a River", "Decorations in a ruined cemetery", "The Time Travelers Wife" (I am always drawn to books that involve time travel, I am not sure why, maybe to escape my life...oh that is another post) Anyway, the point that I am having a hard time getting to is that I love books. I love to read, I love the tactile experience of reading, I could never read a book online or on an ebook reader, it just wouldn’t feel right. I like a paperback book to look like and old friend, I don’t mind if the cover gets worn or I get coffee stains on the pages. I will not however, ever, dog-ear a page, that is what books marks are for, I also have an over abundance of those.
Okay okay, the point.
Okay okay, the point.
My dear friend gave me a little clutch purse for my birthday, it is quite adorable and just the right size for carrying your essentials on an evening out. The problem? It is made from an old book. A Nancy Drew hard cover book:"The Secret of Red Gate Farm". While I appreciate the ingenuity and creativity of the idea and they did a great job of making a beautiful little purse all I could think of was "but what happened to the book?" I asked my friend what she thought they did with the books innards and she said they probably recycled them. Okay, I get that, if the book were old and decrepit and falling apart and couldn't be enjoyed by anyone else, or the pages were falling out or the spine broken anything that would excuse the fact that the book had been disemboweled. But to make a purse! The book covers, front, back, spine, the whole thing is perfectly intact it is, as they say on ebay, in mint condition. So why, I ask you, would someone take a perfectly good book, albeit a might out-dated (there is probably some collector on ebay that would appreciate it) and skin it, remove the innards (most likely discarded), punch a hole in it's cover for a pretty pink button add some pretty pink material for the sides and inside that match the pink sweater of the girl on the cover and make a purse? I don't get it. It is a clear case of book-abuse, bookacide if you will. I just can not fathom it.
I tried my hardest not to let my friend know that I felt like she was giving me a carcass of a dead animal (okay perhaps I overstated that) but you get my drift. Remember a couple of Christmas's ago they had those kitties all curled up on little kitty beds and they breathed. They had a battery and a motor and they looked like they were sleeping, and their chest would methodically go up and down like they were breathing,they were soft and cute and cuddly and thoroughly gave me the creeps, that's what this purse was like to me. I smiled, admired the creativity and fine workmanship and I kept thinking "how can she not get that this is so NOT something I would approve of?" I have know her forever I figured if anyone would understand that she would, I guess I was wrong. She thought I would appreciate it, as a book lover. As a book lover I found it abhorrent, sacrilegious and just plain wrong. Maybe I should have been happy that someone gave this book a second life, but I wasn't
I know, I know, what is the big deal, it's just and old book? But that's how I feel about books. You can not throw them away, give them away yes, throw them away - never. Make coffee table legs out of stacks of them. Donate them, leave them at bus stops or on a park bench for someone else to pick up, drop them off at a hospital anyplace someone might need to put there hand on a good word. But don't turn it in to an accessory to carry tampons and lipstick in to make a buck at a craft sale.
I have brought books to Half Price Books many times and the ones they don't want to buy they ask you if you want them to "recycle" them, I can't ever do it cuz I know they are going to dump them into a giant book-chipper and turn them into sawdust and I just can't stand the thought of it, so I take them back home and hide them under the stairway until the DAV or ARC come around or take them to the salvation army and hope someone will give them a good home.
I will put my dead-book purse in my closet and once in a while I will pull it out when I am going out with my girlfriend, to let her know I use it. Or maybe I will put it on my book case, vertically, spine out, and pretend it is still a real book.
In the grand scheme of things is this important? Maybe not, but then again maybe yes.
