Be a Barbarian with books (was) RE: [at-l] re: books

[nealb@midlandstech.com (William Neal)]

***Before someone says I don't love books and I want to burn books (as in
FARENHEIT 451)(?), I was a book lover for several decades before giving in
to others urgings, and I am now a librarian (with poor grammar and
spelling).***

Libraries often have to get rid of books.  And many of the books are already
self-destructing -- they are "burning" which is why the pages start turning
brittle, brown, and/or yellow.  Also use causes many of them to be worthless
for keeping.  And there is the assorted problems of mold, mildew, pest
bites, deteriorating glue and stiches, etc.

So why not help out a library, and find some good or interesting reads.
Maybe even duplicates of books you already have.  Tear or cut off the
covers.  Cut the book up into sections.  Carry one section with you and (for
a long hike) bump box the rest ahead.  Then as you read the section you
have, use the read pages to start a fire or as TP (I'd save the last page or
two so that you can re-read those and keep some of the continuity going in
your head.  Especially if you are only hiking every now and again).  

Don't look at it as destroying book.  Look at it as getting one more good
read out of a book.  Because otherwise, it's going to evaporate into a
landfill: State procedure (since we are a state agency) requires us to send
our "withdrawals" to surplus.  And most of the time, they sit until they are
tossed into a landfill since no library really wants them.  I understand
that they send some to the penal system, but most of the books are not what
prisoners want for reading pleasure or other purposes.  So even those books
soon end up in a landfill: Though I've heard of a guy who uses them to build
things.  I've thought about building a "reading table" to go next to my easy
chair with old med and law books.

William, The Turtle



-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Magnanti [mailto:pmags@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 12:03 PM
To: at-l@backcountry.net
Subject: [at-l] re: books


Skeeter wrote:


>>Right now I'm wading through T.E. Laurence' 
>>(sp?) 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom'. If it weren't
so
>>heavy it would make for a good hiking book, it would
>>last a good long time...

Good read, once you stick with it..

In any case, there is a great quote in it that may
apply to hiking..or at least taking the months long
adventures that many seem to do about this time every
year.

"...the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for
they may act out their dreams with open eyes, to make
them possible".
--T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia)


As a literary side note, as I said, once you get past
the somewhat dry start of the book, it really comes
alive.  The movie version (a real treat to see it on a
large screen) of this book is known for the  sparse,
almost poetic dialgoue. The words of Lawrence are like
that in his account of his role in WW1. He took some
er, poetic license, with his role..but it is still a
good read.

Hmm..it has been years since I read the book. Time to
read it again before I go hiking in the desert? :-)



=====
************************************************************
The true harvest of my life is intangible.... a little stardust caught, a
portion of the rainbow I have clutched
--Thoreau

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