Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Manuscripts Do Burn!

Now why would a bookseller burn his own books?

Thanks Patrick Lee sending me this link, which then lead me to Tom Wayne's website for his independent second-hand bookshop Prospero's Books in Kansas City. (I've actually bought from there via abebooks.com)

I lift this very apt quote from his site:
There are worse crimes than burning books, one is not reading them. ~ Joseph Brodskey

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good god, what was he thinking!? Surely there's got to be a better way to draw attention to decline in reading than the burning of precious tomes...it's sacrilege!

But I guess Tom Wayne really didn't have a choice now did he? But I guess some good did come out of his desperate act...at least it got people to come and buy some books at a bargain before it's all gone up in smoke...literally.

I shudder to think that bookstores in Malaysia also get rid of their old stocks this way if they couldn't get them to sell after numerous warehouse sales...

Hopefully it isn't so...

bibliobibuli said...

EW - books here get pulped too. that's why we always feel we're rescuing them just as we save cats and dogs on the street.

i wish there were a way to ship the excess books here to stock community libraries ...

sorry btw that the link didn't work at first. if a space is left accidentally when typing in the addres an extra bit of code gets added ... i should have checked bu was rushing this morning