« Hopeless ideas to which I retain an irrational attachment | Main | Simone Dinnerstein »
The Ethics of Book Abuse
"Every reader has a personal ethic for how to treat a book, a morality for what can and can't be done to the physical object." Is dog-earing a page a violation of the sanctity of the volume, or an easy way to hold your place? What about highlighting key passages, or writing notes in the margins? Or even (gasp!) throwing out an old book you don't want anymore?
Here is the link. I do not believe that books have rights, Nozickian or otherwise. I am most likely to rip up travel books if only to minimize my carry burden. But I don't write in books because I wish to discover new ideas -- and not just my old ideas -- each time I open them up. Dog-earing pages is useful because you can go back to old books and see how far in them you read and then decide you really shouldn't give it another chance after all.
Here is a story about book left behind in hotel rooms, including a list of the top 10 most abandoned titles (UK).
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 30, 2007 at 03:20 PM in Books | Permalink
Comments
All of the above, with one's own books: perfectly ok, however uncomfortable at first. Students who pencil their pathetic opinions in the margins of library books, however, should die.
Posted by: Alan Little at Aug 30, 2007 4:27:15 PM
I understand the idea of treating books as semi-sacred objects, as discussed in the quoted text. I won't dog-ear a page, but instead will use bookmarks (or memory). I also tend to avoid highlighting and notating. But I tend to be a very memory-based person.
I do buy used books that others have highlighted, which is always fascinating. Different people find different parts to be significant, so I wonder what they were thinking of when they chose to highlight *that*.
A friend of mine had some books which wouldn't even be taken by the local "Friends of the Library" for their book sale, so she decided to use them as fire starters. Another friend took the books (which she didn't want) to keep them from being burned.
Posted by: Blaise Pascal at Aug 30, 2007 4:31:15 PM
we rip our travel books to shreds. we dog ear pages in all our books like there's no tomorrow. we leave books we have both finished behind for whoever finds them and wants them. we have had hotel employees running after our cab as we head to the airport trying to give us back the books we "forgot" in Morocco, South Africa, Italy, and Thailand. I have taken to leaving them in the fridge if there is one in the room in order to make a clean break.
Posted by: angus at Aug 30, 2007 4:37:25 PM
we rip our travel books to shreds. we dog ear pages in all our books like there's no tomorrow. we leave books we have both finished behind for whoever finds them and wants them. we have had hotel employees running after our cab as we head to the airport trying to give us back the books we "forgot" in Morocco, South Africa, Italy, and Thailand. I have taken to leaving them in the fridge if there is one in the room in order to make a clean break.
Posted by: angus at Aug 30, 2007 4:38:26 PM
I'm against mutilating books, and will never write or highlight or dog-ear books I'm reading. I realise this is pretty irrational, it's a superstition I absorbed as a child along with valuing knowledge, a hold-over from a few generations ago when the problem was scarcity of information, not surplus.
I find it hard to break this rule even for travel books, bought for one trip. Free guides & maps, and newspapers, and things printed out from the computer all get scribbles on and torn up with glee.
Posted by: improbable at Aug 30, 2007 5:39:49 PM
There was a time where I would never highlight, write or dogear a book. Partly out of habit of reading so many from the library, partly for reasons of sacredness. Over the last several years, now that I buy most of the book I read, I write in margins a lot more. I find that it allows me to engage the book much more, think through issues more, and connect ideas. Reading becomes a much more active process. I still would never dogear though.
Posted by: wph at Aug 30, 2007 5:47:12 PM
I blogged about dog earing books not too long ago:
http://therighteous.blogspot.com/2007/07/dog-ear.html
I do think there is a relationship between writer and reader, but the physical condition of the book is not part of that relationship. The work existed in other forms besides bound book, after all.
Posted by: KingM at Aug 30, 2007 6:16:17 PM
One of the more interesting things about Tyler's book ethic is that he doesn't keep books after he's read them. Most of the people I know, including myself, keeps just about every book they've ever bought, even if they never open them again--hey, I *might* open it again!
Tyler, don't you ever wish you had a book you read so that you could look something up in it, or reread an especially good chapter?
Cheers,
Posted by: Michael Giesbrecht at Aug 30, 2007 6:48:18 PM
I used to care about the state of books until my stint as a librarian, at which point I adopted a philosophy more along the lines that the contents of the book were what mattered, and as long as the book remained in a state fit to be read, perfect uncreased pages didn't really matter. I still hate people who damage spines when they're reading, mostly because that tends to reduce the life of the book.
Posted by: Janet at Aug 30, 2007 7:05:32 PM
JFK apparently kept his place in books by ripping the book in half.
Posted by: joeo at Aug 30, 2007 7:12:19 PM
Michael,
You mean you don't keep books around just to impress people?
Posted by: Sameer Parekh at Aug 30, 2007 8:01:51 PM
Huh, no Dan Brown?
Posted by: Eric H at Aug 30, 2007 8:11:47 PM
My small used bookstore buys and sells 90,000 or so books each year. I wish we had kept track through the years of the items people use to mark their books. I'm not sure if the books we've been offered are representative of those owned by the population, but here's a few observations:
- less than 5% of books have dog-eared corners, and most of those are mass-market paperbacks;
- airline ticket stubs were once the most common form of bookmark;
- items with personal information, such as credit card receipts, are left in books way more often than I would have guessed;
- about every other year we find a photo of an unbeautiful woman, partially clothed and perched atop a Harley-Davidson (not the same woman each time, of course).
It might be fun for my employees to record the types of bookmarks they find over the next few months. My customers would find that interesting.
Posted by: John Dewey at Aug 31, 2007 4:41:44 AM
Nozickian rights I don't know, but isn't there a school of ethics that argues that abusing an animal is wrong, not because of the animal's rights, but because of what it says about you that you would want to?
I suppose you could apply that to books as well. One could argue that tearing a book to pieces in rage or arranging a book-burning party are not very nice things to do.
I think creased corners pass, though.
Posted by: Harald Korneliussen at Aug 31, 2007 7:32:31 AM
I was listening to the radio and heard that in prison libraries it is common for people to underline the murderer's name in mysteries in the beginning pages, effectively ruining the book.
Posted by: AnotherDave at Aug 31, 2007 8:56:32 AM
Jacob Viner, the Chicago school pioneer, would fill his books with handwritten notes on every margin to the point of saturation. I think that story's in George Stigler's biography.
Posted by: Jack at Aug 31, 2007 10:34:47 AM
Above all else, I find myself wondering how I can avoid the sorts of books that would house the kind of photo described by John Dewey.
Posted by: fustercluck at Aug 31, 2007 11:42:37 AM
"I find myself wondering how I can avoid the sorts of books that would house the kind of photo described by John Dewey."
We find many more photos of someone's grandchild or pet. So the odds are with you.
Posted by: John Dewey at Aug 31, 2007 1:09:14 PM
When I finish a fiction book I know I won't read them again so I release them in the wild
Posted by: Coujou at Aug 31, 2007 3:50:15 PM
Hi Best wishes。Allow me to offer my heartiest wishes.xicao loves-流水线娱乐博客常年提供高、中、低压锅炉钢管、流体钢管、结构钢管、化肥专用钢管、石油裂化钢管、地质钢管、液压支柱钢管及合金钢管-无缝管-无缝钢管等论文发表资讯/刊物信息，协助客户制定论文发表方案
Posted by: xicao at Nov 13, 2007 7:42:04 PM
China Tours and Yangtze Cruises A professional China travel agency offering private & group package tours, tailor-made vacations for families, couples and individual travelers, Yangtze cruises, hotel & ticket booking services.
China Travel and Tours One-stop China travel service delivering China package tours, discount Yangtze River cruises and best rate hotels.
Tibet Train Travel A reliable tour operator specializing in Tibet tour packages, adventures, hotel and train ticket booking.
China Maps A free web-based source for China travel and tour map users
Voyage Chine, Tour de Chine, Circuit Chine - Un agence spécialiste voyage en Chine
Great Wall of China A website for the Great Wall of China.
Posted by: China tour at Nov 27, 2007 2:14:16 AM
I am looking for 翻譯社,who can help me to translation these words?
eg:女優、傢俱、搬家、室內設計?
Thanks a lot.
Posted by: Yony at Dec 5, 2007 9:12:00 PM
Posted by: 翻译公司 at Feb 13, 2008 7:05:14 AM
China Tours, Travel China, Beijing Tours ，China Travel is a China travel agency providing China tours、Beijing Tours, Tibet Tours, Great Wall Tour and Yangtze river cruises. We specialize in "Tailor-Made" and "Customized" private and group tours to China. We'll try our best to offer you China tours with super value and most considerate service.
Posted by: China Tour at Apr 14, 2008 10:36:59 PM
aion gold
aion money
cheap aion gold
cheap aion money
buy aion gold
Mabinogi online gold
Mabinogi gold
buy Mabinogi gold
cheap Mabinogi gold
Mabinogi money
2moons dil
2moons gold
buy 2moons dil
2moons dil
cheap 2moons dil
flyff gold
flyff penya
flyff money
buy flyff penya
cheap flyff penya
cheap flyff gold
Dofus kamas
buy Dofus kamas
cheap kamas
Dofus kama
Dofus gold
Dofus money
Knight online gold
Knight Gold
Knight Noah
Knight online Noah
Posted by: aion at Jul 14, 2009 1:53:43 AM
