A Mother's Observation (MAA!)

[Lady Vetinari]

When I was reading Men At Arms to my mother she made an observation about The Librarian - his attitude to books. She said that in a sense the Librarian is right in the fact that books do belong on shelves as they are made, more or less, from the same material... a book should not be removed from the shelf and you never know - the book your holding might have been pulped from the wood of the tree next to the one that made the shelves ...

An elaboration on a mother's observation.

I hadn't thought about that before...

[chris.ph]

how come books dont get woodworm

[Tonyblack]

Because they get bookworms instead.

[chris.ph]

.45 bookworms

[Who's Wee Dug]

Yest 303 ones.

[Tina a.k.a.SusanSto.Helit]

how come books dont get woodworm

They get Deathwatch Beetles and it is Horrible, they just eat them up. Quite horrible really.

[Willem]

I read something once about buying more books to save the world from global warming. The reasoning was something like: yes, we do use paper (made from trees) for books, but we're also reducing the amount of carbon going around since we're essentially ' locking' it into the books. Been trying to find the exact quote without any luck.

Still, gives me another reason to buy books! And I get to feel smug while doing it, double bonus!

[Doughnut Jimmy]

I like the idea Willem but I suspect the carbon dioxide produced in cutting and transporting the trees, producing the paper, printing and distributing the books outways the amount locked up in the paper

unless anyone has any sources to suggest otherwise?

we'll just have to feel smug about our good taste in books even if we aren't saving the planet

[raisindot]

I read something once about buying more books to save the world from global warming. The reasoning was something like: yes, we do use paper (made from trees) for books, but we're also reducing the amount of carbon going around since we're essentially ' locking' it into the books. Been trying to find the exact quote without any luck.

Still, gives me another reason to buy books! And I get to feel smug while doing it, double bonus!

My guess is that the timber industry put that bit of malarkey out there.

Living trees convert carbon dioxide to oxygen, which make them the best natural defense against global warming. It is the removal of this conversion potential in the form of rampant deforestation, particularly in the rainforests of south America and Asia, that is, in part, causing the overabundance of CO2 in the atmosphere. You can't covert the CO2 in your copy of Pyramids to oxygen. Otherwise, it would be logical for us to completely eliminate all forests and use the wood to build houses, books, paper and whatever, since by doing so we'd be "locking it into the wood."

J-I-B

[mystmoon]

I read something once about buying more books to save the world from global warming. The reasoning was something like: yes, we do use paper (made from trees) for books, but we're also reducing the amount of carbon going around since we're essentially ' locking' it into the books. Been trying to find the exact quote without any luck.

Isn't it in one of The Science of the Discworld books? Either that or the Book of General Ignorance

[theoldlibrarian]

how come books dont get woodworm

believe they do, although most people are sensible enough to take car of them.

I think that part of the thinking behind the librarian is the rights for books that came about after ww2. The Nazis among others burned and destroyed books, and therefore ideas and therefore a very important part of ourselve that goes beyond our animalistic side.

[Doughnut Jimmy]

I think that part of the thinking behind the librarian is the rights for books that came about after ww2. The Nazis among others burned and destroyed books, and therefore ideas and therefore a very important part of ourselve that goes beyond our animalistic side.

Are there specific rights for books you're thinking of? Certainly book burning goes back a lot further than the Nazis as does an awareness of its dangers - Heinrich Heine wrote this about 100 years before Hitler "Where they have burned books they will end by burning human beings"

[Tonyblack]

I read something recently about the amount of books that were deliberately buried under the rubble of the Blitz in London. There were just too many books and not enough places to put them.

[theoldlibrarian]

Of course the Nazis weren't the first to burn or desecrate books. That has been going on all over the world for hundreds of years. Although WW2 is widely considered to be the time when our attitudes to books changed. They were more than just writing on paper they were ideas they were the spread of human knowledge.
As Doughnut Jimmy pointed out, burning a book isn't just burning a book, its burning freedom and burning people. Of course it still happens all over the world.

[Jan Van Quirm]

We had this discussion back along when Amazon? (was it?) pulled George Orwell's books off their Kindle catalogues because of a copyright issue and I definitely view book-burning as a human rights 'crime'