In Defence of Book Art

If people at dinner parties should avoid talking about politics and religion then one of the taboo subjects on Reading Addicts should be book art. While some people love book art and the creativity of reusing an old book as something else, there are always a small group of people who just cannot forgive us for cutting up the books. Every time the subject of repurposed or upcycled books comes up on the page, there are huge divisions. Each to their own but I don’t see a problem and here’s why.

It’s absolutely tragic that not all people in the world have access to free reading material, but suggesting I should keep every crappy novel I ever read because someone else on the other side of the world can’t get a copy is tantamount to making me eat all my dinner because some children are starving. It simply makes no sense. I can’t send the books to the people who need them, it costs around £12 to send a paperback to some more remote parts of the world (I know, I’ve checked for previous competitions), so the possibility of passing a book on to someone who needs it is virtually impossible.

I offer all my unwanted books to other people before I cut them up, but the only other alternative is to give them to the charity shops. This is a great idea, but sadly if it’s a mass-produced paperback, they already have six copies! Sadly some books are just no use for resale. The charity shops still at least make something, they send them off to be pulped at around 10p a kilo, and I can’t bear that kind of end for even the crappiest of paperbacks! Books deserve more than to be turned into recycled toilet roll! While it used to appease my conscience to drop stacks of books off, these days I understand where most of them end up, and I think I’d rather give them prettier endings.

So if you’re tempted to chop up Jordan’s autobiography that you got in the Secret Santa last year, or that cookbook you’ve never opened, or even that novel that turned out to be the worst thing you had ever read, don’t feel guilty, just do it! It’s called mass publishing for a reason and thankfully we don’t live inside a dystopian novel like Fahrenheit 451.

Sorry purists, this isn’t wartime Germany, my reading accessibility is not endangered by the destruction of books, and the world has lost nothing by the tearing up of the latest bodice-ripper!