Posted on 04/24/2005 9:49:51 PM PDT by SmithL
Books are fine, but why do we need taxpayer-funded bookmobiles?
For that matter, why do we even need taxpayer-funded libraries?
Hasn't anybody heard of the bookstore?
I thought government was to put out fires and defend the borders. Not to give us stuff to read. I mean, thanks to the private sector, it's already everywhere you look. If I simply bought one copy of every magazine offered at the corner Mobil station — covering everything from Kawasaki motorcycles to Esquire women we love to Forbes financial advice — I'd be reading for the next year.
Yet, now the poor taxpayers in Orland Park are stuck three times over. First, they paid for an unneeded library. Then, they paid for an unneeded bookmobile. And now, they must pay the $8.5 million bill to settle the lawsuit over the 2001 bookmobile crash that left a man brain-damaged.
All this foolishness could have been avoided if government had just stayed out of the library business in the first place.
But, you might say: "We need a library system so that our neediest citizens can read as much as the well-off! Books are expensive!"
Well, it depends. If you buy hard-cover and full-price, then, yes, books can be expensive. Last Monday I bought "An Incomplete Education," the 1995 edition, by Judy Jones and William Wilson, off the shelf at the Borders bookstore in Evanston.
Later, looking at the receipt, I must admit I felt pretty stupid. List price for the book was $32.50. Adding tax, the total was $35.34. If books were always so expensive, there might be a case for keeping libraries. (Not bookmobiles.)
But, you see, there now exists Amazon.com, where you can order nearly any book you can think of for a bargain price, and in less than a minute. I kid you not. A couple of days after my purchase, I made a sample buy on Amazon to see the alternative price.
I have ordered from Amazon in the past, so they already have my billing (home) address, my work (delivery) address and my credit card number. I typed "Incomplete Education" into the search field. The book popped up as $21.45 new.
Trying to demonstrate thrift, I clicked on "used." I found a copy for $6.25. The seller labeled the condition as "very good." In other words: "crisp/clean/unmarked pages, in firm binding, with straight spine. Minor wear/scuffing to dust jacket. Minor edge wear."
This was good enough for me. I want to read the book, not mount it in a glass case.
Postage was another $3.95, for a total of $10.20. If I had proceeded, I could have had the book delivered to me at work by this coming Tuesday, for a savings from Borders of $22.30.
And you know how much time this order would have taken me? I counted the seconds: 31.
An excellent book (delivered to your desk, no less) for $10.20. Hmm. That sounds like a bargain to me. Let's do some math here. Divided by the 55,000 residents of Orland Park, the $8.5 million bookmobile settlement comes to $155 apiece. By my calculations, with that money a family of four could have bought 61 books from Amazon.
Now, instead, they have to sink it into a boondoggle.
There's another reason citizens should buy books rather than borrow them from a library. In my opinion, the only good books are those worth keeping. Then, in the future, you can return for the pleasure of rereading; or to refresh your memory about a certain quote; or to reprint a compelling passage for a column like this one.
If a book isn't worth keeping, it probably isn't worth reading in the first place.
Consider my new book. "An Incomplete Education" is just the reference for people like me who didn't pay attention in college. It's divided into 12 chapters: American Studies, Art History, Economics, Film, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Science and World History.
If you don't know something, you can just dip into the book and fake it. For instance, did you miss the movie "Citizen Kane"? Then read the synopsis here. It tells you what the fuss was back then and what the fuss is today. Now you can utter "Rosebud" with the best of them.
Another example: Suppose you get invited to a royal wedding and quickly have to learn the hierarchy of British peerage. Per my book, the mnemonic to remember is "Do men ever visit Boston?" Take the first letter of each word and you can impress for success: duke, marquis, earl, viscount and baron.
The book also gives you crucial pronunciation information. For example, despite all logic, viscount is pronounced VYE-count. I knew that one. But I didn't know this: Marquis is pronounced MAR-kwiss.
Finally, the book lists some really useful foreign phrases, such as the French "nostalgie de la boue." It means "yearning for the mud."
As the authors explain, the phrase refers to wallowing by a person you would have thought was above such a things — "particularly in a guess-who's-sleeping-with-whom context."
I don't know when, I don't know how, but someday I simply have got to work that delicious phrase into a column. And to think I never would have heard of it if not for "An Incomplete Education." If you can't afford $10.20 to buy such a valuable book, then you've got bigger problems than the price of books.
So, a memo to Orland Park: Dump the bookmobile. And maybe dump the whole library too. Let your citizens keep their tax money and buy their own books. It's the American way.
Well, I think it is one of the few things our government has invested wisely in. I used to skip school and spend all day at the library, reading . I couldn't afford books at that time.
This libertarian cant is usually an excuse for not thinking.
Because to buy all of the worthwhile books would cost too much. I spend at least $500 a year on homeschool books and I STILL go to the library because my daughter reads so fast!
This article makes more sense if one imagines an author with a mental age of twelve.
Who ever wrote this is an IDIOT!
I thought he was about to discuss his autobiography.
It is the last refuge of a lazy mind.
Exactly. My children are in the Accelerated Reader program, and we check out 20-30 books at a time. I have been checking out gardening books, home decorating books, and sewing books, since we just bought a house. The "author" is a complete moron.
This is a stupid article. If I had bought every book I've read in my life, I'd need a house the size of Dallas just to put them in.
Of course, I wouldn't be able to afford that house, because I would have spent all of my money on books.
Has anyone ever attempted to run a private library where you would pay a yearly/monthly/etc. subscription fee to check out books with late fees applying of course?
What an absolutely goofy and ridiculous rant!!
I cannot make it through a week without a trip to one of our county's different libraries.
Paying for libraries, where I CAN CHOOSE the books my children read is one of the great resources I can depend on while homeschooling my children.
Hey, I pay for your Public schools, so the least you can do is pay for the libraries that are full of information and education for EVERYONE.
I fully support the Library system, one of the better and more reasonable ideas our government has ever dreamed up.
I often go to the Cerritos Library. It is beautiful; having a giant aquarium, childrens section, and other areas that resemble some rich persons private library.
It's all good until you consider that its paid for with taxpayer dollars.......it's far beyond what is necessary. It is another monument built for bureaucrats on the backs of the taxpayer.
It has a greeter at the door, like Wal Mart; three levels of computers, books and rooms. It really is worth seeing if you are in the area. As you can see, it was named the BEST LIBRARY IN THE US by Readers Digest.
http://www.ci.cerritos.ca.us/comnews/PressReleases/readers_digest.html
http://www.ssdesign.com/librarypr/content/p071102a.shtml
We should be spending that money we waste on libraries more effectively, say, on free booze for me.
After all:
1) It'll keep me off the streets.
2) I'll learn a lot (my tolerance for alcohol, the neighborhood's tolerance of me while drunk, etc.)
3) I'll be building my future (alcohol tolerance is an important skill in most industries, especially sales, education, government, etc.)
If we decided that it would be appropriate for government to loan out tools or loan out cars, there would be hell to pay from the hardware stores and auto dealers. I suppose booksellers don't have the same pull.
I'm a big fan of private libraries, open to the public--the few that are left. If you want to see the world's worst public servant in action, try asking the 90-year-old library lady for help. If I had a dime for every time I'd heard the words "USE THE CARD CATALOG!" in the loudest whisper you can muster and still have it be a whisper...
And of course you always see these "In Memoriam" things about those same 90-year-olds when they finally do croak, which talk about how much they loved children...when children lived in fear of them.
The purpose of this article is so that the liberals can say that the conservatives now want to get rid of libraries.
You gotta think ahead with these people.....
I buy every book that is important enough to read. Anything that good is worth having for future reference.
Plus, sometimes postit flags or highlighter marks tend to p!ssoff the "librarians," the "queens" of the shelves.
A condition the writer seems able to relate to.
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