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.
Oh yes, I am sure people will be reading the sage writings of Hillary and Hannity 1000 years from now. LOL.
What a horror! A poor person migh be enjoying books in the beautiful environment at the expense of the successful taxpayers! This money would be better spent on a private golf field or a few yachts.
For instance, I have a friend who's got a young kid, and I thought that I'd get him a few Heinlein books, you know, his "juvinile" series, like "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel," or "Podakyne of Mars." Well, they didn't have them. In fact, they only had a handful of his books. Same with Asimov and Herbert. Harlan Ellison? Forget it! Not a single book. And these examples are only fron their miserable "Science Fiction" sections. Their selection of non-fiction and history books were pretty grim too. And not too much for literature. And very little was there for academic books, although there were "study guides," I didn't find much at all for math and science.
One sure way to keep people ignorant is to do away with the libraries. Well, the leftists have pretty much destroyed the school systems, I guess they feel it's time to start work on the libraries too.
Mark
Yesterday I heard Hush Bimbo promoting privatization of the libraries until his own audience put him on the run! His listeners are smarter than him - a comforting thought!
Clearly freemarketeers are not conservative. They would not "conserve" even the libraries.
WTF??
This is the same argument that we see with space travel. Many people oppose it because they see no personal benefit to such endeavors. Talking about the larger benefits to mankind will simply make their eyes glaze over.
I couldn't believe it!
All those books and I had been given this magical little card!
Wiser usage?
You suspect the proles of reading too much?
I have a vague childhood memory of a rack of books at the corner drugstore that were "rented" and then returned for the next reader.
I have always found librarians to be extremely helpful and polite.
Libraries also serve the business community. Its nice, when one needs to check a bit of information in a hurry, to be able to phone the reference librarian and get an answer, not everything is on the internet.
I agree. He probably hated to study, too.
"I have always found librarians to be extremely helpful and polite."
Consider yourself the winner in the lucky-with-librarians sweepstakes. It has rarely been so easy for me.
Card catalog? Since about 1990, the only public library that I've been to that still uses a card catalog is the one in Columbus, NM, a tiny community about an hour west of El Paso, Texas.
And I'm wondering if your "90-year-old library lady" isn't actually a staw man. With her attitude, she wouldn't last long among the professionals on the reference staff at the library where I work.
Maybe it has something to do with his attitude.
1.Libraries have older books that would not sell at a bookstore.
2.Libraries are not a "waste of taxpayer money" and they are usually there as a result of people voting for the funds to build them.
3.If you think that somehow the money spent on libraries would be spent on better things, you're smoking some good weed.
Lending libraries played a large part in freedom of America.
In most countries only the elite had access to libraries.
There are plenty of worse things in government that need eliminating. Libraries are good. Reading is good for the ignoramuses, if only they would take it up.
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