[Publib] RE: reading recycled books

[Allison Angell]

   Connie Willis's book Bellwether addresses this issue.  The heroine in that checks out copies of classics, just to keep the circs up.  I've taken to doing this, too.  If I use the copy of the book that I own, I check out the library's copy and return it right after.  Or I check out anything I read over lunch or on a break.  I tend to do this more for books that are much-beloved but older fiction, instead of Dickens or Austen.
   Allison Angell, Benicia (Calif.) Public Library
   allison_angell at yahoo.com  

Another thing:  I've helped weed books, and what goes out is what  doesn't 
circulate, and what doesn't circulate is often very important, serious  
stuff--the Bronte's lesser fiction, translations of books like Primo Levi's  Periodic 
Table.  I could fill my house with like-new library discards I  find of this 
sort.  And I do.  And this sort of thing prejudices me  against my own library. 
Very often it seems that, in the war for shelf  space, the flashy, the new, 
the popular, the light stuff--this material  wins.  I know that publishing is 
a fast conveyor belt of books pushing at  the library door, but come on folks.