What about rich fools who use this service to buy up nice editions of books and never read them? Again, who cares. Nobody reads those things; it ruins the resale value. It's like taking the comic book out of the Mylar sleeve. And it's not like you could have afforded that book if only the rich fool hadn't bought it. I just get the Penguin or Gutenberg edition.
Sun Mar 25 2007 17:42 Doesn't this class go by the rule?:
The other thing about Strand is that they sell Books by the Foot. They let you judge not just one, but an arbitrary number of books by their covers, and line your wall with them to impress girls or law clients. It's easy to get upset about this misuse of the sacred book, but really who cares. I've been places that used a service like this to create a literate air, and the books are all lousy: thirty-year-old autobiographies and interchangeable novels. Services like these let some underperforming books get put out to pasture instead of being pulped. That appeals to me because I have a taboo against destroying books. Books by the Foot is the natural end-of-life for all the review copies that end up at Strand.
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