Book Throwing

I'm going to throw away my copy of Crime and Punishment. It's not rage or indignation--some of the the pages from the first half are coming out. I'll probably buy a new copy. But I had to read through this one. Why?

I got this book from the box of books outside the door of a professor I'll call, for anonymity's sake, Great Britain. The need to preserve his anonymity stems from the fact that, according to the inside of the cover, Great Britain received this book for Christmas 1981. Also, it's never been read through.

That's not to say G.B. hasn't ever read Crime and Punishment or to blame him for that (heaven knows, I've been in that culturally illiterate camp until this last month), but just that this particular book has gone its whole existence with only the pages of the first half being bended and separated.

It's like the time I checked out from the library a book that had been published in 1882 and still never had its pages cut. More than a hundred years old and never read straight through. How long had it been in the library before I lost half a sentence in a page fold? I had to turn it in to get it cut properly.

I'm not saying G.B. did wrong by his book that he abandoned in a cardboard box in the JFSB--I'm just saying every book deserves to be read through. At least once.

And now it's into the recycle bin.

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