There was a Book Sale …

It had been awhile since I last visited our local library, which had been closed for renovation although I had already cut down my trips there even before the work had begun.  I still read and my use of the library has not diminished.  What changed was that I serendipitously discovered e-books.  The county library, steeped in the tradition of brick and mortar, took some time to embrace the electronic medium of acquiring and lending books.  I’m sure budgetary considerations were a factor and the median age of its users – a good number of whom, like me, couldn’t let go of the old traditional way of reading where one actually has to flip pages and use book marks.  Apparently, e-books were not a priority for the library system and its patrons, I suppose.

Earlier, kindle and tablets to me, for a very long time, meant fire starter and headache pills.  Then I heard of a much acclaimed book - “The Martian” - that was made into a movie - which the author published online for free.  So, I said to myself, “I better hitch on to this e-book reading thing”, if I wanted to read it.  Just then the local library opened their electronic bookshelves, not with too much fanfare because until I inquired at the front desk I never heard of it. So, I signed in and voila I was connected to the ether world of bibliotheca from the cloud.

What brought me to the library this time, after it had just recently re-opened, was to sort of circumvent the system.  I had checked out an e-book, “The Girl on the Train”, but failed to finish it within the 14-day period as my schedule got hectic by a short out-of-town trip and some wood working projects that needed to be finished.  It is a popular book so there was no renewal to accommodate the long waiting list.  I hedged my bet by reserving a hard copy as well several days earlier when I knew I couldn’t finish the e-book.

Last Saturday the library pinged my phone of my good fortune that the hard copy book was ready for checkout.  So I got in my car to make the four mile trip.  The parking lot was packed! There was a book sale.  I thought I’d saunter in to the hall where the book sale was humming with book mongers and bargain hunters before proceeding to the main lobby counter to pick up the book.

There they were – books past their utility to entertain, or had overstayed their welcome at their owner’s tightly packed bookshelves or for any number of other reasons.  I browsed and was surprised to see these books in excellent condition.  Some were New York bestsellers only a year ago.  A good number of them still had their glossy dust jackets.  These were books that once graced the display tables at Barnes & Noble, the toasts of critics, or were so eagerly awaited by readers across the country from any town with a Post Office or accessible by UPS or Fedex; therefore, within reach by Amazon.  Tons of books today come that way.  But now some of them were there at the book sale, discarded by their original readers, donated for free to the library and are being re-sold for pennies to the dollar.  Books are that easily discarded these days.

Each table was well labeled for every genre.  There was a complete volume set of Sherlock Holmes mysteries and there were children’s books and self-help or self-improvement books.  I was kind of surprised at the number of cook books.  Have the previous owners mastered them or have they simply gone on from Chinese and Vietnamese or country style barbecue to now experimenting with Indian or Afghan cuisine?  But get this.  There was almost an equal number of diet and exercise books. I am almost certain the cook books and diet books were not given up by the same donors.  A real surprise was the number of massive Tom Clancy novels that were there. His books average about a quarter million words per novel.  Some of the books still had tightly packed pages in them, which seem to indicate that the previous readers/owners were finicky page turners or they just simply gave up at 2/3 of the stories, not being able to deal with the convoluted plots of characters and places and techno-warfare jumping in and out of every chapter.  No, I’m sure the previous readers finished the stories.  There were a number of Sue Grafton’s “alphabet” thrillers.  I have not read any of her books and she’s down to the last two letters of the alphabet.  She just published, “W – is for wasted” and a one-letter title, “X” (no clever add-on phrase since what good is xenon or xylophone to a murder mystery).  It won’t be long before we get to, I guess, “Z – is for zero suspect”.  I’ll wait when she gets down to the Greek alphabets, with perhaps, “Alpha – is for alibi”.  How’s that for a suggestion to Ms. Grafton’s first Greek alphabet series?

It was tempting to let go of a few dollars.  For ten bucks or less I was going to have a stack for much of my summer reading.  The Sherlock Holmes volume set was going to be a good one to give to the grand kids when they get to the age when logical thinking will be something to try once video games lose their allure.  I’m not sure of it but I hope their parents will indeed keep them away from video games.  I decided against the purchase because I figured by the time the grand kids do some serious reading they will be going for e-books, or some other yet but soon to be invented medium of spreading information and reading material.  I left the hall empty handed.

I went to the counter ready with my library card in my hand – there’s a big sign that tells you to do just that because they don’t want you fumbling for it from your wallet when you get there as that would take up a few seconds of the busy schedule of the other patrons waiting behind you.  I sled my card towards the lady behind the counter announcing politely that I had a reserved book.  As practiced before, she would scan your card and without saying much she’d turn and walk towards the back room and in less than a minute she’d be back with your book/books and you’re done. 

Well, the library now had a new system for checking out reserved books. She motioned me to go somewhere first. The “back room” is now three long shelves at the center of the library behind the information desk. I was to go there and find the book myself.  Books there were on shelves not arranged according to the familiar Dewey Decimal System but alphabetically according to the last names of the borrowers. Making use of my mental acuity, I went to the section labeled with the first letter of my last name. Lo and behold, there on one of the books was my name on a piece of white paper stuck between the pages.  Those demanding the higher minimum wage should now understand that it is just a matter of time when customers at a fast food restaurant will soon be picking up their orders from the kitchen in the back.  There they will pick up the cooked patty off the hot plate into the face up buns, put the condiments on, after which they either pick up a paper plate or paper bag, depending on whether they were dining in or taking it out.  Fast food customers have for ages been serving sodas themselves so there will be no change there.

I picked up the book and went back to the counter.  Not right away because there were now about eight people ahead in line.  When my turn came I confessed to the lady about not finishing the e-book so I was borrowing the hard copy.  I did not expect her to respond to that. She didn’t but she did say this, “Well, soon if the trend goes towards e-books we will be saving a lot of trees, won’t we?” She was smiling, so I assumed she was just kidding.  Then again she may have been serious about saving trees. She looked like the environmentalist type.

How about that, we’ll save trees with e-books! Soon my idling mind revved up to a higher gear, switching quickly to the implications of e-books.  Saving trees is a distinct if not profound possibility that will potentially reverse the current trend of deforestation, flooding and the balding of mountains.  But then, what could possibly go wrong?

For one thing, Barnes & Noble will have to close shop; Amazon will need to find a good chunk of bulk sales to make up for books now being peddled through the ether; the time to retire some cargo planes at UPS and Fedex will have to come much sooner; some paper mills and printing companies will come down to a few survivors; and worst of all the rank of the unemployed will swell, and so on and on.  Are these the unintended consequences of e-books?

From the space station, or its replacement at some future time, astronauts will see a very deep green-in-blue planet earth as mountains and plains abound with trees.  We can dream, can’t we?  Because this assumes the population of people has stood still at a mere seven billion and livestock kept at minimum because vegetarianism is on the rise.  But let’s make that scenario, anyway.

For trees to flourish in that scenario there should be plenty of carbon dioxide in the air to support their needs. We may not have that much today with just the existing number of cars and fossil fuel-burning power plants, so it must be supplemented perhaps by more than the occasional volcanic eruptions to insure CO2 sufficiency in the air. We will need one Krakatoa every six months. (The last time in earth’s history when there was hardly any ice on either pole, perhaps the greenest period of time when vegetation was dense, was during the Eocene epoch – 56 to 39 million years ago.  It was also marked by frequent volcanic activity).  But here’s the thing.  As trees gulped CO2 they will expel oxygen.  With the existing population of people and other air breathing animals, there may not be enough to consume all the oxygen to keep it at the level it is today.  So the oxygen in the atmosphere could exceed 21% to maybe 30%?  That has a potential to change the atmospheric makeup of the air with hazardous consequences!  But nature will do what it needs to do.  It will cause more lightning strikes.  As oxygen level goes up, forest fires will be easy to start, burns hotter and will take longer to extinguish. But forest fires, in the aftermath, are precursors to more trees and plant growth and …

I can go on and on with these wild scenarios.  Who knows what else can happen that I haven’t worried about.  Then I realized that indeed my idle mind did rev up to high gear, or perhaps the oxygen level has come down a bit in the room.  Well, you can all rest easy. Get e-books and don’t worry about it.