They get turned into roads.

Or fake snow.

So many hopes are invested in reading as a source of educational advancement, personal fulfilment, self-knowledge and spiritual growth. Yet Bayard's book reminds us that reading is an inherently uneven experience - at times passionately rewarding, at others boring and difficult.
-- Joe Moran, Pulped Fiction, Guardian Unlimited.

When I moved into a tiny house 11 years ago, I began to lose my native idealism for the book. Not the story, but the space-eating, damp-sustaining, pages-yellowing *object* in which the story travelled. The book.

Eleven years ago, too, I had a heck of a lot of books -- most of which were purchased second-hand or remaindered, & bought BECAUSE they were second-hand or remaindered (ie. cheap) rather than for reasons of aesthetics. I didn't follow authors or extended storylines, & perhaps this was even the time I ceased to read trilogies. A lot of the reading I did back then bored me. Not surprising, given how poorly it was chosen.

Nowdays I am less interested in the price of my books and more interested in the author, and base most of my reading on recommendations. I do still tend to give away books when I've finished them, however, since once the journey is taken, I tend not to repeat it (there are other roads less travelled...).

Dumping three large boxes of read (& unread, since poorly chosen) books at the Lifeline fund-raising bookfair, I was complimented on the pristine state of my discarded volumes. I realised I am still appalled by people who dog-ear pages or break the spines of books, despite my own 'read and remove' approach. It feels too much like a bullying self-assertion over the story (& author) held within the object -- or over me, if I've been the one to lend the book. (I confess I probably do base that conclusion on the husband of a friend of mine, who borrowed a book as toilet reading -- I later discovered -- and ended up bending and thwarting the object so badly with his toilet-busy hands that I refused to retrieve the wretched thing. The book was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, & I will never forgive that friend's husband for his brutality.)

But even now I see books as a practical (and disposable) method of transport.

Indeed, a perfect thing from which to make a highway.