Books - Read and Throw Away?

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Courtenay
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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by Courtenay »

It is fun to talk with others about books they loved as children, I agree — I usually get very positive reactions from people when I tell them I'm a member of the Enid Blyton Society! Well, one older friend seems to like teasing me about it a bit (though she has admitted she too loved the Famous Five when she was little :P ), but most are delighted. I remember the time a couple of years ago at a training session at work (while on tea break) when the topic of children's books came up somehow and I mentioned the EBS — my colleagues' faces just lit up, including one who'd grown up reading them in German and then later read them in English to her own children! :D Definitely not people who would display their books backwards, I would guess, let alone rip pages out of them...
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Rob Houghton
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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by Rob Houghton »

Surely, displaying books with their spines to the wall had to be a tongue-in-cheek suggestion by whoever said it? I mean - how would you know what book you wanted, and they would be difficult to pull out too! Totally impractical - might as well just not have books...but maybe that was their intention!

I have my EB books displayed on shelves in both our front and back rooms, and people have often commented about them and if ever I mention Enid Blyton, people's eyes generally do light up - rare that her name meets with a negative reaction in real life, I've found!

Upstairs in my 'Hollywood bedroom' (the spare room) I also display all my DVD's - mostly musicals - as I've said before - I have around 500 musicals (I counted them the other week - actually 476 but I've since bought about 10 more, lol.

I would never want to hide my books or my DVDs!
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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Chrissie777
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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by Chrissie777 »

Courtenay wrote:Couldn't agree more. Whenever I visit someone else's house, I always try to sneak a good look at their bookcase to see what they're interested in and whether we have something special in common! :wink:
Unfortunately many people whom I met in my life barely possessed any books.
Or did hide them in a guest room closet (like one of my sisters-in-law).
That's why I enjoy so much communicating with book lovers online. :D
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Chrissie777
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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by Chrissie777 »

Rob Houghton wrote:I have my EB books displayed on shelves in both our front and back rooms, and people have often commented about them and if ever I mention Enid Blyton, people's eyes generally do light up - rare that her name meets with a negative reaction in real life, I've found!
Upstairs in my 'Hollywood bedroom' (the spare room) I also display all my DVD's - mostly musicals - as I've said before - I have around 500 musicals (I counted them the other week - actually 476 but I've since bought about 10 more, lol.
I would never want to hide my books or my DVDs!
Rob, I envy you...you must have met some very nice people! :D
Whenever I got to know somebody better or had really nice colleagues at the office, at some point I asked them if they ever read Enid Blyton when they were younger, they only looked at me :? and had no clue about whom I was talking about. Of course, this was in Germany. Maybe their public libraries banned EB as well.
I assume EB was and still is MUCH more well known in the UK, India, Australia and probably even in Canada.

Same here, we don't hide our 6.000+ DVD's in the living room or our 2.000+ books which are spread in book cases all over the house, but most people who come visit are not interested in the books nor in the DVD's. They are usually much younger and all modern indy movie lovers, not classic movies.
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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by Chrissie777 »

Anita Bensoussane wrote:"What a lovely, cosy room. It's just like a library!"
We have a dining room library. Our guest room has 7 large and one small bookcase.

Anita Bensoussane wrote:I've also had interesting conversations with a washing machine repair man and a plumber about the books they loved as children.
Anita, I'm obviously living in the wrong country, but I doubt I could persuade André to retire in the UK in 3 years. :wink:
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Anita Bensoussane
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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Courtenay wrote:I remember the time a couple of years ago at a training session at work (while on tea break) when the topic of children's books came up somehow and I mentioned the EBS — my colleagues' faces just lit up...
Rob Houghton wrote:I have my EB books displayed on shelves in both our front and back rooms, and people have often commented about them and if ever I mention Enid Blyton, people's eyes generally do light up - rare that her name meets with a negative reaction in real life, I've found!
I've also seen visitors' eyes light up at the sight of my Enid Blyton books. They're mostly 1970s editions, i.e. paperbacks or Dean & Son hardbacks, but people like the washing machine repair man and the plumber had grown up with those versions and they spent some time looking at the spines and recalling their favourites.
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Katharine
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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by Katharine »

My books are all hidden away upstairs, mostly on the landing which is very long, so most people wouldn't see them, however generally people I know would be horrified if they knew I had so many. Several people I know think books make a house look messy or cluttered and just see them as something that collects dust. :cry: The only books they would own would be cookery books and maybe a couple of books they are currently reading, probably ending up in the next charity bag that comes along. I've heard people comment that the only time they ever read a book is during their annual holiday to somewhere hot where they spend most of the week/fortnight by a pool with the latest Jackie Collins etc.

I remember many years ago a girl from work saying her husband was annoyed that he couldn't find a book that he'd been reading, and she said she thought it had ended up in the bin as she'd had a tidy up. That was back in the days before we had recycling bins, so it would have ended up in land fill. :shock:
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Rob Houghton
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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by Rob Houghton »

Its interesting how some people throw things away so easily and with very little thought! I can remember my neighbour's mother throwing her children's toys in the bin a couple of months after Christmas! Quite often this would include toys like Spirograph, or stencils, or colouring books etc, not the bigger toys - and often annuals. I had one or two annuals in this way, which their mother had thrown out! Me and my friend Dawn (who's mother it was!) often used to salvage things and keep them! :D

In our family we've always been hoarders -though not in a massive way - but as kids we were always taught that we owned our own possessions, and our parents would never have dreamed of throwing them away without asking us first! We were encouraged to write our names in our books, and this often extended to our jigsaws and games as well! Many of our childhood toys and games are still in our loft now - my toy fort which my granddad made me, and my push along bear, which used to be on wheels, and my toy garage, plus lots of toy cars and Lego and Meccano etc! How could anyone throw away their books as if they had no worth?


Its so good to see people's eyes light up when they see my Enid Blyton books, or I mention her name. In Britain Enid was amazingly popular from the 1950's until the 1980's - in fact, in Birmingham, I do't even think she was ever banned! We had ENid Blyton books in our school library, performed an Enid Blyton play at school, and the girls in my class regularly swapped Famous Five books - so anyone of a certain age group usually reacts with affection and enjoys seeing the paperbacks and dean versions they grew up with!
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by IceMaiden »

It wasn't a tongue-in-cheek suggestion, it was lroper advice from an interior decorator to make the room look tidier! Having looked a bit further, it's an actual craze, known as 'backwards books' :x . As one comment I saw made said "I bet the sort of people who do this have put all the tins in their kitchen cupboards on their side too so the ends look neater than the labels!" :mrgreen: .

http://www.joeydevilla.com/2018/01/03/i ... rds-books/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Rob Houghton
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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by Rob Houghton »

Thanks for the link! To me, all of those examples just look really messy! Might as well not have the books! Its almost as if the idea is to give the shelves a cluttered untidy look! Style FAIL in my view! :lol:
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by jon beeza »

I did buy a very tatty famous five book many years ago, it was for pennies. It was meant as a read and throw away, as it was falling to bits. I think I may have kept it, just not sure where it is though.
Last edited by jon beeza on 12 Feb 2018, 11:41, edited 1 time in total.
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Courtenay
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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by Courtenay »

Gosh, the "backward books" look even worse in the real-life examples than I ever imagined they would. :shock: :shock: :shock: Even from a purely aesthetic point of view — without what they imply about some people's attitude to books (they're not actually for reading, they're just for "decoration") — they simply look terrible. Well, each to their own and all that, but that's one trend I hope never becomes seriously popular.

Possibly the scariest photo in that blog was this one — especially with this remark from the comments thread at the end...

Image

I wonder if the fireplace works. Either way, it’s horrific if unintended symbolism.

:shock: :( :x :evil:
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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

I agree that "backwards books" don't enhance a room at all. Also, the pages are more likely to become damaged and dusty.
Rob Houghton wrote:Its interesting how some people throw things away so easily and with very little thought! I can remember my neighbour's mother throwing her children's toys in the bin a couple of months after Christmas! Quite often this would include toys like Spirograph, or stencils, or colouring books etc, not the bigger toys - and often annuals.
Golly - my sister and I got years of fun out of Spirograph, stencils and annuals! Even colouring books lasted a while. We would never have discarded a toy or a book after just a couple of months!
Katharine wrote:Several people I know think books make a house look messy or cluttered and just see them as something that collects dust. :cry:
They'd probably be shocked to know that I view many of my books (the ones that have been part of my life for ages and that I've read and re-read umpteen times) as friends! :lol:
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.

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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by Daisy »

Well... what an odd idea! It wouldn't do for the likes of we avid readers, that's for sure! I can't imagine the frutstration of trying to find a book when no spines are visible! It says it all when it is stated thats only about 20 books will be reread, but I do wonder why the rest are still there. :roll:
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Re: Books - Read and Throw Away?

Post by Katharine »

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually quite like the fireplace of books. I like the different sizes and colours on view. I also like the mystery they conjure up, I'd want to go and pull them all out to see what they were. Not sure it would be a good idea to keep books in that way for any length of time though as they look as if they'd get twisted out of shape after a while.
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