I think it’s fair to say that we are all familiar with Pinterest and how evil it is in that ‘must pin for the next 7 hours and forget I have a life’ way. But there is an even darker side to this website that most have never seen. One that gives me nightmares. One that I hope you will be just as disgusted as I am about and will join me in stopping this atrocious practice.
This site encourages you to destroy books for the sake of art or crafting.
People are dissecting these poor novels to create things like fake books to hide precious items on a bookshelf; or super gluing them to canvas as a collage of favorite tomes; or turning the spines of a book into a book mark, which in my opinion is no different than cannibalism. If it’s not their bindings they want, it’s the papers inside, which they use to make paper flowers, butterflies, pumpkins, streamers, confetti or paint over the page using a stencil to ‘remember your favorite quote’ among many other horrible acts. They think it’s the best thing and clever art. They don’t see there’s any harm because they are old or unused books.
Murderers is what they are.
Ok, fine. I may be a bit dramatic about this for giggles, but still I find this pretty upsetting. I’m one of those people who can reread a book a hundred times. I could be able to quote every page, word for word and I’d still be as madly in love with it as if I’d just read it for the first time. I only give away the ones I don’t like and the only time I throw one away is if it is so damaged it no longer resembles a book. Also, I have a tendency to pick older publications out of pity because they’ve been forgotten, in my eyes. So yeah, to me, this really is heartbreaking. I kid you not, the first pin I saw was one where they turned the spine of an ‘old’ book into a bookmark, I had tears! In the pin comments it said something like ‘the best recycle ever!’. I wanted to punch that person in the throat! Recycle my left butt cheek!?! Unless it was water damaged to the point of being unreadable or partially eaten by a dog or toddler, there was nothing wrong with the book in it’s original form!
If you don’t want a book then give it away to someone who will appreciate it, please? Stick to recycling mason jars, wine bottles, tin cans or even popsicle sticks. These things don’t touch your soul and make you fall in love with imaginary people. They don’t take you on adventures while sitting still in the comfort of your own home. They are inanimate objects with no life form inside them, unlike a novel…well unless it’s a bug, which you should kill, kill it with fire.
Does anyone else get irritated about this? Do you shed a tear that a poor book has been hung, drawn and quartered? Anyone else go all crazy drama queen just thinking about it?
Wow! I haven’t seen this yet. I can completely relate to you with this one. Unless a book is destroyed beyond recognition, why would you mutilate it? Sell it, give it to a friend, the local library, etc.
I love Pinterest, too, but had also been perplexed by these mutilations of books- I hope they are damaged books that can’t be saved, but, sadly, this probably isn’t the case.