Charles Bukowski- Jim Thompson
- Philip K. Dick
- William S. Burroughs
- Any graphic novel
Ever read any of these? An avid reader? Ever stolen any of them? This is a list of the five most often “lifted” books from an independent book seller.
Books can take on aspect of furniture… furniture that reflects your good taste and character; although it maybe that you are unwittingly exhibiting an anti-social character. I have at various times in my life had a passionate interest (although interests and passions change and atrophy over time; and my interest was not criminal) in four of the above five and am now I’m working at the libraries.
So if your literary predilections gravitate towards the above, remember that you do have a choice; statistics don’t tell us how we should act. Come to the libraries where we have a large array of titles from each of the above which you can peruse, without the eyes of independent bookshop owners burrowing into the back of your head.
On Kim Hill’s podcast page she interviews Cheryl Shucher, an independent bookstore owner in New York, furnishing a few more names that have book owners reaching for their running shoes (this interview should be on the pod-cast page for a further two weeks) .
1 April 2008 at 6:43 pm
Hmm interesting idea. Makes me wonder what the most stolen library books are. This “liberry” blogger reckons it’s “A child called It” by David Pelzer. I would wager books on Heavy Metal and Body Art would form a sizeable chunk of the “stolen from the library” hitlist. I’m not being prejudicial either, in the past I’ve liked both Metal and tatooes but I know that books on this topic tend to “disappear” a lot.
11 April 2008 at 9:06 am
Funnily enough I’m a huge Philip K Dick fan but have purchased them all with my own cash. Even his straight novels (Confessions of a crap artist, Puttering around in a small land) are insightful. His Sci-fi tends to have one or two brilliant and original ideas but it is rare that he gets a fully coherent novel together, escpecially in his later years when he believed he was being controlled from space by a pink ray of light! Other’s on the list also grace my shelves – Bukowski of course and a bit of Burroughs – had to read about the original Steely Dan. My guess from the list is that it is a bit dated or shoplifters are getting old.