Yes, It’s Okay to Throw Away a Book
Usually, I read these new books, but not always. My interest is usurped by library books, with their urgent loan periods, or forthcoming releases I’m reviewing for work, or a TV series that I’m binging instead of reading anything at all. Have you seen Deadloch? It’s fantastic. By the season finale, the book I meant to read has been supplanted on my nightstand by another recent addition. The pile beside my bed never shrinks; at the bottom of the stack are books I’ve been planning to crack open for months. My shelves remain full of lingering aspirations.
I doubt I’m the only person with this problem. BookNet Canada, a nonprofit that collects data and produces research on the publishing industry, found that almost a third of surveyed Canadians read daily for leisure in 2022. Last year, we collectively bought nearly 49 million books. And we prefer books that take up space: physical volumes remain much more popular among readers of all ages, compared to ebooks or audiobooks. Still, the majority of readers are finishing fewer than one book each month—the rest, I assume, are accumulating in a shameful stack beside the bed.
For some, unread books aren’t an issue as long as they fulfill their implicit secondary function: as decorative objects and social signifiers. The pandemic only made this more conspicuous, as many of us have been compelled by Zoom, Google Meet, and the like to stage our private spaces for public viewing. In April 2020, a Twitter account called Bookcase Credibility began documenting and scrutinizing the ubiquitous bookshelves on display behind public figures as they gave media interviews or sat for photographers. As journalist Amanda Hess observed, “the bookcase offers both a visually pleasing surface and a gesture at intellectual depth.”
