Biblioutrage

The competition was tight for which article in the Sunday paper I found most distasteful.  There was this gem about public high schools removing thousands of books from their libraries.  Not for censorship reasons, which is still highly denouncible, but to make the rooms more spacious and airy so students can make crafts and play games, eat lunch and drink coffee there.  

"It's really spacious now," Farley [a 17-year-old student] said.  "Before it was really crowded with all the shelves."

Much more spacious, my dear Farley, I dare say, but it would not be near so much like a library.

Amazingly, though, that story lost out to the grousings of the underappreciated Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist.  His book was a bestseller in 1994, but that means nothing to Carr: only having his book put on screen matters.

"It seemed like a really futile struggle to continue the series when there was no interest in making a decent product out of the first book, much less the second book, much less a future book," Carr said.  

Apparently, it's an utter waste of time to create a book if it is to be enjoyed only by readers. *Sideshow Bob shudder*  Only turning one's creativity into a media franchise is a worthy goal.  One wonders why Dickens and Austen ever persisted, given the complete futility of their work.