@SamburgerHandwich: So then you donate it somewhere. It's doubtful that /no one/ wants a history book about Oklahoma whose gone out of date because it's missing some punctuation and some poorly paid professor is trying to make a few more bucks.

ShadowBottle

@ShadowBottle: Not all books are valuable. Some are outdated. Some just suck. As such, most people wouldn't want them and few would pay much for them on the secondary market? Turn them into something useful, I say.

elgilicious

"Cahill cuts profiles from the books using a band saw, then wraps the spines around test tubes to form waterproof vases."

Her method seems pretty straightforward from the article.

koenjicalling

You will NEVER see me destroy books like that. It is almost disgusting to see this how-to article.

ww2db.com

@ShadowBottle: Because nobody wants my Oklahoma History book from last semester when the course requires the $120 new edition. Half priced books has a surplus of that stuff and you're lucky to get a dime.

SamburgerHandwich

Destroying books -- SACRILEGE!

ww2db.com

It's certainly asthetic but I feel bad about mutilating books like that. If it's art, okaay, maybe, but ... destroying them just for a vase that's pretty to look at? I don't know. I'd be a bigger fan of furniture and such made from books if the books were left intact.

Kapprika

D: you can also burn them for heat?
Why would you do this instead of donating them or selling them to places like Half-Price books?

ShadowBottle

Tacky. Dust magnet.

AdvisoryCapacity

@tonyshangrila: I'm usually quite lax and enjoy clearing things out but I don't know what it is about books, I would cry if someone did this to any of my books.

Klopfer123

@elgilicious: all books are valuable. maybe they don't have monetary value, but some people in the world have moved beyond that puerile mentality.

garbanzo-bean

I don't understand the position of the book-loving zealots. It's not like she's making a lamp out of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I guarantee you there are more copies of every book that went into these projects; hence, the knowledge contained within is safe!

tonyshangrila

Destroying books is just indefensible. There is not good excuse. Even terrible books have a right to exist. You can't destroy books because /you/ feel that they suck. That's happened before, you know? Outdated books are still valuable because generally speaking only a very small portion is out of date and its extremely cheap price is beneficial to those who can't afford or libraries trying to build stock.

ShadowBottle

@elgilicious: Here, here. I appreciate a good book as much as the next person, but there are millions (billions?) of books in the world, and many of them suck. At least they can still be put to good use.

eeefresh

What's with the crusade for books? They're not people. It's just unnecessary paper, especially in today's digitized world. Call me when Lifehacker does a story on turning puppies into vases. THEN we'll have something to cry about.

Webran61

It hurts me to see books abused in this manner.

It's a book. Read it, or give it to somebody who will.

HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak

Awesome project. I have some old books that I can guarantee nobody would every want.....

dwroth

My uncle used to work for an old used book shop. He said that they basically kept 3 sections of the store. The first section was all the "recent" releases. Books from the last couple of years. This was what most people wanted and was kept near the front of the store. The next section was as he called it, "the crap section". This was all the crap that almost no one wanted. It was the largest section, and he would do maybe 1 sale a month out of it, and it was usually to someone who was decorating, and was buying the book for the cover. The last section was the "valuable" books. These were the first editions, rare books, etc. This was by far the smallest section, and most books never made it there because the employees would buy them before they hit the shelf. That is the only reason my uncle worked at the shop, to collect rare books. I don't know if this is how most used books shops are run, but it seems logical.

With this in mind, I wouldn't mind making an art project out of a "middle" section book.

Ryan Fisher

To prove the fallacy of the argument, walk into any thrift store, they have dozens of books they can't even give away. Do you know where they go after that? The trash can. That's reality. If you want to make it your mission to send unwanted books to the far reaches of the world, more power to you, but I don't see you or anyone doing that. The books are still sitting in the thrift store waiting for T-Day. I love books just as much as the next person, but some books can be given a new useful life and serve mankind better.

cliffordthered

Heh, I'm loving the flame wars starting over this one.

My $.02: I'm going to have to agree with the makers on this one. I work in a library, and absolutely love books and am a habitual book collector. But come on, some books just stink and it really is my right to do what I want with them. I do try to sell them to used book stores, but especially for old books, they just don't want them. Way to recycle it into something pretty!

Even more than the lamps, I really love that book-end table/stool. I should think about making one, it would really fit in my book-cluttered room...

kiyote

@SamburgerHandwich: You can donate your old textbooks to Chegg.com and they'll pay for the shipping.

rerunx5

"I discovered that the glue in old books make them extremely difficult to recycle."

"To prove the fallacy of the argument, walk into any thrift store, they have dozens of books they can't even give away. Do you know where they go after that? The trash can."

If these places are throwing books out they need to try recycling them for the paper. Even burning them as fuel is better. True recycling places should have no problem recycling books- there are machines called "book debinders" which slice the binding off (holding glue or sewn pages) so that the paper can be reused. One machine I found could due up to 1000 books an hour.

Books true value is in what people will pay for the information. I frequent a regional book chain called McKay here in TN. They always have a "free" book bin out front of the store for valueless discards- sometimes you can find something there cool other times it is those crappy books the librarian speaks about...

I also have gone to the local Goodwill Outlet (yes outlet) and have seen the volume of crap books available. Some are damaged (torn in half paperback novel), some lack literary value (30 copies of God and You from 1973), some are from sets missing their companions ( Volume E from the 1974 edition of World Book), some are text books or instruction manuals for specific obsolete items- (MS Word for Windows 3.1), etc

Goodwill Outlet used to be particularly good for salvaging cheap books (and other items) until they figured out that it was easier to have "everything 1/2 price" sales at their retail stores on the first weekend of the month. That clears inventory from the stores and limits the amount of stuff returned to the Outlet anymore.

It comes down to the value of information. I think what most people are tweaked about is the artist using books as decor for people in homes which probably lack actual reading books.

I once worked for a company which designed end tables, coffee tables, light sconces, etc basicallyhome decor which cast from plaster. They had a line of faux book end tables, coffee tables that were cast in plaster and then painted to look like "ye olden bookes"- leather looking covers with hinges ect. Another college educated guy and me used to joke about how this was the closest some homes would ever get to having a personal library...

econobiker

Anyone here who draws a parallel between banning and burning books for their content and turning them into vases because nobody wants them lacks some serious perspective.

Second, I'd rather see a book- or any other object -reused in a clever way then turned into a moldering object in a landfill. Right on, DIY people.

trioxinaddict

@trioxinaddict: "Anyone here who draws a parallel between banning and burning books for their content and turning them into vases because nobody wants them lacks some serious perspective."

Agreed. It's a knee-jerk thing. Very predictable.

RAHfanboy

I do tend to be sentimental about books, but I wouldn't mind seeing this done with the works of L Ron Hubbard.

Johnay

@tonyshangrila: I'm going to have to side with the poster above you who is against destroying books. I dunno, I think it's like being a conscientious objector - you can't sometimes be for it and sometimes against it. Maybe books in thrift stores do not get read/sold as often as they should, but I don't think that's systemic of the value of the books, rather its a mirror of our culture that devalues reading over video game playing and values Saks Fifth Avenue over thrift stores.

I wouldn't consider myself a book zealot either - that's just name calling. I just think about all the past reasons people have used to destroy books and I'd rather not give an inch to those reasons.

berribrand

I cannot bring myself to desecrate most books I own, even if they are really old and I don't plan on reading them anytime soon.

@RAHfanboy: There's always someone who will read your book. Yea, it might be a knee-jerk reaction, but if you've read _Blink_, you might understand the validity of such reactions.

berribrand

I tend to hoard old books, not because I am so sensitive I can't bear to think of them being upset... but because some day I'm going to be so bored that I will get around to cutting out a secret compartment in them, for ... um... something else to hoard.

xenobyte72

Seems like a fire hazard.

ChainsawFacelift

Really depends on the book. Computer manuals and such are woefully prone to be outdated and useless.

Also:
Reduce
Reuse
Recycle

Note the order. Instead of going straight for the recycle bin, the designer is reusing them, which is even better than recycling. And hey, when it's time to get rid of the vase, the pages still could be recycled.

The only thing about the vase and lamp designs...they don't seem all that durable. They look nice and all, but I'd imagine that even grasping the lamp post to move around would deform the delicate pages. Also, the occassional inadvertent splash would make for a soggy vase. Perhaps moldy pages add color to the design?

kftgr

With a good story line such as "recycling", you make a silk purse out of a pig's ear.

It would make more sense to "regift" the book to Goodwill.

aeronaut

I have tons of terrible and outdated books and no one wants them (they're mostly in English and I live in Mexico). There's no paper recycling here, and I already have plenty of scrap wood and paper wrappings for firewood. It's either make an end table out of them or maneuver around them until mold finally consumes them, so I like the idea.

Now I want some good ideas for what to do with all my scratched DVDs and obsolete CDs and those 300 or so empty wine bottles I have been saving (I might make lamps from the discs and drinking glasses from the bottles, but I'm open to suggestions).

We used empty tetra-pak containers as insulation in the walls of our house...

zoomZAP

In my house, there's no such thing as an 'unwanted' book.

Terry

@zoomZAP: We use CDs as Christmas decorations on our trees outside. Tie them together two at a time with the shiny side out, and clip them onto tree branches. Nice shiny ever-changing ornament display.

The funny part is that inevitably someone steals one or two of them every year. If they really want AOL disks from the 90s, data disks that my daughter's roommate mis-burned circa 2000, and trade show catalogs from who-knows-when, they're welcome to 'em.

infmom

@cliffordthered: A lot of people don't think of thrift stores as a place to buy used books. Which is why any time I'm going to be traveling, I can find an endless supply of reading material at Goodwill.

I also get a nice tax deduction for donating the books we no longer want to the public library, every year. They put them in the Friends of the Library book sale, which is another good place to pick up good books.

infmom

@garbanzo-bean: It's much more childish to cling to material things like you do than it is to let go of them.

"All books are valuable"? I bet you think all people are beautiful, too? How delusional.

elgilicious

@infmom: LOL Here in Mexico taxi and bus drivers often use old CDs as rear-view mirror and radio antenna ornaments. It just looks like shiny trash to me, but they like it.

If you drill three matching holes in a stack of old discs and put bolts through them with washers (or other spacers) in between the discs, you can make a nice little desk lamp. Just use a narrow compact fluorescent bulb (one that fits in the hole between the CDs; don't use a standard bulb because it will heat up too much and might be dangerous) and make a simple base with a switch. It's a nice conversation piece and the light it gives off is pleasant.

zoomZAP

Actually I do, making the vase is WAY "greener" because it takes far less energy than recycling.

cliffordthered

@infmom - Huh? Thrift stores are picked over like clockwork everyday by book aficionados, collectors and professional resellers, don't kid yourself. I worked in one of those operations. They wait for the trucks and the carts to come on the floor. If you are some normal joe, you are lucky to get much of anything that isn't crap at a thrift store.

Those libraries do the same thing. They get rid of books no one wants all the time.

@econobinder - yes, recycling is always a nice thought, especially if you can get paid a little for making the recycling company rich. But I don't see the diff between shredding a book or making it into a vase.

cliffordthered

Destruction of books is not necessarily evil. I don't think the world will suffer too much if I make a small vase out of my copy of "The Firm." I'm sure someone else out there in the world has a copy. I wouldn't destroy an out-of-print book, but modern bestsellers are perfectly disposable.

Brad N.

The cover binding thing with the title(forgot what it's called, it's early for me)makes an interesting book mark. Before you glue on a backing, you insert a tassel.

Beth28