Bruce McCall - 50 Things to Do with a Book: Now That Reading Is Dead

H otel rooms now provide Gideon Bibles only as pay-per-view TV channels. Librarians recently thrown out of work are forced to take jobs assembling Kindles in Amazon.com basement facilities where books were formerly stored. The Cassandra Report, the bible of the book-publishing business (available only on the World Wide Web), forecasts that more than fifty warehouses across the U.S., long used as book storage and shipping centers, will shortly be converted to video-game facilities. The Barnes & Noble retail book chain is widely rumored to be studying conversion of many of its larger stores into more profitable Noble Barnsmini-storage units. Rare-book collectors are switching to classic Betamax movie videos of the 1970s and 1980s.

Meanwhile, any publishing executive or editor still employed today will admit that being paid in books instead of currency, though reducing their firms unsold inventory and representing once-in-a-lifetime windfalls for bibliophile employees, can create morale issues that not even free copies of How to Get Rich without Brains! can easily resolve.

Dire omens indeed, in line with a recent survey that found that more than half of all Americans didnt read a single book in the previous yeardoubtless a conservative figure, because everybody lies about their reading habits. The trend toward a bookless society is gaining almost daily as a TV-besotted, iPhone-bedazzled, time-starved, speed-crazed populace becomes ever less willing to seek information and entertainment by concentrating their minds on endless lines of type on even more endless page after page while sitting in a chair or lying in bed, wearing earphones.

In brief: the end of books, as man has known and loved them since Gutenbergs movable-type breakthrough of 1439, is nigh.

Thats why 50 Things to Do with a Book may well be not only the last, but also the most timely, book ever published.

Its inspiring message is that the end of the book as an information-input tool portends opportunity as well as intellectual teeth-gnashing. Instead of just sitting there reading books, which is rapidly becoming as pass as a Jane Fonda workout video, there are literally thousands of ways to amortize all the time and money youve spent on all those books on your shelves, coffee table, and nightstand, or in the corner under the bed at the summer cottageand to help yourself forget the death of the six-century-old book traditionby doing other things with them. Fun, exciting, adventurous, creative things.

Seen in this light, that familiar hefty rectangular object with a flat, smooth surface on two sides is suddenly seen to offer enough dazzling new interactive possibilities toyes, fill a book. This book.

And the upside keeps going up. Lets face facts: it may even be a relief to toss that Theodore Dreiser novel you never quite got around to reading, or that history of Dutch agriculture you started reading but couldnt finish, without shame. Youre not a moron: youre a with-it American on the cutting edge of a worldwide trend. Think, too, of the vast new space suddenly opened up on living room shelves, tabletops, and throughout home and office for your collection of Franklin Mint car models or antique can-openers. Savor the idea that that insufferable book bore holding forth at cocktail parties on the hidden meanings in Danielle Steele will be silenced forever. No longer will your kids have to lug book bags as heavy as boulders to and fro from school.

And ad infinitum, bookless-benefits-wise. Feel better? Imagine how youll feel after youve finished discovering 50 Things to Do with a Book!

B ooks on ancient Egypt are the starting point for a fascinating project. Use themyoull need up to a million volumesto build your own Pyramid of Cheops. For maximum authenticity, build the pyramid close to a stream or river and have the books loaded into a rowboat or punt way upriver. Pay slaves to sail the cargo down, unload it, and lug the books to your site. (For absolute maximum authenticity, be sure to whip your slaves.) Sunny days are always best when in ancient Egypt. Be sure to study the pyramid on the back of a U.S. dollar bill to make sure yours is the correct four-sided triangle shape.

P olar exploration books can make for a lively outdoor activity. Gather up a hefty selection, tear out all the pages, and rip them into shreds the size of, say, cornflakes. Place the thousands of shreds in a pile in front of a powerful fan, then walk a hundred paces or so away. Have a pal turn on the fan to create a fierce blizzard and start trudging toward it. Youll feel like Scott of the Antarctic!

M embership in a reputable skeet club can be expensive, and even more so if you have to rent a gun. Why not start your own backyard skeet club, exchanging your piles of useless books for the regulation clay pigeons? Get Junior down from his room and have him hide in a bush with a few dozen volumes of poetry or a set of old law books; meanwhile you take up position with your .22 rifle. Ready?

Shout Book! every five seconds and start firing away as Junior lobs one book after another in a high arc from his hiding place. If you keep missing your flying targets, tell Junior to go back up to his room until he learns to throw like a little man and not a sissy girl.

C ut a circular baseball-sized hole in the center of a thick book, all the way through to the back cover, which must be left intact. Then glue two, three, or four catgut strings eight to ten inches long so that they run across the hole. Buddy, youve got a bookjo! So start strummin!

T hose redundant books can make a fascinating bedtime sport. You and your spouse get into bed. While she snuggles down to go to sleep, you gather up half a dozen books and start juggling them without moving from a sitting position. You should get the hang of it in a couple of hoursbut! Every time you curse out loud and wake the wife is one demerit point. Every time an errant book knocks something off your nightstand is two demerit points. Every time a book glances off the Little Lady or conks her on the head is three demerit points. You cant switch off the light and go to bed until youve erased all demerit points.

W hy not build yourself a pair of elevator books? Its simpler than it sounds. Get a roll of duct tape and bind the flat sides of two books of exactly equal thicknesstwin copies of Paradise Lost, for exampleto the underside of your feet, shod or shoeless. Youll gain up to five and a half inches of height. Better yet, the distinctive shuffle required to move with two hefty volumes underfoot will make you the focus of all eyes at the cookout, the college reunion, or the convention!