Dead Books - Sarah Nicholson

What do you do with books you no longer need?

I’m not talking about more recent paperback novels which can be taken to a charity shop. I’m an avid fan of searching the bookshelves for a bargain.

I’m talking about non-fiction books that are no longer relevant. Or multiple copies of “best sellers” that have fallen out of fashion.

And what about self-published books that have been printed but then you find too many typos, or formatting errors and releasing them into the wild could potentially damage your overall brand?

This is what happened to a friend recently – despite all the checks and balances before printing when his novel was republished, he still found issues that needed to be addressed, so rather than selling the stock that had already been printed he made the bold decision to throw them away.

“But I still have seventeen copies to sell and an event this weekend?”

“Just put them in the recycling.” He said.

With a heavy heart I did just that. In they went with the empty cereal packets, and washed-out plastic milk bottles. Hopefully they will be recycled into something useful next time around.

Sometimes unwanted books need to be thrown away – burning them is usually frowned upon - recycling is the best option. Charity shops throw away copies of 50 Shades and Harry Potter, not just on grounds of dodgy morals or bad writing, but because so many copies have been produced and it’s not sustainable to keep them – too few people want to buy them these days.

But recycling doesn’t have to mean putting them into the blue bin, you could turn them into art. A quick internet search reveals some very inventive pieces.

You can fold pages, cut out words to makes poetry, reframe pictures – the only limit is your imagination.

I have even been known to tear up old Bibles to create something new – that’s where some people really do draw the line, but old Bibles not being read deserve a new lease of life too – at least in my mind.

This is an art piece I created for a church exhibition. It’s called Patience. Recycled and repurposed watches represent man-made ways to measure time and many of the quotes in the papier mache are relevant to the topic.

Alongside Patience I created Potential, again using paper mache from torn Bible pages to create a sort of tree with multi-coloured keys hanging from it.

The irony is Potential took days to complete while Patience only took an afternoon before I had a result I was happy with.

The torn out words may or may not have meaning - it depends how much you study it and what you want to take from it.

So, I return to my original question - what do you do with books you no longer need or want?