Awful Library Books

http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com/

the captions are sincere not sarcastic but the books themselves really bring it:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/419F3V73VAL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

http://awfullibrarybooks.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/abuse1.jpg?w=215&h=300

This site is great!

http://awfullibrarybooks.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/pregnancy21.jpg?w=500&h=419

"this photo shows judith with the vacuum cleaner"

http://awfullibrarybooks.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/introducing-cellular-communications1.jpg?w=180&h=300

^^ that doesn't look awful at all!

i dig it too i thought u guys should see it!

I know one of the people who created this site. The pregnancy book remains my favorite.

http://awfullibrarybooks.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/creative-recreation-for-the-mentally-retarded.jpg?w=191&h=300

Oh dear. Needless to say this is brilliant.

Just linked to it to my whole library school crew

You know actually I loved finding books like this as a kid that were outdated bcz they were this weird window to a past where everyone wanked over Ray Kroc instead of Bill Gates and the books about dancing advised you to give it up to the beat to a disco song, even in the grocery store.

The library sale was today, and what a load of crap.

The only interesting book I found was THE BIG BOOK OF SECRETS... ("When going on vacation, turn off your beeper!")

Or like "THE ULTIMATE GUIDE ON BABYSITTING" where the advice is like "if a kid gets burnt, first spank him for being insolent, then apply butter generously to the burn."

http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/indiana-jones-really/

This is great.

yeah n/a this really underscores why i am NOT studying to become a public librarian but instead some other kind.

love this website

haha, the site should be called "In Every Underfunded Small-Town Library Ever"

WmC calls it. Old astronomy books were always my favorite as a kid along the lines of what Abbott describes. "The recently discovered Pluto..."

This site is great inspiration to weed your collection, btw. I have been at work on this all week since we are slow during the summer.

these are the books i always buy at library book sales
my favorites are the ones about teenagers and suburbia

The girl in that Cellular Communications book kinda looks like she's holding an iPhone, but backwards

All too prescient

ok this is brilliant

http://awfullibrarybooks.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/dealwithparents21.jpg?w=499&h=845

aw steady dating

THE UNMENTIONABLE TOPIC

not sure what it is tbh

http://awfullibrarybooks.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/live-to-be-100.jpg?w=203&h=300

i think one of my childhood friends had this book in his house

Clown Ministry

http://awfullibrarybooks.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/clownministry010.jpg

The absolute worst!

In this battle between love of clowning and love of sharing Christ's teachings, I think the clowning is winning.

xtianity as a self-clowning oven

http://awfullibrarybooks.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/you-can-say-no-3.jpg

Someone points out in the comments that the illustrator for that "say no to chimos" book also illustrated a bunch of Care Bears and Popples books, which explains why they're so inappropriately cute & cloying.

ws the janitor tbh

aw steady dating

― Roz, Friday, 17 July 2009 21:22 (1 year ago)

Saw this and immediately sang to myself:

And we began to date
Steady
Steady dating all night long
(Dating til the break of dawn)

I foresee killing much time on this site.

http://awfullibrarybooks.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/petting15-725x1024.jpg

^^^favorite book title

I love this graphic:

http://awfullibrarybooks.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Scan10028-777x1024.jpg

That must be eligible for some kind of award for "bullshit made up diagrams".

ha ha I have that Everything You Need to Know About The Goth Scene book! It's great.

http://awfullibrarybooks.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/scan10059.jpg?w=648&h=1024

I just donated a big bag full of DVD's and Blu-ray's to a nearby branch of the Queens Library, and this was honestly good shit IMHO - the complete series of The Wire in its original aspect ratio (in one large DVD set), Blu-rays of Raging Bull, Michael Mann's Heat, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, a deluxe edition of William Friedkin's The Exorcist, Fight Club, Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, No Country for Old Men, three excellent Vincente Minnelli films on Blu-ray including Father of the Bride, Homicide: Life on the Street seasons 1 & 2 (the best seasons, neither of which are streaming), Seinfeld seasons 3 & 4, etc....FWIW, they have a sizeable DVD section but only a fraction of it is on Blu-ray.

Anyway, when I drop them off, I ask the librarian (out of curiosity) if they would actually go directly into that library's collection or if something else would happen, and she kind of shrugged and said someone would go through them and decide whether to add them. As I'm walking out, I see some of their "new" acquisitions which were kind of ludicrous, including the likes of this one which even used the pictured poster as the DVD cover art...with that in mind, it would be REALLY aggravating if they trashed what I brought them. Anyway, maybe I'll swing by in a month or two and see if any of them do get incorporated into their holdings.

aiui donations to libraries are usually sold at book sales funding lbrary programs, rather than going into circulation (which i'm guessing involves some degree of bureaucracy?).

I think this is true... because they are essentially 'distributors' of content, they have to be purchased from the copyright holder

But more importantly, what happens when DVD's become cool again in a few years (when streaming is passé), you'll be bummed you gave away your classics

With the TV shows, I don't want to revisit them anymore, it's just too much to go through - even with The Wire, it's not something that's all that compelling in just single episodes, you really have to watch a whole season to see how it all builds and unfolds. With the movies, they're either films I've lost interest in, or films that I've since upgraded to UHD.

Originally I thought about selling them, but it's a lot of work for a very modest amount of money. I was going to donate them to Housing Works and at least get a tax receipt, but ultimately I thought it would be nice to have these watched thoroughly instead of sitting on one person's shelf for god knows how long, especially the TV box sets, and also the Queens Library system has been hit with brutal budget cuts in recent years, and reportedly they made less purchases as a result. Anyway, with all that in mind, I thought a library donation would do the most good - at least I hope!

Yeah I think they have to pay royalties, which means that any time some unsuspecting fool watches the aforementioned cult classic "Joysticks" someone gets a payout. Possibly, and this depends on the terms of his contract, top-billed star Joe Don Baker? Yes he's still alive.

xpost

Thanks all for the info. Honestly, if I knew they were unlikely to be added to their holdings, I would've donated them to Housing Works. (I wish the Queens Library at least gave me a tax receipt, but Housing Works would have done that.)

Joysticks is the movie that, if memory serves, the Leonard Maltin guide said that it looked Joe Don had spent a week sleeping on skid row.

I have borrowed 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?' from the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center a couple of times.

NYPL is in trouble:
https://www.nypl.org/about/service-impacts

I mentioned on another thread that the Toronto Public Library system has been crippled by a ransomware attack that occurred in Oct., and whose effects are ongoing. I found this a painful event, not so much because of a need for new books and CDs, but because it struck at such a vulnerable institution that I probably regard with greater respect than almost any organization that I've dealt with ever since childhood.

So they're just closed due to the hacking? Or went back to paper cards?

They continued to circulate items by taking library card and item numbers down on paper, and anything that's being returned is being kept in storage until it can be discharged electronically. But the website has been out of action since the attack, and not being able to look up the catalogue or the "reading list" I had been creating for the last six years or so left me at loose ends, it's almost like a personal diary or calendar to me.

Like if they restore the website without being able to recreate my reading list, I'll feel as if a large section of my brain has been erased.

That's awful. I found this open message and at least it sounds like things may be returning to normal later this month.

I'm sure they're doing their best. They may even take the opportunity to make some changes to the website that would have seemed too big or difficult if the attack hadn't happened at all.