While the rioters in England this week have looted shops selling shoes, clothes, computers, and plasma televisions, they’ve curiously bypassed one particular piece of merchandise: books. The Economist observes that while rioters have a centuries-old history of book burning, “books are losing out to high-end jeans and Apple-made gadgets” in London, with the Waterstone’s bookstore chain emerging unscathed and the WH Smith chain reporting only one incident (some stores closed as a precaution). In explaining that the store would probably stay open during the unrest, one Waterstone’s employee even felt comfortable enough to issue a dare to the rioters: “If they steal some books, they might actually learn something.” The exception to the rule is the gay bookstore Gay’s the Word, which had its front window smashed and its shopfront splattered with eggs (notably, no goods were stolen). “Our impression is that there are certain people who have an issue with a visible gay business and are using the excuse of chaos to cause anti-gay damage,” an assistant manager told PinkPaper.
Confronted with all this evidence, The Huffington Post poses a couple vexing questions: “Did the bookstores survive because the rioters respect reading–or because they simply don’t care about books? Is this a positive or a negative sign for the future of the industry?” Most people seem to be embracing the theory that the rioters simply didn’t want books, particularly in the digital age. “The only shop NOT looted down the road from where I live was Waterstones,” British author Patrick French tweeted. “I guess the rioters have Kindles–bought or looted.” Martin Fletcher touched on a similar theme at the end of a report for NBC News. “A final thought that may say a lot about our times,” he concluded. “In this shopping center every store had been looted but one, the book store.” The “underlying message for bookshops,” The Economist adds, is “hardly front-page news: looters, like more conventional consumers, are all too happy to ignore their wares.”
I would think that it’s a little of both, that many of the looters if like the majority of young people I have worked with are doing good to read at 7th grade level, and that’s pushing it in many cases, and books don’t have a good re-sale value, and now many people read cliff note books on their kindle. And looters are not know for long-term thinking, and or gain, but only for instant gratification of their barbaric behaviors.
The bookstores are full of Qurans.
The Huffington Post comment is funny.
OK, look at the evidence.
Someone like Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, Mark Steyn, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, (IOW conservative writers) puts out a book and it rockets to the top ten and stays there for a while.
Someone like Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitas, Barbara Tuchman, David Halberstam, Jonathan Kozol, Barbara Ehrenreich, Lisbeth Schorr, William Julius Wilson writes a book and you can find it low on the sales lists.
Who are the rioters?
In the UK, they are self-described as ”yobs,” (unemployed white youths) anarchists, blacks and unemployed opportunists.
Does that group fit the home-filled-with-books type?
No.
But I am surprised they didn’t burn the places down, like they did the 92-year-old furniture store.
Why steal them? It isn’t as though they could read them.
Agree with DrJohn……altho’ I’d alter it to :
They can read well enough to follow marching/rioting orders from tweets, FB, or emails…..but Comprehension is a whole other thing.
@NAN G – Does that group fit the home-filled-with-books type? Sadly you are so right. Sounds like yet, another [Liberal Fail] to me…Unless of course as SB Smith says unless they need to follow marching/rioting orders from their tweets or blackberry…
My first thought was when was the last time anyone of them even looked at a book never mind read one [if they can]… The Huffington Post sounds like a bunch of [vexing] morons…. I wish the shop owners had guns….
True [ Liberal hypocrisy] at work here, how the [Liberals have the audacity] to call Right wingers “Radicals” “Terrorists” etc… This is how these [Liberal derelicts] behave and they are [showing the world exactly what they are] … I hope they throw the [book] at them… And, I hope people are paying strict attention to their actions on this side of the pond because the mentality is no different here [remember Wisconsin?] No respect… The environmentalist Liberals go to our Capital to protest and leave their garbage and crap all over the place…. Losers.