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A Dream Job For Dennis?


Razors Edge

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...or a nightmare? What do you think @dinneR???

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Ashok Bajaj, the celebrated Washington, D.C., restaurateur, owns 281 copies of “Storm Warning: The Origins of the Weather Forecast,” a book published in 2005 that promised to explain “how weather prediction emerged from the realms of the seer and charlatan into credible acceptability.”

He also owns 158 copies of “Triskellion,” the first in a series of novels about twins “swept up in an archaeological mystery that ends in a startling paranormal twist.” But his accumulation of these works is outpaced by his prolific amassing of copies of “Clubland: The Fabulous Rise and Murderous Fall of Club Culture,” a favorably reviewed nonfiction book published in 2003. Bajaj has 333 of those.

Though he is an avid reader, Bajaj has never consumed a word of these three volumes. Instead, the tomes — bought from a wholesaler after they went unsold — line the bookshelves in the library-themed seating area of his Indian restaurant Rasika West End in Washington.

This is where so many of the spurned books of America end up — places like Rasika West End, where some of Bajaj’s collection sits in anonymity with their spines and titles turned to the back of the shelves. They spice up dull hotel bars and live in corporate lobbies. They’re insta-gravitas props on movie sets and upgraded Zoom backgrounds for the pandemic era. Often they are sold to interior designers by the linear foot (about 10 to 12 books per foot typically), or to under-booked new homeowners, or chain store decorators and myriad others.

Want 10 feet of purple-spined, 10-inch-tall books that have never been opened? How about 100 feet of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet books to make your shelves look like a rainbow flag? It’s doable — and it’s been done.

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1 minute ago, dinneR said:

I used to buy gaylords. It was a giant treasure hunt. 

But, yeah, that actually sounds sort of fun. :)  I actually am the type who picks up books used as decor.  When we sold the CA house, they "staged" it for photos and the weekend it was an open house.  I checked out a few of the books they used as props. It was fun.

One person in the story has a scanner to pick out potential resale material.

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22 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

But, yeah, that actually sounds sort of fun. :)  I actually am the type who picks up books used as decor.  When we sold the CA house, they "staged" it for photos and the weekend it was an open house.  I checked out a few of the books they used as props. It was fun.

One person in the story has a scanner to pick out potential resale material.

I'd rather see books as decor than knick-knacks. 

The scanner people mostly suck. They don't know what a book is. They go to charity sales and tear up the place. The volunteers hate them. I used to like to follow them and find all of the gems they missed.

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12 hours ago, dinneR said:

I'd rather see books as decor than knick-knacks. 

For the never-sold multiple copies of a book, that's the best thing we could  do,after 1-2 donated copies for a fundraising sale.

At least the books are clean to start off, for restaurant walls, which has food crumbs, etc. YOu have to think from that perspective if  ever used for decor. I might have seen an arty coffee table and then you finish if off  the whole surface.

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10 hours ago, dinneR said:

In my retirement I plan to become a collector of Nat Geos magazines. I've heard those things are valuable.

 

4 hours ago, Thaddeus Kosciuszko said:

Say, I have some Beanie Babies I bought a long time ago for a similar kind of investment.  Maybe we could work a trade...

 

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