Why So Many Books

Went to the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Library Book Sale this week end. Perhaps 350,000 books there maybe more. No shit, that many. I know guys from Blue Stem Books in Lincoln, Nebraska who come to buy books at the sale. Some years I have seen Larry McMurtry there hauling off boxes and boxes of books. Used book dealers come, bibliophiles come, entrepreneurs looking for dollar text books that can be sold to university books stores for much more come. People consulting their Blackberries, scanning ISBN codes with a hand held scanner that flashed either a red NO or a Green Buy. Some were looking at typed list. Some were calling others to see if they wanted a book they had found. Shoulder to shoulder thousands of people, sweat, dust, book musk, and other odors. They leave with 50, 100, 200 books. A madhouse, yes a mad house.


Every year I learn something new at the book sale. This year after I had my fill and killed my quota, I settled in near the eight long folding tables with sign RELIGION over them. I watched. This area was one of the most visited of subject tables. But where other subject were, those books were leaving the tables and from the boxes under the tables by the dozens at a time. In Religion though they picked over them and they left most untouched carrying off just a few per person if any.
I bought the best seller from 1923 "The Man No One Knows" and a weird paperback about the life of Mary written by an Italian Nun who received the details of Mary's life in ecstatic revelations. But like the others I passed up most of the titles there. So I just watched. Most of the books on Religion stayed on the table.

Three days later at the end of the sale, when the prices go way down and they bring the left over collectors books into the general area and sell them cheap, I went back. After making my finds, I went back to the Religion tables and watched. About half of the books were gone. That's not all that good, because 80% of all the other books were gone, even the Readers Digest Condensed books. I perused the titles. They were 99% Christian oriented books. Of the ten I picked up none had a bibliography or footnotes.

It got me to thinking. What are these books anyway? Who are they for. Who are they by? Who buys them? Why are there so many here, donated to this book sale. Many of the titles were recent books, and on the third day of the sale they were still on the table.

Tonight as I thought about this, I decide to see just how many books like this there are available today. So I went to amazon.com and check out the volume. Here is what I found.

I typed in Religion:
843,877 titles came up.
These subcategories came up.
Religion & Spirituality (382,182)
Nonfiction (238,176)
History (108,078)
Children's Books (31,873)
Science (47,625)
Reference (45,667)
Teens (9,833)
Health, Mind & Body (57,501)
Parenting & Families (16,816)
Home & Garden (7,473)
Biographies & Memoirs (45,184)
Entertainment (26,239)
Literature & Fiction (103,318)
Arts & Photography (20,988)
Law (14,451)
Professional & Technical (74,617)
Medicine (17,922)
Business & Investing (35,413)
Outdoors & Nature (8,027)
Gay & Lesbian (6,149)
Computers & Internet (5,948)
Travel (13,636)
Sports (5,984)
Mystery & Thrillers (11,317)
Science Fiction & Fantasy (7,959)
Cooking, Food & Wine (2,553)
Comics & Graphic Novels (1,028)
Romance (5,267)

So I typed in Christian:
356,326 titles came up in these categories.
Arts & Photography (9,151)
Religion & Spirituality (193,077)
Nonfiction (91,425)
History (58,316)
Children's Books (14,107)
Entertainment (10,235)
Teens (3,706)
Literature & Fiction (39,155)
Biographies & Memoirs (21,352)
Science (17,326)
Health, Mind & Body (21,710)
Reference (18,433)
Professional & Technical (23,131)
Law (4,522)
Business & Investing (10,045)
Gay & Lesbian (3,005)
Outdoors & Nature (3,169)
Parenting & Families (6,852)
Travel (7,282)
Home & Garden (2,723)
Medicine (4,866)
Sports (1,784)
Science Fiction & Fantasy (2,087)
Mystery & Thrillers (2,656)
Computers & Internet (1,143)
Cooking, Food & Wine (883)
Romance (1,275)
Comics & Graphic Novels (260)

So I typed in Christian Bible.
I got 28,361 hits.
Bibles
Formats (2,571)
Greek (71)
New Testament (12,010)
Other (1,431)
Specific Types (5,770)
Translations (7,100)

Jesus got 345,963 titles, Christ got 373,433, Allah got 45,702, Moses got 182,013.

Of course if you type in History or Math or English you will get a couple million hits, uh not Math it seems only about 300,000 there.

The Erudite Redneck once asked on his blog what religious books should he read to give him some seminary sense. Well it kind of looks like he needs to read about 844 thousand books to get it all in, and of course that doesn't take into account all those books that will be written while he is reading the others.

So how does a Christian know which books he/she should read? Divine guidance is about all I can come up with, or apply for the job of librarian in Heaven.