These unread books have a long shelf life -- as decor
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.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/03/08/where-unsold-books-end-up/
Kind of a sad story in a way, but it would also be a pleasant surprise to discover a treasure among thousands of random books.
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