A Good Tip to Lighten up your Luggage when you return home...If you read....

What a great way to make room for souvenirs and help out the next tenant at the same time!

What a terrific idea, wynstep! Thank you for sharing.

We own a resort condo that we rent out & we encourage our renters to do that.

Wow! I'm glad to see that you all like that little tip. This year I even left a book behind that I couldn't get through. And I left a note in the book jacket with my e-mail addy to get thoughts on what others thought.

My hotels in Paris all have a rack of books to borrow or trade. I usually travel with one paperback and count on making trades as I finish reading. In a pinch I will buy a used paperback at Shakespeare & Co. At the end of my trips I usually ditch a paperback book and whatever travel book I've been using. My iPad has plenty of Kindle books, so I still have something to read on the plane.

I am also a reader and not a fan of electronic reading, so every trip I put a bit of effort into selecting just the right books--one for each flight and one for each week I am gone. Don't want them too thick, maybe 250 pages max, and I always read a chapter to be sure they will keep me entertained. I frequent used book sales so it's not a problem to leave behind a $1 book.

In my pre-Internet traveling days, I found I went through three books a week. Now, that was heavy. Back in the 1970s and 1980s it wasn't so easy to find used English-language books in Europe--or even new ones in some cases. Often it was Agatha Christie or nothing.

Agree with Dave on the simple utility of taking apart resource books and taking what you need. Book burning makes me think of censorship, fascism, etc. Not what I'm doing when I take a chapter or two of a mass-produced tourist guide that's published annually and separate it from its brethren chapters!!

What I wanna know, Wynstep, is whether you heard from anyone who later attempted the book you couldn't get through. You may be on to something -- a virtual book club of people who have never met!

yup, Mrs Eb, I still cherish the memory of the cute but broke little honeymooning couple I handed all of my maps and guidebooks to as I returned a rental car......

and, I, too have swapped out books in various B &Bs in various places......

I agree with Kim. Taking a couple of pertinent chapters out of a book so that you don't have to lug the whole thing is not "akin to book burning" (not nearly so overdramatic, anyway). I usually use guidebooks for research beforehand, not take them with me, but there have been times when I took particular chapters or maps - and it's my book, so I can do that. I would never do something similar with a novel or other book, but guidebooks are of limited usefulness after that year.

The guru himself suggests ripping up his guidebooks so you don't carry the whole thing when out and about. He even sells a cover for the torn out pages.

I would never rip up a book I would read or have read. But a guidebook that will soon be out of date is fair game.

If you don't want to rip up a book, consider the electronic version.

People are confusing guide books with reading books. Reading books never lose their value with time. Guide books are like phone books - the information becomes incorrect with time and they are issued annually (or so) to keep up with the changing information.

It's OK to tear up a guide book because it will quickly become obsolete.

But you can't take a library book on an extended trip.

I come from a family of readers and writers. My mother read a book a day. My cousin has a Pulitzer. His wife is a bestselling author.

So books are important to us. However.....to me, a guidebook is like a magazine.....I cut out the articles I want to keep and throw the rest away when done.

Books don't go out of date. They can become more valuable with time. Guidebooks, however, have a limited shelf life. They become old once the newer edition is published.

But, if you don't want to tear up a guidebook, don't. Everyone has to make up their own rules.

What I wanna know, Wynstep, is whether you heard from anyone who later attempted the book you couldn't get through. You may be on to something -- a virtual book club of people who have never met!

There is something already set-up! It's called bookcrossing. You sign up and get a unique # which you write (or make stickers) into the book, the next person to pick up the book then logs on, can write a review, etc. You can see your book virtually travelling the world!

I have a love and respect for books too.

I just don't feel the same way you do about taking chapters out of utilitarian, mass-produced, going-to-be-out-of-date guidebooks.

But I guess I'm just a hick from Oklahoma, heck I probably don't even know how to read. Remembering how we had to burn the books at night in the stove to try and cut the edge off the chill wind blowing in through the cracks of our shack out on the High Plains. That was, of course, after the stagecoach took us to school (but we had to walk home, uphill, in the snow, 3 miles, because it went on to another town of an evening.)

Good thing there's them folks over thar in New York City to tell us whether we respect books or not!! My mom, who chaired our library board in our small town, and spearheaded a years-long historic renovation of a four-room schoolhouse to house our town library, certainly didn't raise me to appreciate and respect books. Nosirree. Only fancy New York City people who have published authors in their family are able to respect books.

The books I've been setting aside this week to take to our local Oxfam bookshop -- guess I'll just burn those, too, since that's all I know to do with books. Even though it's a little warm in Paris this week and the marble fireplace in my Art Deco apartment is a bit dysfunctional. I'll consider it like a sweat lodge--healthy and purifying.

I'm so happy to have been put back in my place, down here.

I love my books. In fact, we have shelves upon shelves of books of all kinds here in our home. Ficton. Non fiction. Reference.
But here's the great thing. We have the freedom to do what we want with those books.

If someone finids a passage or a paragraph from a book, and as an impulse action, tears that page out because the words have an effect on them and they stick that page in their wallet and read those words when they need to--then what is wrong with that? The book's page helped someone. That impact lasts forever.

Guidebooks--especially Michelin, outdate themselves every year. Isn't it better to perhaps tear out a few pages of a place you will never get to revisit rather than throw the book away?

Years ago I found a book for a buck at a garage sale. It was a book of illustrations by Wenzell, the illustrator of the Saturday Evening Post. The book was from 1911. In this book, was a print in color. It was so beautiful I had it framed and now that illustration is on view for everyone who enters into my home. The book did the job of making people see what a great artist Wenzell was.

Stepping off my platform now.