Theos-Talk Archives (June 1997 Message tl00183)

At 12:02 PM 6/9/97 -0400, K. Paul Johnson wrote:
>
>I just finished going through a section of my library's shelves
>with a list of items that haven't circulated in the last 18
>months.  Having gone through 3.5 sections, which is about 700
>books, I only found a few that had been stolen:
>
>Quotations for the New Age
>Karma, the Great Teacher
>Cosmopolitan's Guide to Fortune Telling
>Astrology in Modern Language
>Crystals
>Secrets of the Face (how to read character)
>
>The subjects covered in the sections thus far scanned include
>computers, unexplained phenomena (UFOs, Bigfoot, etc.),
>journalism, libraries, philosophy, dreams, and psychology.  Yet
>the *only* books stolen were New Age/occult titles.  What does
>this say about the kind of people who read them?
>
>I know, it could've been just one person and thus no basis for
>hasty generalization.  But every library I've worked in has had
>the same problem: New Age and occult books are among the most
>frequently stolen.  This suggests to me that the paranoid
>fundamentalists may have a point-- there really is something
>evil in the character of people who are attracted to popular
>New Age stuff, e.g. crystals, astrology, fortunetelling?
>
>Comments?  Why this pattern?
>

I don't know why books are stolen. Some of my friends and myself routinely
pass on the books to any one interested after we are through with them. I
retain only a very few books after reading them.

....doss