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Man Asks Twitter If He’s Wrong To Cut Books In Half To Make Them Lighter To Carry

There are people who love books and then there are people who love to read, and they’re not always in the same place on the Venn diagram. Right now, a war on Twitter is raging over the sanctity of books as objects versus the practicality of actually carrying them around to read, especially super big, chonky ones. They’re heavy! Wouldn’t it make sense to…cut them in half?

That’s what author Alex Christofi suggested people do on Twitter, which led to him being called a “book murderer” by his colleagues, according to him.

To be clear, he cuts the book along the binding, so it’s actually the first and second half of the book in two volumes. if he cut it across the middle that would make absolutely no sense and he should definitely be labeled a book murderer.

He shared pictures of his three sliced books, advertising he’s been reading Dostoevsky, The Infinite Jest, and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. That’s the one I’m personally most skeptical about because Middlesex is not really that long, but whatever.

People are not pleased with this blatant disrespect to the written word, though they recognized Christofi’s right to do whatever he wants.

As an author himself, he does have some skin in the game. Clearly, he wouldn’t take it personally as a writer if someone did this to his books:

It seems other people do this as well, and they warned Christofi that there are hidden dangers to book slicing:

From a practical standpoint, losing half of a book is a big issue if you want to finish it. And a few people pointed out that The Infinite Jest is full of long footnotes from the author, David Foster Wallace, who made them as important as the writing. Christofi admitted he messed up there:

Is it smart? Well, Christofi says it’s the only choice for him:

Hmm. Maybe what the man really needs is a Kindle reader. They’re very lightweight.

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