2 MARCH13, 2022
Opening Lines
Countless remaindered books find new
life on shelves as sold-by-the-foot decor
BY MANUEL ROIG-FRANZIA
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.
Want 10 feet of purple-spined, 10-inch-tall books
that have never been opened? How about 100 feet of
red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet books to
make your shelves look like a rainbow flag? It’s doable
— and it’s been done.
Chuck Roberts, owner of Wonder Book & Video in
Frederick, Md., buys tractor-trailer loads of new,
unsold books, known in the trade and dreaded by
authors, as remainders. Brokers pick them up for
pennies from publishers or bookstores, and Roberts
stands ready to make a deal. He recently bought a
44,000-pound load of about 38,000 remaindered
books.
Roberts, who sells both used and remaindered
books, told me he once provided two miles — yes, two
miles — of books as decor for more than 100 locationsBestsellers of
a Different Kind
A
shok Bajaj, the celebrated Washington,
D.C., restaurateur, owns 281 copies of
“Storm Warning: The Origins of the
Weather Forecast,” a book published in
200 5 that promised to explain “howweather prediction emerged from the realms of the
seer and charlatan into credible acceptability.”
He also owns 158 copies of “Triskellion,” the first ina 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