The Missouri bookburning has become even more of a dog-and-pony show. Now the good folks at PaperBack Swap have gotten involved, mounting an effort to douse the fires:

Of course we were unhappy at the thought of all those books being
burned! So we contacted Tom to see if he would consider donating them
to our PBS [Note: that’s Paperback Swap, not Public Broadcasting Service] family. He said that he has had several contacts from
different groups asking for his books so that they don’t get burned and
has vowed to select one of the groups to receive them–he hasn’t
decided yet which one. Of course, we think that he should give all of
them to PBS!

To show Club support for the idea, we have started a
petition from our members asking Tom to let PBS find new readers and
new homes for these books, instead of destroying them.

Here is the proposed plan:

Robert and/or Richard fly
to Kansas City and rent a big truck. Then we drive it back, heading
towards PBS headquarters in Atlanta, with numerous stops along the way.
At each city we visit, we would invite our members to come meet us and
take as many books as you want. All for FREE!

It’ll be interesting to see Tom Wayne’s response to this. Is his primary objective to inspire people to read more books, to boost sales, or to garner media attention? And I wonder what other organizations will jump into the ring?