Is it possible for a person to slay a book, physically? Yes, perhaps! An author has been labeled a Book Murderer by his colleagues! A British author recently made such a claim on Twitter, and his tweet went viral on the Social Media…
Alex Christofi, known for his 2015 debut novel ‘Glass‘, was born in Dorset, the UK. This new generation author has already published two books, and has bagged the 2016 Betty Trask Prize for the first one. The Betty Trask Prize and Awards are for first novels written by authors under the age of 35, who reside in a current or former Commonwealth Nation.
Alex recently posted an image of some books on Twitter. The image shows that the books were chopped into smaller units! In the post, Alex also mentioned that he had done so in order to carry them with him easily. Meanwhile, his colleagues started calling him a ‘Book Murderer‘ soon after they found half a paperback on his desk. Alex believes that his colleagues overreacted. “When I posted a picture of my latest victims on Twitter, it started trending next to Jess Phillips – who had real news to share. People were replying in other languages, copying in the International Criminal Court, the FBI and the Metropolitan police. Others suggested chopping me in half,” he added.

Alex Christofi

Alex further said that he enjoyed doing so at home since he had found the end of a 16-page section in his shelf many years ago. He had chopped off the remaining pages, bound the unread half in cardboard in order to prevent the pages from “getting too dog-eared“, and carried them to work in his pocket. He explained that he never liked long books. Later, the Briton realised that he actually hated carrying them around or holding them open with one tired thumb especially while travelling in a train in rush hour. Although he has a Kindle and audio-books, Alex prefers books.
“Whenever I had a big paperback I would leave it at home unread, or struggle through eight pages a night out beautiful old two-volume editions of books, such as ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ and ‘War and Peace’, which fit neatly in my pocket. I found that I actually read the books that way. I started chopping big paperbacks by modern authors in half and shoddily patching them up. I assumed the authors wouldn’t mind selling a new paperback to someone else, and I really only wanted to get the words into my skull,” stressed the author.

In his tweet, Alex asked Netizens whether they, too, indulge in actions of this sort. The Netizens reacted in various ways. While Alex’s tweet shocked some of them, others advised him as to how to carry big books. Alex’s January 21 tweet has got 66,000 ‘likes‘ so far and has been retweeted by 9,000 Netizens!
It is the people to decide whether the act of a book-lover, like Alex, is the true violation of culture, or just a piece or eccentricity while acquiring knowledge…

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das