- NEVER EVER leave the book lying face down, to the point where the spine bends or cracks. How would you like it if your backbone got bent over itself, you barbarian
- NO dog-earing. I expect you to either use bookmarks or just go with your memory.
- When you're reading paperbacks, DO NOT flip the book so far open that you bend the spine. It is entirely possible, and not as difficult as it sounds, to hold the book open at an angle that doesn't damage the spine while you read. This rule is negotiable when hardcovers are involved.
- DO NOT take the book with you into the bathroom or shower.
- DO NOT bend, fold, or crease the covers or pages.
- DO NOT eat or drink anywhere near the book. The only acceptable stains are when the pages turn brown with age, not coffee.
- DO NOT take the book with you to school, work, or generally anywhere outside your house where you can drop it, misplace it, leave it behind or otherwise lose it.
- Highlighting, scribbling, underlining, or defacing the book in any way is punishable by a slow, torturous death. Or maybe a smack upside the head. It all depends on my mood, really.
Yeah I don't know how I still have friends after all that, either.
I should probably explain that all these apply only to books that I own. If the books are yours, or if they are a gift from me (and I do love buying books for people ; all future nephews and nieces can look forward to a book for every birthday and Christmas and THEY WILL LIKE IT dammit) you're free to do with them as you please ; drop them in the toilet, lose them at the train station, smear the pages with foodstuff.
Most people I know subscribe to the life philosophy of letting the copies of your favourite books show exactly how much you love them. Torn, creased, folded, stained, falling apart and held together with tape and glue, or the pages bloated because of the one time the book fell in the toilet bowl or when you had to run across the campus parking lot in the middle of a thunderstorm or something. Books that show signs of life, of having been loved and handled and shared and passed around, bearing dozens of fingerprints and coffee-and-chocolate stains and smell like that one brand of perfume you used almost every day when you were sixteen. That's fine. That's great. Whatever makes you happiest, whatever way in which you choose to cherish your reading material, go for it. I say this with no trace of sarcasm.
My own books, on the other hand, look almost exactly as they did the day I got them. Spines intact, no creases or lines on the covers ; still in mostly pristine condition. The only sign that the copies are not actually brand new can be seen in the yellows and browns of old paper. Visitors look at my bookshelf and proclaim that "it looks like no one has ever read these before!", which to me is like a compliment wrapped in a taco of insult. I have read every book on my shelf at least twice, and many of them are copies I have owned since early childhood. I love those books. I treasure them and I remember how and where I acquired every single one of them. They are my babies. I even keep the books I don't particularly like and will probably never read again because I'm afraid of making them sad if I give them away (I have issues, I'm dealing with them okay).
And I genuinely resent the idea that I (and other nitpicky pieces of shit like me) am somehow less of a book lover because I am too obsessed with keeping my tomes in mint condition to actually enjoy the words, the content. I resent the idea that I am some sort of an incarnation of a demon librarian because I won't allow my books the liberty of relaxing just a little.
Don't judge a book by its cover, but also don't judge a reader by the way they read. Their...readeringship. Methods. Thing. You know what I'm getting at. I still cringe to the very core of my being when I see someone holding a paperback so wide open that the spine cracks and I can see where the pages are already coming loose. But do I see them as barbaric uncouth uncultured Philistines who have no idea how to treat literature and thus are not worthy of the joys and wonders of the printed word? Yes!
NO.
NO I mean no.
No of course not.
How you read and keep your books really have no bearing on the kind of the reader you are. It took me a while to learn this, and to stop judging people who felt no life-defining need to handle their books like the tree pulpy equivalent of cut glass dinnerware. These days, as long as we can sit down over a cup of over-expensive pearl milk tea and totally fangirl over Neil Gaiman's brain and leather jacket collection, we're good. Just keep your unrefined paws off my copy of Good Omens.
This is post is brought to you by Tom Hiddleston, who thinks reading is totally sexy, especially if you put on a suit for the occasion.
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| And just a smidgen of lens flare. Ooooh. |
p.s All that being said, I do have a thing for old books. Especially the kind you can find in university libraries, with musty pages and cloth-bound covers and check-out cards with return dates from the 1950s stamped on them, and handwritten notes scribbled into the margins. I sometimes go to the library just to sniff them, like a creeper.
