Dec
1

– Crinkled paper

3 Comments

I feel like I owe Valerie a big Christmas gift… all of her hard work in blogging and coming up with interesting topics have sparked so many posts that I feel like I’m stealing her creative energy!
Ahem..
Anyways, today I saw over at Something to Write About a video using books as a medium for art and it got me thinking.

As the video loaded I thought of arts and crafts with old books when I was a kid. I would be heartbroken to see pages torn or covers bent…

Remember the Readers Digest Christmas trees? (gotta love Girl Scouts) I thought it was sacrilegious to spray paint magazine pages green!

I’m a book purist, I won’t even break the spine of my paperbacks. I’d rather splurge on a trade paper so I can read it without breaking them, and even then I strain my eyes to the center of the pages so I don’t open them up all the way. I pull off dust covers from hardcovers and stow them away while I’m reading so the edges stay crisp. Don’t even get me started about folding corners to mark your place in a novel, I’d rather memorize the page number or scrounge around for any little scrap of paper to keep my place :)

I’ve also been known to buy a new copy for my bookshelf just because some malady like spilled water or bent corner during use has tarnished it.

I know. OCD. I’m one step away from being psycho. Can you imagine how hard it was for me to work in a bookstore with all those sloppy uncaring people reading books, bending covers, spilling coffee…. and then return the books to the shelf! As if!

So here’s a question for you readers, with no judgment from me… (my mother bends her mass market paperbacks inside out upon themselves… eep!) How to you read? Paperbacks, fold the corners? Hardcovers and use the dust jacket to mark your place? Have an E-reader and wish you had the paper copy for your bookshelf anyway?

Share the love:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google Bookmarks
  • email
  • Posterous

Posted in Craft:Design:Fashion Literature
3 Comments Posted by The Girl

3 Responses to "– Crinkled paper"

  • Valerie Geary says:
    December 1, 2009 at 9:32 am

    I’ll accept chocolate, books or kittens. :) Kidding. I love inspiring people’s creative brains… free of charge. I am most definitely not a book purist… I don’t know what term would describe me but for how much I adore books (which is an awful awful lot) I wear them out. I bend, break, spill, fold, sometimes throw (but very rarely… only if a book is exceptionally awful) and underline to my heart’s content. Unless the book is a library book. Then I am careful. I like being comfortable around my books… I like the used look. However, I enjoy knowing that when my book is one day published, it will be in good hands with you. :)

  • JenTiki says:
    December 1, 2009 at 9:39 am

    I’ll admit to breaking the spines on the paperbacks to fold them back on themselves, but hardcovers are a different thing altogether. I also remove the dust jackets and store them safely until I’m done reading. I use a ribbon with a decorative button on the end to mark my place.

    A friend recently returned a hardcover book I had loaned her and I just about flipped when I saw that it was apparently kept somewhere near her pet rat’s cage. Tiny little grey rat hairs embedded in the edges of the book! And the dustcover was lightly splattered with the same brownish sticky substance that was on the bottle of falernum and can of coconut creme she left me while preparing to move from her apartment downstairs. I’m kinda glad now that I didn’t know her better. I can only surmise from the condition of my book and the cocktail supplies she left me, that her life was a bit chaotic!

  • Miss CherryBubbles says:
    December 1, 2009 at 10:01 am

    I’ve been a lover of books and reading since I was a wee tot. :) I collect all sorts of vintage books, primarily Nancy Drew and Perry Mason, so I’m careful with those. Having been a librarian for many years, it pains me to see ‘dog-eared’ page corners and writing in books. Also, I never liked buying used textbooks at college because trying to ignore what someone else highlighted was difficult. I’m still rather leery of e-readers, but then, I’m not that into reading the latest best-seller anyway. Oddly enough, I do read books in pdf form on a computer monitor, but that’s only when I’m doing my freelance work as an indexer. When it comes to reading for enjoyment, I love to curl up with with a good book, a cup of tea or hot chocolate (being careful not to spill), and a little unobtrusive background music.

Leave a Comment