when I get a new paper back I freak out if the cover's bent out of place, I kill my brother if he flips through it just to get it worn down a bit. so no I don't think you're weird

I've started doing some basic bending to work the spine a bit so it doesn't crease obviously or otherwise get a damaged spine. Something my mom showed me. Apparently her mother was actually tought how to open books in school since most of what they had were hardcover and the spine could be damage or compromised if they weren't worked properly before reading. It basically involves strategically placed creases so no one part gets overworked or something. How to be picky, 101. ;)

i feel ashamed to call myself a bibliophile next to you lot, i dog-ear and crease spines and have occasionally kept my pages with things too thick not to hurt it(like cards) i set them down anywhere and loan them out, i all but consume library books in nearly any state, and i love them all, i don't mind if a book has a broken spine or has yellowed, i adore the smell of a 20 year old book with more checkouts than i had oppertunities to say 'check out' i have no preference for either a brand-new stiff paperback and a floppy hardcover from the fifties, each and every book has a personality to me just /because/ of it's wear, i think the only exceptions i make is to tears, those make me want to cry, a tear is like a scar, a missing page is like dismemberment, a lack of cover is like a third degree burn to the face of the book, that makes me sad and i so dislike it and try not to do it myself to the point where i have re-bound books that are broken and refused to read or hold books with sheafs missing, but that is my only reluctance, i just love books too much, like a man who has seen the world and whose body shows it a well loved book /should/ show a little of it's life on the pages


books may not be alive in the traditional sense of the word but a book still has 'life' in it and a lonely life of ginger fingers and almost never being read is a sad one for sure


~edit~ johnny's last paragraph is exactly what i am talking about

The last time i checked out a book was last year. I don't really care much about the condition of library books, I treat them like my own, as long as the book ends up being unreadable and missing pages then I'm fine with damaged goods.

thats not odd at all, ive been known to do that with the few books i care about, im not a big reader,but the ones i do read, i take insane care of.

I do that as well, I rarely read but when I do it's a manga and I take extremely insane care of my mangas like they are my offsprings

I got my book wet today...
I was reading after swimming in the pool.
; A ;

Such a tragedy!

Did you dry yourself off before you touched the book?

I used to read books in the bath but it got rather irritating having to constantly dry my hands off, and keeping them out of the water because it was annoying to dry them off made it extra irritating. I stopped bothering eventually, as in stopped reading in the bathtub, but things like steam prints from warm hands or such I don't mind much, especially if it's a book I intend to -or have- read a lot. I don't mind some weat for aesthetic purposes ;), so long as it doesn't have any bearing on the integrity of the book. No torn pages if those tears extend into the words, no bent spines, and no falling out pages! Aaaaahh!

I once dropped the library's copy of Salvatore's The Cleric Quintet in the bathtub. All 1300 pages of it. It made a rather epic splash. :p

Ooh, what did the library think about that?

I never heard anything about it, actually. It was still readable once it dried, the pages were just all warped.

Well good chance that book's been through worse

Yeah. By library standards I suppose it's not that bad, especially given the condition some of the discards are in. My best library score was a hardcover copy in great shape of PN Elrod's I Strahd for $2. :). This was, of course, two days after I finally got around to ordering it off of Amazon.

I don't think I'll make too many efforts to keep my copy of War and Peace intact. Given the cheapness of the book, -and it shows in the paper- I'll settle for alive instead. I want to read it again. It's so much simpler -writing wise- than some of the other books I'm trying to slog my way though. It's just long. I suppose I could get a better copy but I like the translation that I have and don't want to go reading other versions to see if I like them as much.

I haven't bought anything from the library because I'm a picky person on what I want to read

The library selections that I've seen are usually pretty small but there are good deals to be had. Discard pile stuff is often free because of the hideous shape but some books are sold anyway, maybe to make space if they aren't getting loaned out.