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| Dad and Josh circa 1976 |
I am now in possession of a book that belongs to a friend of mine. He wants me to read a story in it and I have had it for several months without doing so. I want to read the story, dear readers, but I am not careful with books. This book does not have the spine broken and the only way I could read the story is by holding the book open six inches or less. I am afraid even to touch it. When people loan me books, I take the same book out of the library and read that copy, returning the perfect one to its owner.
Books are sacred to me but not SACRED to me if you get the drift. I don't write in books or deface them in any way. But I do open them as far as I can, stick them open-faced on the floor, eat lunch over them. They are an extension of me--I am not an extension of them.
How do you treat your books?
7 comments:
I have the same paranoia about loaned books, because I can really read the hell out of a book. I buy hardbacks to keep, but I try to actually read the most battered, disposable-looking reading copy around.
My coffee tends to be VERY attracted to book covers, too.
I'm a lot more careful now than in my younger days. I hate reading library books where every other page seems to be dog-eared. That;s what bookmarks are for, people!
Jeff >
Right there with you, Patti.
After moving something like five times in three years, I decided that I would only own books that I'd read until they fall apart. That equated to about one shelf worth of fiction, and I keep destroying them through multiple readings. Split spines, crumbling covers, dog-eared pages -- the works.
I'm nearly OCD about books. It's probably not a good thing.
I'm somewhere in the middle of being OCD about books. I do eat when I'm reading them and open them fully and turn them face down. I don't do anything that might get them wet and don't turn down pages.
I try to keep mine as close to pristine as possible, but the greatest abuse they tend to face in my stewardship is being piled on my bed, were cats might sit on them or, infrequently, I might roll over on them. (Fritz Leiber, after the death of his wife, used to call his tendency to do similarly his "scholar's mistress"...) My father used to complain that he didn't dare read any of my books because I would never open them entirely, which is, of course, incorrect...but my mother's tendency to grip magazines and paperbacks in such a way as to create a divot in the covers always would drive me up a wall. Offends the inner animist.
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