WinterLyre sent me the following link to a NY Times article by Ben Schott: Confessions of a Book Abuser. Seems Mr. Schott is one of those readers who dog-ears, doodles, and bestows marginalia on his books, much to the dismay of an Italian hotel chambermaid.
My late grandmother was one of those whose books were pristine, even after multiple readings. Even the spines of her paperbacks were barely marked or striped in the least. Candy is a reader much like my grandmother – when Candy loans me a book, I feel like I need to keep it hermetically sealed inside a glass podium like in a museum, and certainly far, FAR away from the grabby fingers of Freebird, the Toddler Who Eats Books With Glee. I have a picture of him contemplating the nuances of potential flavor in Candy’s copy of To Love and to Cherish, and I still am hesitant to send it to her, even though I didn’t let him get her paperback anywhere near his growing appetite for edible romance.
I am, alas, not a neat reader. I don’t read compulsively with a pen in my hand anymore, but I do dog-ear pages, most often for review – a fact I’ve mentioned here many times. Lots of teeth at the top = lots of passages or moments that made me irritable or confused. Lots of teeth at the bottom = passages or moments I loved. The amount of top teeth vs. bottom teeth can give you a good sense of the grade at casual glance, yet there are those who would look at the teeth, top and bottom, and scream at me for being a heartless wench who abuses my precious reading material.
Such an accusation would honestly make me chuckle because I harbor immeasurable feelings of guilt for giving away and donating those books sent to me as ARCs or review copies that are far, far outside the realm of romance novels.
Certainly a few dog ears are nothing, as Schott mentions, when compared to book burning parties or cutting into books to create safe places for hiding valuables. But is marking or folding pages a habit that drives you batty, or one that helps you enjoy a book?
What kind of reader are you? Do your books, like mine, show abuse, wear and tear as signs of being real, like the Velveteen Rabbit? Or are your favorite books eligible for resale as “new & unread” because there’s no sign that you or anyone else cracked the pages, even though you could probably quote passages from key scenes?
New and unread looking forever. Book abuse is akin to uncleanliness. When my husband and I were dating, I lent him my hardback of A Prayer for Owen Meany and he returned it to me violated, spine broken, dog earred and had lent it to a former girlfriend. Reader, I broke up with him
While I will not review, for years and years, I have tried to come up with a consistent method of rating books for my database. I never once considered teethmarks. ROTFL!
Research books are treated with kid gloves. Fiction books get lugged around in my purse, battered and rubbed, etc. I don’t dog ear them, but I don’t worry that they look new when I’m done with them.
If I didn’t dog-ear the book, I’d never find my place again. I tend to read 2 or three books at one time (work related & personal). All of them get dog-eared for different reasons. I also tend to read while eating lunch and sometimes get smudge marks on the pages. Shocking, I know.
Also, I have to add that the worst case of book abuse I have ever seen was last month when I borrowed a Stephanie Laurens book from the library that had all the dirty bits UNDERLINED in PEN and personal sexual comments WRITTEN IN. The ultimate abuse in my mind AND to top it off, the writer was clearly over 70 (that shaky old people script) and desperate for oral sex. My squick alarm was shrieking and I’m open to a lot.
Closetcrafter—LOL!
My ex-husband underlined half the words he read and annotated liberally in the margins, in RED INK, in MY BOOKS. Emphasis on “ex.”
OK, that’s creepy, the sexual comment marginalia.
I will say, though, the girl who introduced me to romance novels back in the early 90’s used to dog ear all the rape scenes in the library paperbacks so if you wanted to avoid them you knew what pages to skip. I always thought that was clever and considerate, though devastating to those who expect pristine paperbacks from the local library.
I’ll admit to dog-earing on occasion, but only paperbacks. You can always tell which are my favorites because there’s only about a drop of glue holding the pages in, and some I’ve had to replace because I acutally read them in half.
Hardcovers are another story, though. Don’t mess with my hardcovers… grr…
My books get the normal wear and tear that comes from being carried around in a purse, read over lunch, etc. but I don’t dog-ear or annotate. Instead, I use small post-its to mark noteworthy passages or jot down notes.
I’ve just broken myself of the habit of leaving books open, face down.
Mostly by making sure that there’s never enough surface space available to do it.
I do scribble notes in margins, but usually in pencil, esp. if it’s a textbook and I’m going to try and sell it back after the semester.
My mom used to tell me that dogearing pages in a book was a sin (she didn’t seriously believe that, of course) and I refuse to loan books to my sister because the first thing she does when getting a new paperback is cracking the spine. It KILLS me.
On a related note, we had a garage sale about a decade ago and sold a lot of our old children’s books; we had a lady come up to us saying she’d never seen books in suck pristine condition—nary a torn page or crayon mark to be found.
I try not to crack the spine of my paperbacks and hate dog-eared pages, folded pages, unknown stage marks on pages gives me the creeps. I once turned in some books to my local used bookstore and the seller asked me if I had read any of them and said, yes. Yes I did read all of them.
These days, most used bookstores will not take junk (the beat up pages and so on and so forth) to trade for nicer looking books that were well kept by other readers, exception being a very hard to find book like Laurie Breton’s Black Widow selling for $294.99 freaking cents for good condition.
XD
I don’t mark books, if only because I don’t generally have any reason to. My books progressively look worse on every read – I’ve read some books a dozen times or more. My Life of Johnson and Telegraph Book of Obituaries are in much worse shape than, say, the latest Christine Dodd. But I’m more likely to re-read non-fiction.
The marauding barbarians who deface poor, defenseless books make me cringe!
One terrible day, upon getting into my car after a shopping spree at B&N, my overflowing bag tipped and spilled one of my precious new books onto the asphalt, crumpling and dirtying the unbound edge.
I went back inside and bought another copy.
My mother is a binding-breaker and will not borrow a book from me unless she is about to die from book withdrawal because she feels she has to read them cracked opened no more than an inch. (Which I don’t understand. I manage to open them up without snapping their poor little spines.)
I have books I’ve read 20 times that look like they just came off the press. The more precious they are, the better I want to take care of them.
My keeper shelf looks like it’s ready for a recycling bin. Live bunnies, every single one of them.
The good news is that since I’m a very fast reader, the ones that go to trade or a UBS usually only have one or two dog ears…
cutting into books to create safe places for hiding valuables
Or cutting into books to create book art, like this. It’s beautiful, but I was brought up to think of books as my friends. In other words: no leaving them face down; always turn the pages from the lower corner of the page; no writing on books; no folding or bending of books. I have had a few disasters when I tried scanning a book, or opening it a bit wider so that I could prop it open and take notes from it. I felt really, really bad when their spines gave way. “Books are my friends!” I thought, “I must never, ever, break my friends’ spines!”.
Dog earing, notes in the margins, post-it notes galore, this is the life of my books. I am an English Education Major and I can say, with complete confidence, that messed up written in books are the sign of a good reader. It means you’re interacting with the text. That being said, I usually buy two copies of books I REALLY love, one I can treat like crap and the other that can sit nicely on my shelf for future generations to stare in awe at.
I’m a bathtub reader, so a lot of my books tend to have water damage. It’s a huge problem, so I avoid taking hardcover into the tub with me.
Usually I can reduce water damage by putting the book back between other books on the shelf when I’m done, which prevents the wrinkling caused by moisture.
I’m very careful with my books—want them all pretty forever. No dog-earing, no spine-breaking, no personal sexual notes in the margins. (that’s what notebooks are for)
Conversely, it delights me when a reader brings me a tattered, ragged, water-bloated, falling-apart copy of one of my titles for me to sign. It just looks well-read and loved to me.
I don’t hesitiate to dog-ear the last page I read in a bookmark emergency, but I don’t do it as a long-term marker of good pages/pages to avoid.
Sometimes I’ll underline a sentence if it really needs it, but I tend to go through stages of how much I do that, and it’s been several years since the last time I did so regularly.
I have two truly beat-up paperbacks: Don Quixote and Les Miserables, which probably take more abuse because their size makes them fit less neatly into the carriers in which they have been stuffed, and because books that size have to be carried around longer per read. Don Quixote lived in my purse for several months before I even read it the first time in seventh grade, because my parents told me not to read it until I graduated from my school’s reading program. (It was based on number of books, not number of pages or reading level, so they didn’t want me reading 1060 pages that only counted the same as the 116 page Baby Sitters Club book that the next kid was reading, until I finished the program.) That paperback has been retired to the “sentimental value” shelf and replaced by a good, strong hardback for future reads.
(Verification word: hard 37. What? I didn’t mention Clerks.)
Spines are made to be broken, IMO. My partner reads without breaking spines, so it’s a good thing we usually read different books. I don’t use bookmarks, I just leave the book face down open on the page I’m reading.
When I’m reading for analysis, I dog-ear important pages, and I write in them. My one quirk, though, is that I’m absolutely incapable of writing in books in pen. I can’t highlight, and I can’t use ball-point or felt-tipped pens. I have to use pencil. Even for books that I will never ever sell, I use pencil. Annoying when I can’t find a pencil, but I still won’t use a pen for annotations.
I once read at UCLA Special Collections Maria Edgeworth’s first edition of Jane Austen’s “Persuasion” with Edgeworth’s marginalia in pencil. That blew my mind. She like Wentworth’s letter, too!
I want pristine expensive hardcover with gilt edges copies of Austen’s novels to read for pleasure, so I don’t have to read all my notes when I read the copies I do have. But it’s not like I’m going to erase my notes.
That’s just the way my keepers are – Velveteen Rabbits. Loved and showing the love. I’m not terribly hard on them, so the ones I don’t keep have only been read once and aren’t shabby.
I dog ear and lay face up and if the spine cracks, it cracks, but I don’t write on them, get them wet or get food on them.
Anything that’s not mass market paperback that I own, gets the white glove treatment.
Did anyone notice this line at the end of the book abuse article SBSarah linked to: “And there was no outcry in 2003 when 2.5 million romance novels from the publisher Mills & Boon were buried to form the noise-reducing foundation of a motorway extension in Manchester, England.” Does anyone have any insight/memories/links to produce to explain what in the hell he’s talking about?
Does anyone have any insight/memories/links to produce to explain what in the hell he’s talking about?
Yes. Here’s a news item about how the books were used ‘in the preparation of the top layer of the West Midlands motorway’. It wasn’t just romances that were used, though:
for every mile of motorway approximately 45,000 books were needed.
The books which are usually end of line or damaged are collected from across the UK and pulped at Excel Industries in Ebbw Vale, south Wales.
Tarmac spokesman Brian Kent said the company was not suggesting there was anything wrong with Mills & Boon novels.
“We want to reassure Mills & Boon readers that we’re not just picking on their favourite books – other books are down there too.”
You can check out this link for details. From another article I read but can’t find now, I understand that other books were read, though Mills & Boon made the most press.
Interesting use of recycling, I suppose.
i’m a messy reader.. usually i am very careful with a book the first time i read it in case i want to trade it in at the used book store. after that if its a keeper, i’ll dogear passages i want to refer back to when reading another in the series, i’ll eat spaghetti while i’m reading ( OH NO!!), in harlequins the first thing i do is rip out the cardboard advertisement in the middle of the book..those things irritate me!
i actually dont mind getting a well read copy of a book at the used bookstore, it’s entertaining to run across someones grocery list, phone numbers and doodles. (as long as there are no boogers stuck in between pages, i’m ok)
I’m more toward the neat side of the reader spectrum, but not quite to the point of keeping my books museum quality. I lug books around in my purse all the time, so a few edge dings or cover wear is inevitable. But I never (everEverEVER) dog-ear or mark them up inside or anything. That’s what bookmarks and post-it notes are for!! Most of my books could go to the used book store being rated anywhere from “very good” to “like new.”
My husband is a dog-ear-reader and it drives me nuts. Luckily, our taste in books is quite different, so we don’t share many of them.
Also, I’m very picky about loaning out my books because I know not everyone is careful. I have to trust you a LOT to lend you one something from my keeper shelf and if you don’t return it to me in a timely fashion and in pretty much the same condition it was when it left my house, you’ll never get your grubby little hands on another volume from my personal library. 😉
The only time I ever write in my books is when I’m correcting grammatical or typographical errors. They bug me so much that I have to get out the pencil right now and fix it.
I never dog ear, unless I’m in a bookmark emergency (but even then I’m more likely to tear a page out of the mini-notebook in my purse). My books do get normal wear and tear – I don’t try to leave the spines looking pristine, or anything, but I like my books to be… pretty. I’ve been known to tape covers rips very carefully with book tape and spend half an hour with a hairdryer after accidental water damage on the cheapest paperback.
Keishon said:
These days, most used bookstores will not take junk (the beat up pages and so on and so forth) to trade for nicer looking books that were well kept by other readers, exception being a very hard to find book like Laurie Breton’s Black Widow selling for $294.99 freaking cents for good condition.
Keishon,
And might I add that that’s $294.99 freaking cents more than I ever made on that book? Every time I see some used bookstore trying to sell it for such a ridiculous price, I want to scream and yell and tear out my hair. NOBODY is stupid enough to pay that much for it. If they are, they deserve to have all the pages fall out on them (and I can pretty much guarantee they will!).
Oh, and on the original topic, if there’s nothing around to mark the pages with (a sales receipt, an envelope, a bill I forgot to pay), I admit it, I bend down the corner of the page. I’ve also been known to crack the spine if I’m eating and reading at the same time and the freaking book won’t stay open, but keeps falling in my plate of lo mein and pork fried rice.
I know. I’m a heretic.
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman has a rather wonderful essay on the different ways you can love a book, from the carnal to the courtly: carnal book-lovers dog-ear and set books open on their spine and splash spaghetti sauce on them while courtly lovers don’t even dent the spine and would rather die than dog-ear. It’s a very lovely essay, much more beautifully written than this bald summary. I’m a carnal reader myself. I’m all about the dog-earing and the occasional highlighting of paragraphs or lines that I liked, and pencil-scrawled exclamation marks scattered in the margins. I get it from my mother: I like the idea of going back to a book and remembering my or another reader’s reactions to it the first time round. My old copy of Pride and Prejudice has hearts scribbled in the margin at the bit where Elizabeth meets Darcy at Pemberley.
I never dog-ear, instead using an assortment of junk mail, those cards that fall out of magazines, and bookmarks picked up at writers conferences to mark my place. However, I don’t worry if the spine gets broken or the cover gets a bit scuffed. I like my books to look read.
I never write in or highlight fiction, but nonfiction research materials for my writing get treated just like college textbooks, with highlighting and notes everywhere.
Having said which, I have about 4 copies of my favourite book (P. G. Wodehouse’s Summer Moonshine): one which has been read to pieces and needed to be rebound, one to lend to people, one extra, and one beautiful and pristine hardback not to read but just to keep on my bookshelf and love forever without ever even touching a page.
I’m one of those who likes to keep my books pristine, but I go one step further: I don’t like using a library or borrowing books from friends, because when I borrow books, I constantly think about “where has this book been?” Were they reading it in the bathroom? Were they reading it while picking their nose? Did their dog or cat pee on it?
To take that even one step farther, this is also the reason why, if I buy a book at the store, I reach back and pick up the copy that’s at the back of the stack. I’ve seen people who stand there (or sit there) at the bookstore and read the books before they buy them, and again, I always find myself wondering where their hands have been, or whether they’re sneezing on the book, or bending the pages. Especially if I’m going to buy a book, I want it pristine.
Sick, I know. I don’t really consider myself a big neatness freak, but for some reason, with books, I’m obsessed about it.
my mom’s a librarian who instilled in me a great love of books (damn, that sounds pompous), so it hurts me to dog-ear a book. nevertheless, if it’s some old thing i picked up at a book sale, or a book that already has a dog-ear mark where i need a placemarker, i’ll do it. almost never in a hardcover though. and as for writing…the only times i’ll write in a library book is when there is a HUGE GLARING TYPO that would drive me insane. say, the wrong “their/there/they’re” or the wrong character’s name or the wrong “phase/faze”. my mom and i have been known to get up in the middle of a sentence (which we normally would NEVER do), find a pen, fix the word, and then continue. i’ll write in my own books for a class, especially if it’s a boring as hell book (aka Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” which i hope never to encounter again) that i can’t focus on unless i commit myself to finding important phrases. i’ll only write in pencil though, cuz someone else might want them someday.
🙂
Yes, I went to find my copy of Ex Libris, because I remembered the beginning of that essay by Anne Fadiman.
“When I was eleven and my brother was thirteen, our parents took us to Europe. At…Copenhagen …Kim left a book facedown on the bedside table. The next afternoon, he returned to find the book closed, a piece of paper inserted to mark the page, and the following note, signed by the chambermaid resting on its cover;
SIR, YOU MUST NEVER DO THAT TO A BOOK.”
Is there a secret school of Book Protocol that chambermaids must attend before they get their bed-making badge?
Ah, I was pounded into “no dog earing” by my second grade teacher, who was probably not nearly the terrifying harridan I remember. I just cannot dog ear—ever. And I also have shelves full of pristine 1st editions with dust jackets lovingly covered by new Brodart sleeves. But I also have books that I read while I eat, carry around in my purse and generally don’t treat with the same respect. Do not, however tell my best friend I actually do that, I have just broke her of the dog earing habit.
I am a most decidedly carnal book-lover. The more I read (and love, and live with) a book, the more dog-eared and scuffed and cracked it gets. Virtually all my books are the cheaper mass-market paperbacks or trades anyway.
Oh, just the idea of a dog-ear made my brain throw up.
A cracked binding…oh man, that poor book! I don’t even want to go into more abuse. Thank god for being able to double up on Lexapro.
:::grins:::
I can’t believe how many responses have been sparked by this topic! Clearly we feel passionately about our books!
So here’s my comment: I never loan out books anymore, and have gone so far as to buy additional copies of books for friends to read rather than loan them my copy. I’ve had too many bad experiences with loaning books. Either they don’t come back at all, or they come back damaged and I have to work at not resenting my friend for not taking proper care of my babies.
I also have a proliferation of bookmarks scattered around the house, in case I’m reading something and need to mark the page and do something else. I’m a recovering dog-earer (over 30 years without abusing a book!), and will never, ever do that to a book again.
Finally, here’s a word in praise of sticky flags for marking research books and even passages in favorite novels. They don’t mess up the page or leave permanent marks.
If it’s a hardback, it’s more likely to have some food on it because they stay open the best when placed on a table, but I don’t dog-ear them.
Paperbacks are dog-eared if I remember to mark my place, but I’m a freak who remembers numbers very easily, and I can generally go back to my last page read, even when reading multiple books at a time.
I don’t actively set out to destroy my books, but I’m not going to cry over a broken spine.
I guess I would be a carnal book lover, but one who’s kind of lazy about it.