Ok! You know I have some peculiar opinions and I'm going to express one here. I love books, as you know. I have full, groaning bookshelves everywhere and in the course of moves have given away more books than most people own. BUT I have only a handful of "valuable" books, by which I mean first editions, limited editions, very rare books. I am fascinated with people who buy first editions because why put that responsibility on yourself? Isn't it best to have an edition you can take to the beach or on an airplane or to breakfast and if you spill coffee on it it's still good? Books are for reading! Put the delicate ones in the library. I write in mine and have sticky notes everywhere and that's not because I don't respect them. I live with them and love them.
I came to exactly that perspective on collectibles. My library is mostly a working library. I have a few real gems that I’ve acquired—and still seek out some special editions from time to time. But I passed out of my collector phase pretty quickly. It started feeling like an obligation, which was odd because it was all self-imposed. The way you know I really love a book is not that I have an immaculate collectible edition, but because I have two or three copies.
Omg yes when I was moving from Baltimore out to California I figured okay I'll get rid of duplicates (or triplicates) first and that barely made a dent but I was aghast at how many copies of The Odyssey I had, and Frederick Douglass's Narratives (at least it's thin) and many bibles and Gatsbys and Scarlet Letters and Bleak Houses and Houses of Mirth. It was embarrassing. Not a one valuable. I believe most found homes.
It does help with culling the library from time to time. Do I really need two copies of Something Wicked This Way Comes? For now, yes. But out with the duplicate Chandlers!
This reminds me of a time when I was in my 20s. I had three first-edition Thurbers on my main bookshelf. (I’d found them in a thrift store in Chicago and paid the regular used-book price for them.) didn’t notice these three books were missing until it was too late. It seems my boyfriend at the time had given them to a friend of his, right before she moved to Germany. He had no idea where in Germany she was, or if she was even a Thurber fan. He just … gave them to her. I don’t think they were that valuable in a monetary sense but they meant something to me. Here’s a rule that should not have to be stated: do not give someone else’s books away.
I generally take my notes on paper rather than writing in / on the book. This is part of the reason I actually own very few books. I lean heavily on the library (which is convenient enough considering that my office is in the library building).
I was able to find a first edition of The Thirteen Clocks, which is among my favorites of Thurber’s. I turned it into a musical when I was in college; about a week before production it occurred to me I should probably find out if I had permission to use the source material. So I tracked down Helen Thurber and called her and asked if she had retained the rights to the book. It turns out that Samuel French had a musical property based on the 13 Clocks and she couldn’t re-license it to me. We had a very nice conversation, she and I. I don’t know how old she was at that point, but she did sound very tired. I went ahead and put the show on anyway – it was the first of many shows I have written and presented.
When George Sayer signed my hardback copy of “Jack,” his great CSL bio, I apologized for its battered condition, including tea cup ring mark on the back. He laughed. He said a worn out, marked up, book is the highest compliment an author can get.
I have a copy of Charles Ferris Gettemy’s The True Story of Paul Revere, published in 1905. When I was down to the wire writing my biography of Revere I resorted to writing in the book to speed up my note taking. At first I felt conflicted. Then I reconciled myself to it and plowed ahead. Years later I ran into his granddaughter online. She said he would have been pleased.
I think books are tools. I mine books. I write in them in the hopes that someday my children might understand. One thing I hate, though, is finding a book in a bookshop that has an inscription: to so and so at Christmas or some such thing. I like that there's a story inside the story but it makes me sad that the owner abandoned such a gift. But I'm like you, to some extent...writing, underlining, notation in margins...tea stains...occasional tears....and I too love my dust covers. Great article. Thanks for writing it. I saw an article, didn’t read it so not sure if it's true, about AI companies buying up books and shredding them. I hope it's not true.
Yeah, they’re doing it. Having worked in used books, it’s hard to say how valuable the particular editions they’re scooping up are. There are a lot of garbage books floating around on the second-hand market. I haven’t read far into the story. Probably need to do that.
Thanks for a fun (but at times harrowing) read! As an Episcopal priest, I’ve long been interested in the matter of “how best to respect the Bible?” — at least in our denomination, It’s all too common for people to have beautifully bound, prominently displayed, but barely-if-ever read Bibles on their shelves. Fine — who am I to judge.
AND: I bet the authors of the rich variety of books within the Bible (not to mention God, who inspired them) would agree with those of us who say “the best way to respect the Bible is to actually read it, and then follow its central message to “love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” And if deeply engaging with the Word of God means highlighting, post-it-noting, underlining, margin notes, etc., then hallelujah. I for one would rather see a Bible looking like your son’s copy of To Kill a Mockingbird than a pristine non-engaged one!
It’s funny. I’m conflicted on the Bible. I have not trouble scribbling in almost all my books, but I struggle underlining my Bible. I recently bought a fairly disposable NT and have been reading the Gospels with a red pencil in hand, gingerly.
My brother and mom are notoriously rough with books. My brother especially once tore the cover of my paperback copy of "And Then There Was None" clean off. When he asked to borrow my first edition copy of "The Fault in Our Stars" (signed by John Green!), I bought him a new copy instead. No way I was going to part with my precious copy and he still got to read the great book lol. There's ways to cooperate with rough readers while accommodating their way of loving books 😅😂
This is a subject I've been thinking about for a long time. My take is that if you own the book you can do what you want with it. Once at the Yale Library, I checked out a book and found that there were two series of underlinings and comments; one commenting upon the other. While very funny, they don't own the books and shouldn't be writing in library books. I once bought a paperback that had every, and I mean EVERY, sentence in the book underlined, even the publishing dates, etc.
Caveat Lector: this ran longer than I initially meant to comment.
I'm a bookbinder, so I feel like I get to be the pathologist, taxidermist, and resurrectionist for books both rare and beloved. I've seen Bibles that have had their spines turned completely concave from the readers' folding the pages back around the cover as they read. I've removed miles of calcified "archival" tape from old library books. I've picked centuries old crumbs from the gutters of Bibles that were printed before Thomas Jefferson was born. Nothing really surprises me any more. Every volume has a story, and the marks we leave on our artifacts are addenda in those stories.
I confess I have cut up books ("bookbreaking" is the polite term for cutting up a book to rebind parts or single pages, usually for resale). I have no qualms about cutting down a paperback, perfect bound copy of Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" and rebinding it in three volumes (the story is meant to mimic the Regency-age three volume novel, after all). The final product is more robust that when it came off the line at the commercial printers. Surgical amendments are justifiable if the finished product is robust or preserved. Wanton destruction simply to assert ownership of a volume seems to me barbaric and infantile.
Personally, when I consider whether to fold/spindle/mutilate a volume in my collection, my first consideration is "will my daughter be able to read this when she's old enough, or can she buy a new copy." If the book is rare, I treat it like an original DaVinci to ensure that she can enjoy it herself, perhaps long after I've left the stage. If it's a mass paperback copy of something she could get herself, and probably in a much nicer binding, I don't mind if it wears out from over-use before then. I prefer having multiple copies of a book that I cherish and enjoy re-reading about the house so I can keep my first editions or sentimental volumes in good condition.
A reader who enjoys devouring (metaphorically) the contents of a volume has every right to do what he or she likes with their copy (but keep your grimy paws off of my volumes!). After all, if you destroy your favorite copy of Pride and Prejudice, you can always get it rebound or recovered. I may even know a guy who can help with that...
My biggest peeve of the mistreatment of books is dropped food or drink. By all means, eat while reading, but make sure no crumbs or smears are left between the pages - food left on books contributes to the development of mold. If you like a book, why not preserve it for future generations to read as much as is reasonably possible.
My father taught us, by example, to pre-fold the pages of a new paperback book back to avoid cracking the spine - as kids, whenever we got a new chapter book, he would take it and fold the pages for us. I still do that with my paperbacks, but have realized that a paperback over an inch thick cannot avoid a bent spine, since it is impossible to pre-fold the centre pages. I still wince when I first feel that centre crease in a new, thick paperback.
My maternal grandfather baked old comic books that were given to his children in the oven - one wonders, if, as a WWII veteran, he'd seen far too much of lice and other vermin to want to risk infecting his household via used books. The books crumbled after such treatment, but not before the children had read and enjoyed them.
I take careful care of my books AND I’m glad to let others do what they may. With every new acquisition I “condition the spine by running my finger down the gutter - starting at the back and the grin, meeting at the middle, every 4-8 pages. I under stand jettisoning dust-jackets for the love of cloth bindings, but I early on grew to love keeping DJs, first for value, second, for the artistry and protection. The bulk of my DJs are in Brodart protectors - a beautiful look. My biggest pet-peeve is a bookseller (even a thrift store) not using stable (heavy) bookends and letting the books sag to the right or left, permanently twisting the spine and shape - crazy. I’m and a mechanical pencil underliner and careful highlighter of my nonfiction books - it engages me and works well with vFlat to capture the sections I’ve underlined. I could go on and on, I won’t.
I used to be very precious about my books, and to some degree I still am. (I have padded book sleeves I put my books into when I toss them in my backpack, for example.) But I dog ear, write and highlight, and more than one of my books has tea staining it somewhere. I think ultimately having kids is what made me less picky—their copies of books end up battered and bent, and you can tell which ones are the most loved because they’re usually missing their covers or been put back together with packing tape. (Or painter’s tape, as in the case of a book I wasn’t getting to fast enough for my son and so he decided to take the repair into his own hands with whatever tape he could find.)
I underline, write in the margins, and routinely turn down page corners for passages I want to locate again. These all seem to me pretty normal.
Someone I know well folds his books backwards along the spine, the way you would read a magazine. I think that’s a bit much, but he is a lover of books and a fine scholar.
I can't stand seeing people lick their thumbs & fingers; be it eating or turning a page in a book! I don't trust people to wash their hands after using the lavetory as it is.
Probably my OCD pricking at me 😆😅 but still... IT'S DISGUSTING. 🤢🤣
@Joel J Miller I found it (no pictures, as I still can’t work out this OS, but the cover is boring, it is worm eaten, the binding damaged and I can’t fully open it up, anyhow, so you are not missing much):
The Enemies of Books
William Blades, revised & enlarged ed., 1888, pub. Elliot Stock
The chapter headings are:
Fire
Water
Gas and Heat
Dust and Neglect
Ignorance and Bigotry
The Bookworm
Other Vermin
Bookbinders
Collectors
Servants and Children
Personally, today I would add libraries (at least in Britain) and AI companies.
To quote his conclusion in full:
It is a great pity that there should be so many distinct enemies at work for the destruction of literature, and that they should so often be allowed to work out their sad end. Looked at rightly, the possession of any old book is a sacred trust, which a conscientious owner or guardian would as soon think of ignoring as a parent would of neglecting his child. An old book, whatever its subject or internal merits, is truly a portion of the national history; we may imitate it and print it in fac-simile [sic], but we can never exactly reproduce it; and as an historical document it should be carefully preserved.
I do not envy any man that absence of sentiment which makes some people careless of the memorials of their ancestors, and whose blood can be warmed up only by talking of horses or the price of hops. To them solitude means ennui, and anybody’s company is preferable to their own. What an immense amount of calm and enjoyment and mental renovation do such men miss. Even a millionaire will ease his toils, lengthen his life, and add a hundred per cent. to his daily pleasures if he becomes a bibliophile; while to the man of business with a taste for books, who through the day has struggled in the battle of life with all its irritating rebuffs and anxieties, what a blessed season of pleasurable repose opens upon him as he enters his sanctum, where every article wafts to him a welcome, and every book is a personal friend!
Ok! You know I have some peculiar opinions and I'm going to express one here. I love books, as you know. I have full, groaning bookshelves everywhere and in the course of moves have given away more books than most people own. BUT I have only a handful of "valuable" books, by which I mean first editions, limited editions, very rare books. I am fascinated with people who buy first editions because why put that responsibility on yourself? Isn't it best to have an edition you can take to the beach or on an airplane or to breakfast and if you spill coffee on it it's still good? Books are for reading! Put the delicate ones in the library. I write in mine and have sticky notes everywhere and that's not because I don't respect them. I live with them and love them.
I came to exactly that perspective on collectibles. My library is mostly a working library. I have a few real gems that I’ve acquired—and still seek out some special editions from time to time. But I passed out of my collector phase pretty quickly. It started feeling like an obligation, which was odd because it was all self-imposed. The way you know I really love a book is not that I have an immaculate collectible edition, but because I have two or three copies.
Omg yes when I was moving from Baltimore out to California I figured okay I'll get rid of duplicates (or triplicates) first and that barely made a dent but I was aghast at how many copies of The Odyssey I had, and Frederick Douglass's Narratives (at least it's thin) and many bibles and Gatsbys and Scarlet Letters and Bleak Houses and Houses of Mirth. It was embarrassing. Not a one valuable. I believe most found homes.
It does help with culling the library from time to time. Do I really need two copies of Something Wicked This Way Comes? For now, yes. But out with the duplicate Chandlers!
This reminds me of a time when I was in my 20s. I had three first-edition Thurbers on my main bookshelf. (I’d found them in a thrift store in Chicago and paid the regular used-book price for them.) didn’t notice these three books were missing until it was too late. It seems my boyfriend at the time had given them to a friend of his, right before she moved to Germany. He had no idea where in Germany she was, or if she was even a Thurber fan. He just … gave them to her. I don’t think they were that valuable in a monetary sense but they meant something to me. Here’s a rule that should not have to be stated: do not give someone else’s books away.
We did not last much longer after that.
I am so sorry for your loss!
I generally take my notes on paper rather than writing in / on the book. This is part of the reason I actually own very few books. I lean heavily on the library (which is convenient enough considering that my office is in the library building).
I was able to find a first edition of The Thirteen Clocks, which is among my favorites of Thurber’s. I turned it into a musical when I was in college; about a week before production it occurred to me I should probably find out if I had permission to use the source material. So I tracked down Helen Thurber and called her and asked if she had retained the rights to the book. It turns out that Samuel French had a musical property based on the 13 Clocks and she couldn’t re-license it to me. We had a very nice conversation, she and I. I don’t know how old she was at that point, but she did sound very tired. I went ahead and put the show on anyway – it was the first of many shows I have written and presented.
When George Sayer signed my hardback copy of “Jack,” his great CSL bio, I apologized for its battered condition, including tea cup ring mark on the back. He laughed. He said a worn out, marked up, book is the highest compliment an author can get.
I have a copy of Charles Ferris Gettemy’s The True Story of Paul Revere, published in 1905. When I was down to the wire writing my biography of Revere I resorted to writing in the book to speed up my note taking. At first I felt conflicted. Then I reconciled myself to it and plowed ahead. Years later I ran into his granddaughter online. She said he would have been pleased.
Also: I love that bio of Lewis.
I think books are tools. I mine books. I write in them in the hopes that someday my children might understand. One thing I hate, though, is finding a book in a bookshop that has an inscription: to so and so at Christmas or some such thing. I like that there's a story inside the story but it makes me sad that the owner abandoned such a gift. But I'm like you, to some extent...writing, underlining, notation in margins...tea stains...occasional tears....and I too love my dust covers. Great article. Thanks for writing it. I saw an article, didn’t read it so not sure if it's true, about AI companies buying up books and shredding them. I hope it's not true.
Yeah, they’re doing it. Having worked in used books, it’s hard to say how valuable the particular editions they’re scooping up are. There are a lot of garbage books floating around on the second-hand market. I haven’t read far into the story. Probably need to do that.
Thanks for a fun (but at times harrowing) read! As an Episcopal priest, I’ve long been interested in the matter of “how best to respect the Bible?” — at least in our denomination, It’s all too common for people to have beautifully bound, prominently displayed, but barely-if-ever read Bibles on their shelves. Fine — who am I to judge.
AND: I bet the authors of the rich variety of books within the Bible (not to mention God, who inspired them) would agree with those of us who say “the best way to respect the Bible is to actually read it, and then follow its central message to “love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” And if deeply engaging with the Word of God means highlighting, post-it-noting, underlining, margin notes, etc., then hallelujah. I for one would rather see a Bible looking like your son’s copy of To Kill a Mockingbird than a pristine non-engaged one!
It’s funny. I’m conflicted on the Bible. I have not trouble scribbling in almost all my books, but I struggle underlining my Bible. I recently bought a fairly disposable NT and have been reading the Gospels with a red pencil in hand, gingerly.
I’m a practitioner of marginalia but other than that I’m protective of my books.
Outside of needlessly damaging a dust jacket, my real sin is cracking the spine. I avoid that one at all costs.
My brother and mom are notoriously rough with books. My brother especially once tore the cover of my paperback copy of "And Then There Was None" clean off. When he asked to borrow my first edition copy of "The Fault in Our Stars" (signed by John Green!), I bought him a new copy instead. No way I was going to part with my precious copy and he still got to read the great book lol. There's ways to cooperate with rough readers while accommodating their way of loving books 😅😂
This is a subject I've been thinking about for a long time. My take is that if you own the book you can do what you want with it. Once at the Yale Library, I checked out a book and found that there were two series of underlinings and comments; one commenting upon the other. While very funny, they don't own the books and shouldn't be writing in library books. I once bought a paperback that had every, and I mean EVERY, sentence in the book underlined, even the publishing dates, etc.
Caveat Lector: this ran longer than I initially meant to comment.
I'm a bookbinder, so I feel like I get to be the pathologist, taxidermist, and resurrectionist for books both rare and beloved. I've seen Bibles that have had their spines turned completely concave from the readers' folding the pages back around the cover as they read. I've removed miles of calcified "archival" tape from old library books. I've picked centuries old crumbs from the gutters of Bibles that were printed before Thomas Jefferson was born. Nothing really surprises me any more. Every volume has a story, and the marks we leave on our artifacts are addenda in those stories.
I confess I have cut up books ("bookbreaking" is the polite term for cutting up a book to rebind parts or single pages, usually for resale). I have no qualms about cutting down a paperback, perfect bound copy of Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" and rebinding it in three volumes (the story is meant to mimic the Regency-age three volume novel, after all). The final product is more robust that when it came off the line at the commercial printers. Surgical amendments are justifiable if the finished product is robust or preserved. Wanton destruction simply to assert ownership of a volume seems to me barbaric and infantile.
Personally, when I consider whether to fold/spindle/mutilate a volume in my collection, my first consideration is "will my daughter be able to read this when she's old enough, or can she buy a new copy." If the book is rare, I treat it like an original DaVinci to ensure that she can enjoy it herself, perhaps long after I've left the stage. If it's a mass paperback copy of something she could get herself, and probably in a much nicer binding, I don't mind if it wears out from over-use before then. I prefer having multiple copies of a book that I cherish and enjoy re-reading about the house so I can keep my first editions or sentimental volumes in good condition.
A reader who enjoys devouring (metaphorically) the contents of a volume has every right to do what he or she likes with their copy (but keep your grimy paws off of my volumes!). After all, if you destroy your favorite copy of Pride and Prejudice, you can always get it rebound or recovered. I may even know a guy who can help with that...
My biggest peeve of the mistreatment of books is dropped food or drink. By all means, eat while reading, but make sure no crumbs or smears are left between the pages - food left on books contributes to the development of mold. If you like a book, why not preserve it for future generations to read as much as is reasonably possible.
My father taught us, by example, to pre-fold the pages of a new paperback book back to avoid cracking the spine - as kids, whenever we got a new chapter book, he would take it and fold the pages for us. I still do that with my paperbacks, but have realized that a paperback over an inch thick cannot avoid a bent spine, since it is impossible to pre-fold the centre pages. I still wince when I first feel that centre crease in a new, thick paperback.
My maternal grandfather baked old comic books that were given to his children in the oven - one wonders, if, as a WWII veteran, he'd seen far too much of lice and other vermin to want to risk infecting his household via used books. The books crumbled after such treatment, but not before the children had read and enjoyed them.
I take careful care of my books AND I’m glad to let others do what they may. With every new acquisition I “condition the spine by running my finger down the gutter - starting at the back and the grin, meeting at the middle, every 4-8 pages. I under stand jettisoning dust-jackets for the love of cloth bindings, but I early on grew to love keeping DJs, first for value, second, for the artistry and protection. The bulk of my DJs are in Brodart protectors - a beautiful look. My biggest pet-peeve is a bookseller (even a thrift store) not using stable (heavy) bookends and letting the books sag to the right or left, permanently twisting the spine and shape - crazy. I’m and a mechanical pencil underliner and careful highlighter of my nonfiction books - it engages me and works well with vFlat to capture the sections I’ve underlined. I could go on and on, I won’t.
I used to be very precious about my books, and to some degree I still am. (I have padded book sleeves I put my books into when I toss them in my backpack, for example.) But I dog ear, write and highlight, and more than one of my books has tea staining it somewhere. I think ultimately having kids is what made me less picky—their copies of books end up battered and bent, and you can tell which ones are the most loved because they’re usually missing their covers or been put back together with packing tape. (Or painter’s tape, as in the case of a book I wasn’t getting to fast enough for my son and so he decided to take the repair into his own hands with whatever tape he could find.)
Sometimes kids leave peanut butter and jam fingerprints all over "Fred The Coconut." It's always a good sign. https://www.amazon.com/Fred-Coconut-Mark-Armstrong/dp/B0H5RL1RF5/
Norman Mailer was nuts, but I bet he would have treated "The Idea Machine" with respect. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1493088939 👍😅
I underline, write in the margins, and routinely turn down page corners for passages I want to locate again. These all seem to me pretty normal.
Someone I know well folds his books backwards along the spine, the way you would read a magazine. I think that’s a bit much, but he is a lover of books and a fine scholar.
Everyone has their threshold. Isaac Newton used to fold down pages far enough the corner pointed to the line he wanted to remember.
Seems like a reasonable system to me!
“Bibliocidal” was my favorite word in this post. Made me laugh. A fair amount of my books have tiny chocolate crumbs between the pages.
Books and chocolate belong together!
I can't stand seeing people lick their thumbs & fingers; be it eating or turning a page in a book! I don't trust people to wash their hands after using the lavetory as it is.
Probably my OCD pricking at me 😆😅 but still... IT'S DISGUSTING. 🤢🤣
LOL. And yet, we somehow survive.
I know, right? Lol
I have an unironically battered old tome entitled “The Enemies of Books” somewhere at home.
I’ll try and dig it out when I get home, and update with the correct title etc.
I’ve got Nicholas Orme’s book Medieval Children. One of my kids scribbled all over the title page. It’s now a treasure.
@Joel J Miller I found it (no pictures, as I still can’t work out this OS, but the cover is boring, it is worm eaten, the binding damaged and I can’t fully open it up, anyhow, so you are not missing much):
The Enemies of Books
William Blades, revised & enlarged ed., 1888, pub. Elliot Stock
The chapter headings are:
Fire
Water
Gas and Heat
Dust and Neglect
Ignorance and Bigotry
The Bookworm
Other Vermin
Bookbinders
Collectors
Servants and Children
Personally, today I would add libraries (at least in Britain) and AI companies.
To quote his conclusion in full:
It is a great pity that there should be so many distinct enemies at work for the destruction of literature, and that they should so often be allowed to work out their sad end. Looked at rightly, the possession of any old book is a sacred trust, which a conscientious owner or guardian would as soon think of ignoring as a parent would of neglecting his child. An old book, whatever its subject or internal merits, is truly a portion of the national history; we may imitate it and print it in fac-simile [sic], but we can never exactly reproduce it; and as an historical document it should be carefully preserved.
I do not envy any man that absence of sentiment which makes some people careless of the memorials of their ancestors, and whose blood can be warmed up only by talking of horses or the price of hops. To them solitude means ennui, and anybody’s company is preferable to their own. What an immense amount of calm and enjoyment and mental renovation do such men miss. Even a millionaire will ease his toils, lengthen his life, and add a hundred per cent. to his daily pleasures if he becomes a bibliophile; while to the man of business with a taste for books, who through the day has struggled in the battle of life with all its irritating rebuffs and anxieties, what a blessed season of pleasurable repose opens upon him as he enters his sanctum, where every article wafts to him a welcome, and every book is a personal friend!
Excellent. Thanks for sharing that.