My girlfriend loves a “well-loved” book…and sometimes our paperback books are loved to the extent that when she’s read them the pages are hanging together by a thread, crispy from water damage, torn/bent, etc.
I prefer treating books with care and I’m okay with our differing viewpoints…but I worry about some books we buy not lasting long enough for me to enjoy them too.
I’ve tried converting her to the school of caring too much that your books are pristine…but it’s not her style and I concede, not something her or should be worried about.
I can’t always buy hardbacks, I don’t want to buy duplicates…and we both prefer physical copies, so kindle isn’t an option either. How do I apply armor to paperbacks that I want to survive to see another day? What else should I try?
Thanks for your input!
Happy reading 📚
by DantesPicoDeGallo
10 Comments
Libraries are a good option. Some people aren’t responsible enough to own.
You could try the clear plastic contact paper to cover them with? It seems to have huge benefits for the longevity of paperbacks.
It’s a paperback, that’s what they’re for
I’m not saying go abuse the shit out of your books but paperbacks get printed cheaply for a reason
A piece of clear packing tape applied to the outside of the binding can add some wear and tear for a while.
If the book is your property she should respect it and treat it better, and you’d be right to be upset, particularily with expensive hardbacks and collectibles. Having said that, i do not buy into the belief that books are somehow inherently sacred. I am a huge proponent of eBooks for their ease and affordability. Bonus that your wife cant destroy your favorite eBook.
Get a kindle for paperbacks? Or some other kind of e-reader. If the pages are falling out of the kindle, she may be treating it a little rough…
Maybe suggest that you get dibs on reading some of the ones you’re most excited about first?
Other than that maybe you buy what you want and she can buy what she wants instead of buying them together.
She likes to beat up her books and that’s perfectly okay as long as they are hers.
Sometimes they are badly made. They just break at the spine. I have a much read copy of my fav ever book from the 70s still in great shape. Read one printed a year ago and had to press a bit hard in the middle to see the words and it just split.
If you own the book, ask her to treat it with care and try to be first to read. You can use book covers and laminate covers, iron out bent pages but it won’t help the other damage mentioned.
I think you might have to get used to that your books are well loved and go in quite on adventure when she reads them 🙂
What’s the book version of calling shotgun for the front passenger seat? If she can’t change her behavior toward the book itself, it seems fair that she can at least delay it and let you read a clean copy.