The vast majority of books made in something like the last 50+ years are all very low quality and degrade rapidly anyway.
It’s a mass-produced book, and a paperback at that. You can certainly keep any such book in good condition to archive or re-read on your own terms. But that stack of acid-paper and cheap glue is going to eventually self-destruct. Unless it’s a limited production run, in danger of getting burned, autographed, is an actual collectable, or something else that makes it distinct or valuable, I say: go for it.
Source: I own a stack of these from back in the day. Despite my best efforts to store them appropriately, they’re all slowly rotting away. Some things just aren’t meant to last.
When you get right down to it, that’s true for everything. Everything self-destructs eventually. So, that seems like a strange reason to destroy it prematurely.
Of course, if it’s your book, you can do whatever you want with it. It just seems needlessly wasteful.
Well… Because it’s not wasteful at all. The point is to make it easier to read. As long as you’re not rough with it, all the pages should stay in, and then you can put both halves back on the shelf when you’re done (or just recycle it, since paper is one of the few things that’s actually recyclable). Nothing is being destroyed.
had this occur with my first copy of ninjas and superspies and ended up punching holes in it and putting it in a 3 ring binder. the binding - and slimness of the book so it had a thin spine - wasn’t meant to lay open.
*thick books
I was an only child, but i can see this being invented when a parent or teacher figured out a way for 2 kids to read the same book at the same time, given one has a half book head start.
They are a magician. They make two books out of a single book. (At least they didn’t cut it hamburger style 🫠)
It’s the dlc
Part 1 and Part 2 of the first entry in the first four parts of an 18 part series.
Parts is parts
I have never been so offended by something so harmless in the greater scheme of things.
If you cut Infinite Jest in half, and half of infinity is infinity, is it now two Infinite Jests? Should every page in Infinite Jest be page ∞ since they’re all a division of infinity?
I don’t know smart math things so I’m just bs’ing here, please don’t tell me how wrong I am.
The reason I only find half of a story when exploring in video games
Rick Steves says to do this with his travel guides. Pull out just the cities you’ll use so you save weight travelling.
Rick’s gotta save room for more weed.
Time to learn DIY book binding…
last year I’ve allowed myself to do marginalia, to allow me to write notes and whatever I want on the books I read while I read. it’s inherently destructive, but it changes the whole experience. reading is no longer a passive activity but a conversation with the material. and I love it.
but felt guilty about doing irreversible changes to the book. then this shit shows up.
It’s destructive but it’s also constructive. That conversation with the material gives future owners new perspectives. At least in my opinion as someone who collects old subcultural texts. Notes in the margins adds to the experience of an old book
I love margin notes. My friends and I have a book exchange where we read a book, write in the margins, and pass it on to the next friend. It’s nice.
it’s transformative, if I’m expected to change when reading a book so is the book
Since I turned 30 I write in the margins of books I read. The better the book is the more notes. Its much more engaging.
100%
maybe it’s my ADHD, but now I cannot read without a pen
Ok, but what is there to take notes about? Assuming it’s a novel, and not some reference book.
If you have really complex books with lots of story threads, I can imagine doing this. For example in Tolstoy’s War and Peace or GRRM A song of ice and fire books.
It would be more useful to take notes besides the book rather than inside it in that case. Maybe it’s just me, though.
I like the idea of this. It would make a re-read or even just flipping through the book years later a lot of fun.
and if another person reads it, they are engaging in that conversation as well and will know what you thought of the book and add to it.
There’s no objective reason that this is wrong, but still, take that shit far far away from me
Infinite Jest has extensive footnotes, which are at the back of the book. Some of them are 12 pages long and contain multiple subplots and plot points and gives history and context to how and why the Infinite Jest of the book is so deadly.
Doesn’t it fuck up the binding? Sure, a softback is still going to stay together in the immediate term, but the covers are almost always a single stronger piece, whereas the pages will now be free to work loose from the cut side.
So… I’d say it is objectively worse.
Correct.
It doesn’t need to stay together for a lifetime, the person only cares about it staying together for a few days till they’re done reading the section, after which it gets disposed of. This makes it much easier for them to actually read it, which means it’s objectively way better.
You…buy a book and then throw it away after you read it? Anyone does that?
I buy books to throw at anyone who can read. You literate fucks.
In the movie My Blue Heaven, Steve Martin had a trunk full of the same (stolen) book and his excuse was “in case I want to read it more than once.”
I’ve heard there are PACs or whatever that buy thousands of copies of politicians books so they become best sellers. Does anyone know where the physical copies actually end up?
I don’t, but plenty of people do, and it’s entirely fine if that’s how they want to read
Actively making things worse because you have a shitty consumerist disposable product fetish actively makes the world worse.
