A Bluestocking Knits

Booking Through Thursday wants to know what kind of care do we take of our books?

1. Are you careful with the spines? Or do you crack your books open to make them lay flat? From years of working in a public library — shelving, processing, cataloging — I’ve developed a little routine, although it’s really just more a habit, for opening new hardcover books, that I find myself doing automatically, even at bookstores with books that I don’t intend to buy.  I open the front cover, gently but firmly, as far back as it will go, then repeat this with the back cover, which loosens the stiffness that comes with the gluing of the spine.  I usally riffle the pages too, although this is difficult with books from those publishers (like Knopf) who don’t trim the edges.
2. Do you use bookmarks? Or do you dog-ear the corners? If you do use bookmarks, do you use those fashionable metal ones? Or paper? I use paper or thin cardstock to mark my place, although they are usually not official "bookmarks" as such, but handy scraps of paper or index cards if I’m taking notes — those subscription cards from magazines that we perpetually find under the chairs are very handy, for instance!  I don’t like the bookmarks that clip over a section of pages, as like paper clips I think these will either crinkle the pages or discolor them eventually.  I really dislike the magnet kinds, as clever as they are, because I don’t want to put anything thick inside a book, being too hard on the spine.  I knew a librarian once who had a collection of things that she’d found in books, things that people had been using to mark their places — leaves, dollar bills, old letters, a boxed deck of cards, bits of string, and such (I didn’t really believe her about the strip of bacon, though).
3. Do you write in your books? Ever? If you do, do you make small marks, or write in as much blank space as you can find? Pen or pencil? Highlighter? Your name on the front page? I found it extremely difficult to get into the habit in college of writing in my textbooks.  I think it took the gradual dawning on me that either my notes would be helpful to me in the future (!), or that my used textbooks would to be honest not get used again by anyone else, to get me to put pencil — not pen! — to paper.  I sometimes, although rarely, make light Xs in the margins at passages I especially want to remember and find again, but on the whole I don’t write in books.  This is somewhat ironic, as I love to find old inscriptions on the flyleaf of a good book (I always laugh at the part in 84, Charing Cross Road when Helene chides FPD for not writing an inscription in a book he sent her from the shop staff, how she would have enjoyed and valued it but their booksellers’ aversion to "damaging" the book has prevented them.)  The only time I use pen is to write my name or a gift inscription.
4. Do you toss your books on the floor? Into book bags? Or do you treat them tenderly, with respect? Er, define "toss"!  That slip from bed to floor (for I as yet have no nightstand)?  Does that count?
5. Do you ever lay your book face-down, to save your place?  Only paperback cookbooks — otherwise, never!  Certainly not hardcovers.  (I had to laugh when a few months ago I heard Laura, then aged six, say sternly to her little sister, "Not that way, you’ll break the spine!")
6. Um–water? Do you bathe with your books? Hold them with wet hands? Read out in the rain? Anything of that sort? There is a certain category in my mind that I call "bathtub books" — generally romances or light mysteries in paperback that would be no great loss if they were to be dropped into the tub and ruined (which I have done, I confess!).  Many of Barbara Michaels’ books are this kind.  I generally don’t read the Harlequin/Mills & Boon kind of stuff, but those would also qualify.  I’m careful not to read with wet or dirty hands, not even magazines.
7. Are your books lined up on a bookshelf? Or crammed in any which way? Stacked on the floor? Well, frankly, some of each, although this is more from lack of space than from any disregard or thoughtlessness!  Most of my P.G. Wodehouse collection (I adore P.G. Wodehouse) is stacked up next to the bookcase in the hallway, having been crowded out by the DVDs — the reasoning being that the DVD boxes are slippery and the stacks fall over far too easily, whereas the books make a fairly sturdy pile which hasn’t fallen over yet, despite being whacked now and then with the broom when I sweep.  (Pathetic, isn’t it.)
8. Do you make a distinction–as regards book care–between hardcovers and paperbacks? Not usually, no.  It’s more the book itself that qualifies it or not — but even with books I don’t like much, I am not careless.  It’s either "careful" or "more careful"!  If I don’t want it, it goes to the library booksale.
9. And, to recap? Naturally, you love all of your books, but how, exactly? Are your books loved in the battered way of a well-loved teddy bear, or like a cherished photo album or item of clothing that’s used, appreciated, but carefully cared for? This question is making me think — it’s not the same as a comfort object, the way that Julia, for instance, carries her Lambie around by the tail, thoughtlessly but with a certain basic need — it’s not the same as clothing, in the way that some people have rooms dedicated to their wardrobe, climate-controlled and organized by color or purpose — it’s more like close friends, that you enjoy having them around, you are considerate of their "comfort" (having a good chair for them to sit on, and tea, or a sturdy shelf), you enjoy their company when they are around and think about them when they are not, you even introduce them to others because you think they’ll get along well together.  You think all of a sudden one afternoon, "I haven’t seen X in a while, I must call her!" or "Eva Ibbotson! I need to read her again!"  My books are in some ways extensions of myself, too, not just like friends who are the world coming to and interacting with me, in that the books that have spoken deeply to me at different parts of my life are in a way like my diaries, except with experiences that I didn’t actually have myself.

Booking Through Thursday writes, "Let’s keep it simple today":

1. What are you reading right now?  I went to the library yesterday morning, and found on the new book shelf Scott of the Antarctic: A Life of Courage and Tragedy by David Crane.  I first learned about the story from watching "The Last Place on Earth", based on the book by Roland Huntford, and then from reading pretty voraciously almost everything I could find on the subject, I learned that the truth, as so often happens, was probably somewhere in between Huntford’s inept bungler and the glorious hero of popular mythology.  (One of the best books that I read this past year was Sara Wheeler’s Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard, a fairly minor member of the Terra Nova expedition who afterwards produced one of the most lyrical works on polar exploration, The Worst Journey in the World.)  Crane is obviously, from the subtitle of his book, in the Scott camp, but he does have some interesting and perceptive things to say, in the first chapter alone, about the English character and its need for heroes in the early days of the twentieth century, with its inexorable slide towards the hell of the First World War.

I’m also well into Reading Like a Writer, by Francine Prose, a literate and elegant guide to the appreciation of great literature.