*Whimper* Hurting Your Books

I have a confession to make: I once ripped the last chapter out of a book. It was self defense, sorta. One of my cousins used to read the end of the book when she started so she'd know how it turned out. This used to drive me nuts; writers work hard to craft a good story and you shouldn't spoil the experience by reading the ending first. That was my self defense. Okay, that was my justification. A little different, I know.

This Broom Hilda cartoon (click for full-size image) got me thinking about mutilating books, not necessarily in a good way, just that we do it. I try not to break the spines, which my dad was infamous for doing (he'd bend a hardcover right in half to read it).  I've also been known to dog-ear my paperbacks (not my hardcovers). Once, in lieu of studying for a midterm, I indexed my hardcover Chaucer text with little glue-on tabs. I think that qualifies as mutilation. I'm sorry now that I did it, but it was handy at the time. And because I eat while I read, I've managed to get all kinds of things on the pages of my books. My cookbooks show the most damage (I really should get one of those splatter shield cookbook stands), but if I'm in the middle of a good novel, eating spaghetti is not going to stop me from reading it at the table.

But fly guts? I think I draw the line there. That's what newspapers are for.