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How possessive are you about your books?

Middle Eye said:
I can't stand when someone picks up one of my paperback books and then proceeds to open it and bend the front cover back around the back of the book so that they can hold it in one hand. I want to scream whenever someone does that. Then when they set it down the front cover is sticking up, flapping in the air like a runover pigeon's wing. So annoying.
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Sheesh! Seriously irritating! And the worst part is when you try to set the rolled cover straight and it just keeps rolling back like a dog's tail! Ugh! :eek:
 
I really love my books and it hurts when someone dog-ears them on me but I have to say, I'm a spine bending type. I just put a heavier book on it when I'm finished. By the time I go to read it again, the pages don't flick up anymore like a flapping bird. I feel really guilty about bending the spine, unless someone has read it before me and it's already bent.
 
hm i don't mind lending books as long as i get them back in perfect condition. my OCD feels that i got the full bang for the buck for a book i bought if more people read it. however, i do make it clear ahead of time that i'll only lend it to the person if they hand it back to me in the condition that it was lent.

Manuscript said:
I really love my books and it hurts when someone dog-ears them on me but I have to say, I'm a spine bending type. I just put a heavier book on it when I'm finished. By the time I go to read it again, the pages don't flick up anymore like a flapping bird. I feel really guilty about bending the spine, unless someone has read it before me and it's already bent.
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i actually prefer a used paperback w/ a bent spine over a new paperback that you're forced to bend yourself so the book is 'read-able'. it looks bad, but is sooo much more comfortable. plus getting one with a bent spine makes me feel less.. guilty
 
I try not to loan out anything that I'd cry real tears for if I didn't get it back. For the most part, I look at my ownership as stewardship of a resource given to me for a time..What is much more difficult is when the need to cull raises it's ugly head...since I learned early in life this amendment to Murphy's Law: If I get rid of a book, any book, even if I haven't given it so much as a glance in 10 years...I will NEED that book withing 7 days of it leaving my possesion. Or worse, I'll forget I no longer own that book, and I'll suddenly get the urge to read it, and will hunt the whole house over three times before I remember the last mass exodus of books...I'm trying to learn not to yell at family members and accuse them of squirreling away that book just to annoy me...
 
Kavitha said:
I cant stand it if my books get dog eared, soiled, marked or torn. It gets on my nerves if someone forgets to return the book I lent them, worse if they lose it :(

But I like the whiff you get from a new book when you first open it (weird?:p ), and the crisp feel of the pages. Also I like books that yellow with age: gives them an authentic look. And I don't mind the 'read' look it gets once you finish reading the book ;)
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I can totally relate with this thread... I'm totally possessive with my books, but I don't mind if they get a "read look" either.

I also love the smell of a new book and that's why all my books are bought new and why I don't like to borrow them from the library. I get really irritated when I request a book from the library and it's written on, or riped or missing pages :eek:. Now I use libraries for academic purposes only (I still hate the state some books are, but as they are books to be consulted and not so much read, I have to manage...)
 
I'm fairly possessive, hence my bookplate quest; however, I do lend out books at times but usually forget who I lent what to. Oh well.
 
I'm rather possessive as well, but I have no qualms about buying used books as long as they aren't too beat up. Once they come home with me though I try my best not to further their destruction. My wife... a lovely, wonderful woman in so very many respects, is not careful with books. Luckily her worst abuses have been committed against easily replacable paperbacks. Our reading tastes are different enough that she's not often interested in my books. Still, I try to keep anything special or fragile out of her way!
 
I'm not too possessive about them; however if someone returns a book to me that was all torn up and dog-eared, you can bet it's the last book I'd lend them. :mad:
 
I've stopped lending books because so many come back looking like they've been ingested by a creature out of a Bosch painting. The borrowed books on my shelves glare out at me with resentment for trusting untrustables.

So, yes, I can get possessive.
 
If there's anything I'm very possessive about, it's everything I own. I may not own a whole lot of valuable things, but one thing's certain...No one can go near my records or the books I own. I simply obsess over them, and that has kept them very safe so far..So I'm quite satisfied with the way things are.
On another note, I strongly agree with what Kavitha said on the very first post of this thread. I do love that first smell, and that very old smell, and that in between smell they get. That yellow and off-white contrast they get, deep yellow on the edges of the pages, and off-white towards the middle of the page. But I hate it when the pages have been marked or something's been torn or written on, because I don't feel like the book was published solely for myself to own and read, I feel like it's been "tapped" by someone else before me. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that I don't lend books, because I don't trust that other people will take care of them like I do, and I'm not one to take those kind of risks. I sure would play Russian Roulette though!
 
I tend to buy most of my books secondhand so they have history when I get them. They are usually good quality secondhand. If books mean a lot to me then I wont lend them out, simple as that. My brother and a close friend are somewhat obsessive about their books, they open their books in such a way that I find it hard to believe they can see everything on the page. My friend very kindly lent me a book when she came to visit a few months ago saying I could return it on my next trip home. Well that book sat in the wardrobe in a plastic bag, I kept looking at it but in the end I was so paranoid about bending the pages back too far that I decided not to read it. When I saw her last month in London I gave it back to her unread. She laughed when I told her I was too scared to read it but on the other hand I got the feeling she was secretly relieved!
 
I'd rather not lend out any of my stuff (too many bad experiences - people move away with my stuff, lose contact with them, etc.).

A lot of my friends have expressed interest in reading my Sandman collection. But I've already said that my collection does not leave my house.

I'll probably only lend out cheap paperbacks - nothing expensive or of sentimental value.
 
gillyb said:
My brother and a close friend are somewhat obsessive about their books, they open their books in such a way that I find it hard to believe they can see everything on the page.
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My dad reads like that...a habit I've picked up now that I am older.

I rarely lend out books...I'm still waiting to get one back from a fellow teacher (I was put in a spot and kind of had to lend it). I do lend books to my dad fairly frequently, as we have similar tastes and I know he'll treat them well and I'll get them back.
 
I lent a friend a few books out of my completed Nercoscope series and she sold them in a garage sale! :mad: :mad: :mad: FOR 50c each!!!! I demanded that she replace them which of course she didn't, she couldn't see the problem as I had read them already. I was in tears when I got home after I had been over there to pick them up. It cost me alot of money to buy them as they are near impossible to come by here. My hubby sourced them all again and replaced them as a surprise for me. But they are not mine and don't feel right in the bookcase. Maybe I have to go back and read them again....

I tend to always buy 2nd hand books so the dog-ear spine bending thing doesn't bother me at all. I love opening the cover and seeing peoples names written in there, and stuff spilt on the pages, passages underlined. Makes me wonder about the previous owners.

I borrowed a book off a lady named Pat once the book was Happy Like Murders, I gave the book back to her. Years later I decided to wanted to read it again so I bought it off ebay. The book arrived and written inside was the same ladies name.... freaky! But I loved it! It was like the book had made its way home! (well kinda)
 
Oooh... I hate it when I see a book that's open with its spine up :eek: , lying flat on its soft and tender belly. And then when the book is new, it wants to close itself and my young cousins would press on it to crease the spine vertically or even splitting the glued spine/book. Boy, after they read a book once, it looks like a library book that's been lent out at least 20 times. I try not to lend them any of our books, so, I just recommend many many books to their parents, so they can be busy killing their own books and not of ours. I know it doesn't sound right, but, I like my books. Alot.
 
NKK said:
I lent a friend a few books out of my completed Nercoscope series and she sold them in a garage sale! :mad: :mad: :mad: FOR 50c each!!!! I demanded that she replace them which of course she didn't, she couldn't see the problem as I had read them already. I was in tears when I got home after I had been over there to pick them up. It cost me alot of money to buy them as they are near impossible to come by here. My hubby sourced them all again and replaced them as a surprise for me. But they are not mine and don't feel right in the bookcase. Maybe I have to go back and read them again....
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That's horrible! I had a friend that I let borrow a series of books and when I asked about them about a year later, he said he had thrown them out because he read them and I had too so why keep them? Grrrr
 
Your friend threw your books away? You need new friends! I shudder to think what your enemies might do:p






sparkchaser said:
That's horrible! I had a friend that I let borrow a series of books and when I asked about them about a year later, he said he had thrown them out because he read them and I had too so why keep them? Grrrr
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abecedarian said:
Your friend threw your books away? You need new friends! I shudder to think what your enemies might do:p
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Oh, I know exactly what my enemies would do: they would tear out every 5th page and return the book. That or burn down my house.
 
Unless it's a very nice copy of the book, I don't really worry too much about what happens to it. Paperbacks I'll give to someone if they'd like to read it. So far, friends and family have taken care of books I loan them and in the case of the few exceptions where something happened to the book, they've replaced them for me without argument. :)
 
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