The Physicality of Books
Do you have any rituals or procedures you go through after acquiring a new (or used) book?
Intro · Likes · Rituals · Necessity
Examples · Memories · Bios
Ian Covell
Remove its dust wrapper while reading it, just in case you catch it against something or get some dirt on it by a moment’s inattention. If it’s paperback, encase it in plastic wrapper for the same reason.
Peter Crowther
I’m a keen book-sniffer, particularly where old books are concerned …and especially old comic books. Generally, I’m attracted by covers and designs, and once hooked, I check out a sample page in the middle of the book to sample the writing style (praying that, if I like the style, the page doesn’t detail the death of a main character!). I’m also a completist—thus certain imprints (ACE Doubles, Gold Medal, Ballantine, etc.) are purchased with little or no attention to the actual story or the author.
John Coulthart
If the book has a dust jacket I always remove it to see whether anything is printed on the boards.
Jack Dann
I always check that books I buy are properly bound, and, yes, in the case of used books, I check the smell of a book for mustiness.
Ellen Datlow
Nope. I just try to figure out where to put it in my very crowded apartment.
Alan DeNiro
If it’s stories or poems, I immediately go to the acknowledgements page and see where their work has been published; it helps give me a sense of where the collection fits into the larger fabric of literature.
L. Timmel Duchamp
My relationship to my books is both obsessive and possessive, which is to say that I and my books are in passionate possession of one another. I could, if I wished, compile a list of every volume that I’ve lost through lending to someone who could not be bothered to return it, a list stretching back to 1971. I own thousands of books, and they own me. When I purchase a book, I inscribe my name, the date, and the city in which I purchased it and place it in one of the areas of my home that is reserved for unread books. After I’ve read the book, I enter its particulars into a database and shelve it with the already-read books. It gives me extreme pleasure to look at the shelves of books read and know that I’ve read every one of them. Sitting in my library—a large, skylighted room that can be accessed only through a pair of French doors located on the far wall of my bedroom—I am conscious that I am the person I am at least partly through my having read the books on my library’s shelves. My response to my shelves of unread books, however, is ambivalent. On the one hand, the sight of my unread books both excites and stimulates me, assuring me, as it does, of an unending supply of pleasure. On the other hand, I am sufficiently aware of the finity of my lifespan that the sight of so many books I’ve committed myself to reading can sometimes make me anxious. I have a ritual for controlling the anxiety, but it’s very involved and would likely bore others to tears (as the mechanisms of obsession generally do).
Lawrence Dyer
Carrying it around, feeling the weight in anticipation of the read. Books in general are designed to be carried easily, meeting perfectly the evolutionary ergonomics of our hunter-gatherer past. In fact, buying books is satisfying because it is modeled on hunter-gathering. You go out to the bookstores, not knowing what you will find. You may come away disappointed and hungry that day, or you may find something superb that will sustain you for many a month.
