Fantastic Metropolis

Intro · Likes · Rituals · Necessity
Examples · Memories · Bios

Jay Lake

Nothing serious. If it’s a hardback, I remove the dust jacket. I read the jacket copy at that time. I find a bookmark, usually the sales slip. When I’m ready to start reading the book, I look at all the forewords, introductions, etc., and will often read literally everything including the copyright statement and printing history—all of those tell me something about the context of the book.

David Langford

Er (glances nervously from side to side), doesn’t everyone have a quick sniff? New books are rarely aromatically interesting, but certain US paper from the first half of the 20th Century has matured to exude a waft of Essential Book. Check out, say, the 1941 first edition of John Collier’s Presenting Moonshine or almost any early printing of James Branch Cabell. Did Jack Vance never describe an alien society where book-sniffing was a major branch of art appreciation? Why not? Another small ritual consists of either gently removing penciled-in second-hand prices with an art eraser, or shouting FUCKWIT! at prices scrawled in ink. Peering into the central gutter of small-press paperbacks to look for that odd hint of fluorescent glow often associated with POD paper stock, and to estimate whether I’ll be able to read the bloody thing without forcing it open so far as to blaspheme against the Book Gods by creasing the spine.

Des Lewis

I smell it, I riffle through it, I catch odd paragraphs and blurbs, I make myself feel as if I am at the start of a love affair. I may be disappointed in the long run. But I have to give the book every chance. I often stow it for a while, with only the spine showing. Its potential is almost as powerful as its actual power (often, sadly, in retrospect, more powerful!). I think it was me that said I bit books. I was lying. I do, however, anticipate that biting books would not be as mad as it sounds, and could be quite pleasurable and efficacious. But doubting my own sanity, sometimes, as I do, I’m not taking any risks by acting mad, which biting a book would certainly seem.

Nick Mamatas

I’ll read all the front and back matter right after buying a book, but never before—I depend on cover and author’s name for making browsing purchases. The only other ritual is that I keep favorite books off the bookshelf. They have to be in some other pile, on the floor or desk. Bookshelves to me are like little prisons for prose that disappoints.

Javier A. Martinez

I hate to buy damaged books. Even in used bookstores I won’t purchase a book that’s been “read” to the point that the spine is broken and the cover damaged (unless it’s something I’ve been looking for for a long time). I always give the book a sniff, too.

Farah Mendlesohn

Sit them on the shelf and contemplate them. Once shelved properly, they don’t count as new any more and the pleasure shifts from the excitement of acquisition to the reassurance of ownership (books are the only objects I’m truly materialistic about).

Michael Moorcock

I either draw my bookplate into it or stick a bookplate in, depending on what’s available or to what degree I’m going to treasure a book. I have to say I have no special reverence for books as material objects. My early experience was as a journalist when one was constantly ripping bits out of magazines and books and dumping the remains in the waste paper disposal.

Cheryl Morgan

I try to find time to read it.