Are you a spine breaker? Or a dog-earer? Do you expect to keep your books in pristine condition even after you have read them? Does watching other readers bend the cover all the way round make you flinch or squeal in pain?
I prefer my books to stay in pristine a condition as possible. I have learned this the hard way. I keep contemplating replacing my copies of the Harry Potter books because I made the horrible mistake of highlighting parts I thought foreshadowed events to come and wrote notes in the margins. It HORRIFIES me to see it now. I regret it so much.
Any curling of the paperback covers during reading will eventually be pressed out by being shelved generally tightly in my home library.
I am definitely not a dog-earer. On the rare chance that I do not have a bookmark with me, I will use anything (a scrap of paper, kleenex, paper towel, any flat object) to use as a bookmark. In fact, I am so not a dog-earer that I will un-dog-ear any dog-ears I find in books I'm reading.
Granted, this is how I feel about my books and this is my opinion. But I still cringe when I see the way other people treat books. Working in a library makes this a common occurrence when you see people return books ruined by food, drink, or other unacceptable substance and think that the book is perfectly fine for other people to read. *shudder*
Read on,
Paula
What do you do or say to patrons who try to return books like that?
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