
Chopping books in half - merrier
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/22/book-murderer-tear-apart-love-alex-christofi
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hirundo
Funny, I've flipped to thinking of my electronic copies of books as the
permanent ones and the hard copies as just convenient printouts. With a few
sentimental exceptions. Damaging a physical book is for me becoming less taboo
than failing to properly backup my book drive. Every spare corner of my house
is crammed with books but every year they feel more anachronous. Like an 8
track collection.

~~~
wbl
We have readable thousand year old documents. Hard drives not so much.

~~~
yoz-y
At least one of the reasons why is that there were no hard drives a thousand
years ago.

Sure, stone and to some extent paper might be more durable. But the
replication and transfer capabilities of digital media can ensure that the
knowledge will not disappear in a fire, as long as the civilisation persists.

~~~
kwhitefoot
And there probably will not be any hard drives in a thousand years from now.

Books are not as flammable as all that and generally survive higher
temperatures than magnetic disks can. And books are generally printed in
thousands of copies so they are replicated and distributed too. They also
don't suffer to the same extent from technological change. It is now rather
difficult to find computers that have floppy disk drives for instance,
parallel ATA is also not especially common either. In addition magnetic media
is not as robust even at normal temperatures. So if you have an archive on 5
1/4 inch floppies from, say, thirty years ago and a printed copy I think that
the printed copy is likely to be the only one that is now readable.

In principle you might be right but it only works if there is an archivist who
maintains the archive by repeatedly copying the content to new storage systems
and distributing the results.

~~~
falcolas
> it only works if there is an archivist who maintains the archive by
> repeatedly copying the content to new storage systems and distributing the
> results.

Funny, that’s exactly the role monks used to play in keeping many of these
afforementioned documents readable.

And “less flammable” matters little when we’re talking about house or library
fires, during which sufficient heat to make iron pliable can be easily
achieved. The advantage of digital backups there is that the (well planned)
backups don’t live in the same place as the original.

And since we’re talking about Mass Market paperbacks, can we talk about how
fragile those things are these days? Sure, one from 30+ years ago is in decent
condition - probably better condition than a new one hot off the press. The
glue they use anymore is terrible - having pages fall out during the first
read is pretty commonplace anymore.

I’d give better odds to a 30 year old paperback that’s lasted this long than a
new book to make it another 30 years.

~~~
dredmorbius
The reason monks played a role in the hand-transcribing (and error-inducing)
_manu_ scripts was because mechanical reproduction didn't exist.

Estimates are that _in all of Europe_ as of 1400 there were on the order of
40,000 titles or editions, and about 15 million volumes, total. A large
library might have a few thousand volumes (University of Paris ~1200 CE:
2,000, the Vatican, ~1400, ~5,000). As of 1800, the British Museum (now the
British Library) contained only 50,000 volumes.

Individual books, scrolls, parchments, and cuneiform tablets
([https://cdli.ucla.edu](https://cdli.ucla.edu)) can survive thousands of
years. The larger problem for more recent woodpulp paper texts is one that's
common to many digital storage media: poor chemical stability. Acid-treated
paper will crumble to dust. Archival-grade cotton rag will last centuries or
more.

So long as you're talking flame and heat, you might care to check the ratings
of your CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, HDD, and SDD media before feeling too secure.

Quality of current-gen paper print media is indeed low. Hardcover, for a
price, delivers markedly better durability. Keep in mind too that you're
applying survivorship bias to your sampling of 30-year-old paperbacks -- the
ones that wouldn't survive 30 years ... haven't.

(I've numerous old books which are now in pretty sorry condition. And others
which remain robust. Details matter.)

------
MarcScott
> “Books are not holy relics,' Trefusis had said. 'Words may be my religion,
> but when it comes to worship, I am very low church. The temples and the
> graven images are of no interest to me. The superstitious mammetry of a
> bourgeois obsession for books is severely annoying. Think how many children
> are put off reading by prissy little people ticking them off whenever they
> turn a page carelessly. The world is so fond of saying that book s should be
> "treated with respect". But when are we told that _words_ should be treated
> with respect? From our earliest years we are taught to revere only the
> outward and visible. Ghastly literary types maundering on about books as
> "objects"...”

Stephen Fry, The Liar

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post_below
I remember seeing something about the twitter outrage over this and thinking
it was silly.

But I like the author's point: It's cool that people still care so much about
books in the digital age.

Long live books, in any increment.

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captn3m0
I did something similar just yesterday.

The original 2001 edition of Fantastic Beasts and where to find them (JK
Rowling) was presented as a copy of the book that Harry borrowed from the
Hogwarts Library. As such, it had notes and scribbles (and a hangman game)
from the trio.

The publisher made a lot of changes with the 2017 re-release, mainly new
illustrations, and content changes to get it in line with the new canon of the
movies. A few original (but really terribly) illustrations from Rowling were
dropped or made better.

The scribbles and comments were left out as well. So I decided to scribble in
those myself. Was quite fun to scribble on the contents page of the book and
write "==chudley cannons==".

The wiki has a list of comments:
[https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Fantastic_Beasts_and_Whe...](https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Fantastic_Beasts_and_Where_to_Find_Them_\(companion_book\))
if you'd like a chuckle.

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OJFord
Contemporary (and most older) paperbacks, I'd say go ahead. I'd feel very
differently if they were out of print and nicely bound (or not, but scarce).

But paperbacks? Yeah, the 'Twitter outrage' is a gross over-reaction: what do
they think is going to happen to these copies otherwise? At best they're
probably mostly eventually unwanted inheritances, donated to a charity shop;
poor condition ones discarded, some sold, rest eventually discarded when they
don't sell too.

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OliverJones
You're cutting your books' bindings at between "signatures." Those are the
16-page little booklets bound together to make the big book. Each signature is
made by folding and cutting a single large sheet of paper coming off the
press, if it's a page press and not a warp (paper roll) press. Those 16-page
signatures used to be called "octavo" or "8vo" in the early days of printing.

This is a time-honored practice in bookmaking. Why shouldn't a very long book
be published in multiple volumes? Before modern very- thin and very- cheap
paper this was common practice. J. R. R. Tolkien wrote and published the Lord
of the Rings as a trilogy because his publisher didn't want to make his work
too expensive or heavy for the mass market of post WWII Britain.

Go for it. You're not disrespecting the author, the editor, or the printer.
And, modern bindings don't really command much respect anyway.

(Not books you've borrowed from libraries or other people, duh. That could
rile up a librarian or your friends big time.)

------
cafard
If a paperback is sufficiently old, it might just break apart on you. I can
think of at least two that have come apart in my hands during the last few
years.

I recycled them. A book once severed is going to keep shedding pages. It's
fine to read once, but probably will not stand up to a second or subsequent
reading. On the whole, I'd just as soon not buy books that I'm not going to
look into again after the first reading.

Having said that, _Crime and Punishment_ is not really a scarce resource, nor
I suppose _Infinite Jest_ or _Middlesex_. I'd bet that I could buy all three
at a used bookstore for less than $30. The author may be stepping up the
recycling date for the books, but by how much?

~~~
arkades
He's rebinding them, too, with cardboard - which is to say, turning them into
half hardcovers. You could argue he's not even reducing their lifespan.

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bambax
Throwing books away is surprisingly hard, even for completely useless ones
(manuals for software that doesn't exist anymore, or really bad novels). I
threw a few of those in the bid a few weeks ago, and it felt really weird.

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okaleniuk
I would prefer being chopped in half to be buried alive in a book cabinet. And
I'm not even a book, I'm a person.

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corecoder
The picture I saw must have been a joke, it showed Infinite Jest divided in
half, but that's ridiculous, as you don't read it front to back, you read it
jumping from text to notes to text to notes (and, when you're lucky, from
notes to notes to the notes).

