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Book Repair
This may be a "humidifier" post. If so, sorry.
I have a ton of old paperbacks, and some of them are starting to fall apart - literally.
Many, of course, weren't printed on acid-free paper and are therefore doomed to a slow death. But some are simply falling apart from many re-readings.
I should explain that I have an apparently unusual brain glitch: I can re-read a good book and get as much or more enjoyment out of it as I did the first time I read it. With some books I have to wait a year or two; with others six months is sufficient. That's lucky for me, because I read quickly and often. If I couldn't re-read my favorites, I'd soon be out of reading material!
The down side is that some of my favorites get worn out. I try to treat my books carefully and gently; I don't break the bindings, I never fold page corners down (it actually shocks me when I see anyone do that), and I try to keep them dry and clean. Still, the covers eventually start falling off. I pick up duplicates of my favorites, multiple duplicates in some cases, but even when I have several copies of a particular book I try to save every copy.
My technique is probably horrible, and would make a librarian scream. Still, over the years it has successfully kept some of my books from falling apart.
I use transparent packing tape, the kind that's perfectly transparent and about two inches wide. A strip along the spine comes first, trimmed carefully to avoid protruding edges. Then both the front and back covers are wrapped with strips of tape. Each strip wraps the top and bottom of the page, overlapping at the middle of the inside cover. The outer edge of each cover gets an extra length of tape folded around it. Lastly, I put an additional strip of tape (trimmed to fit) at the point where the inside covers meet the first and last pages of the book. This reinforces the connection between the cover and the pages.
The result is a book that's virtually immune to further physical wear. The covers are waterproof. And the binding stays together; I have yet to have a book that has been preserved this way fall apart. The binding could fall apart completely due to glue rot, I suppose, but so far that hasn't happened. Of course I don't do this to valuable books, and only do it when a book in in jeopardy of losing a cover! In one case I took an old paperback of Shogun (which is so huge that the spine almost always cracks quickly), that had already lost the back cover during a trip. Since the cover was gone, I double-taped the last page instead - it was an advertisement, not part of the story. It worked out better than I expected, and years later, that book is still unchanged despite several re-readings.
Of course you have to be very careful when taping, to avoid crinkling or misplacing the tape. I haven't lost a book yet, though.
I have a ton of old paperbacks, and some of them are starting to fall apart - literally.
Many, of course, weren't printed on acid-free paper and are therefore doomed to a slow death. But some are simply falling apart from many re-readings.
I should explain that I have an apparently unusual brain glitch: I can re-read a good book and get as much or more enjoyment out of it as I did the first time I read it. With some books I have to wait a year or two; with others six months is sufficient. That's lucky for me, because I read quickly and often. If I couldn't re-read my favorites, I'd soon be out of reading material!
The down side is that some of my favorites get worn out. I try to treat my books carefully and gently; I don't break the bindings, I never fold page corners down (it actually shocks me when I see anyone do that), and I try to keep them dry and clean. Still, the covers eventually start falling off. I pick up duplicates of my favorites, multiple duplicates in some cases, but even when I have several copies of a particular book I try to save every copy.
My technique is probably horrible, and would make a librarian scream. Still, over the years it has successfully kept some of my books from falling apart.
I use transparent packing tape, the kind that's perfectly transparent and about two inches wide. A strip along the spine comes first, trimmed carefully to avoid protruding edges. Then both the front and back covers are wrapped with strips of tape. Each strip wraps the top and bottom of the page, overlapping at the middle of the inside cover. The outer edge of each cover gets an extra length of tape folded around it. Lastly, I put an additional strip of tape (trimmed to fit) at the point where the inside covers meet the first and last pages of the book. This reinforces the connection between the cover and the pages.
The result is a book that's virtually immune to further physical wear. The covers are waterproof. And the binding stays together; I have yet to have a book that has been preserved this way fall apart. The binding could fall apart completely due to glue rot, I suppose, but so far that hasn't happened. Of course I don't do this to valuable books, and only do it when a book in in jeopardy of losing a cover! In one case I took an old paperback of Shogun (which is so huge that the spine almost always cracks quickly), that had already lost the back cover during a trip. Since the cover was gone, I double-taped the last page instead - it was an advertisement, not part of the story. It worked out better than I expected, and years later, that book is still unchanged despite several re-readings.
Of course you have to be very careful when taping, to avoid crinkling or misplacing the tape. I haven't lost a book yet, though.