The warmth of Cray
“I’m kind of a dick about books.”
Sarah Brown, me too (as ever, ad infinitum). Rules include but are not limited to:
1) DO NOT CRACK THE SPINE.
2) Dog-earing is OK for your own books, but not a borrowed one.
3) Ditto underlining or making notes in the margin – it’s charming if I find that stuff in a hand-me-down or used-bookstore-purchased book, but decidedly less so if you borrowed it from me and that’s how I get it back.
4) No food crumbs, coffee-cup rings, bathwater-dunkings, chocolate thumbprints, etc. Come on. REALLY. I read while eating/drinking, too (it’s one of my greatest and most enduring pleasures), but what are we, swine?
5) I keep records of who’s got what, damn fucking skippy I do. Return it in a timely manner (or replace it, if you love it so much you want to marry it and have like ten thousand of its babies). I will get all up in your business about it after a certain amount of time – please spare us both that embarrassment.
6) As regards violations: One strike and you’re out – especially if that strike involves spine-cracking. Do that and you’re permanently on my general-purpose Shit List.
Sarah Brown, me too (as ever, ad infinitum). Rules include but are not limited to:
1) DO NOT CRACK THE SPINE.
2) Dog-earing is OK for your own books, but not a borrowed one.
3) Ditto underlining or making notes in the margin – it’s charming if I find that stuff in a hand-me-down or used-bookstore-purchased book, but decidedly less so if you borrowed it from me and that’s how I get it back.
4) No food crumbs, coffee-cup rings, bathwater-dunkings, chocolate thumbprints, etc. Come on. REALLY. I read while eating/drinking, too (it’s one of my greatest and most enduring pleasures), but what are we, swine?
5) I keep records of who’s got what, damn fucking skippy I do. Return it in a timely manner (or replace it, if you love it so much you want to marry it and have like ten thousand of its babies). I will get all up in your business about it after a certain amount of time – please spare us both that embarrassment.
6) As regards violations: One strike and you’re out – especially if that strike involves spine-cracking. Do that and you’re permanently on my general-purpose Shit List.
Labels: balls in YOUR mouth sir, dead to me, half a dozen awesome, I really am sort of an asshole sometimes, Lookee what the Internets done brung me today, PMFSA
posted by Gleemonex at 10:24 AM
8 Comments:
Preach it.
I almost had a stroke yesterday afternoon when I discovered that someone had crossed out a word in the book I was reading (borrowed from the library) and written in a substitute, incorrect, word. I mean, I can see how a stupid person would think that the word in the book was a typo (and properly replaced with the written-in word), but someone who defaces a library book (stupidly, no less) is someone who was not raised right.
OH! Stroke territory for SURE.
Don't get it. Much-loved books are my fav. I had a roommate with similar book-borrowing rules, who, like, got pissed when I borrowed her clothes without asking and that kind of thing. Are you an only child, perchance?
Heh. No, middle of three -- which actually might explain my tendencies, as there was always SOMEBODY mistreating my damn stuff.
And well-loved is, to me, a different and valuable thing -- my well-loved books look and feel like they've been read a bunch of times (which they obviously have), with the odd ding or dent or almost-falling-off dogeared triangle, maybe some tape to hold it together, a passage underlined -- which is my right since it's MY book. Most of my rules are about respecting borrowed property. ;-)
Also: I'm not a big clothes-borrower or lender in any case ever, but if somebody borrowed my clothes -- or really anything more important than a pencil or a post-it note -- without asking, I would seriously lose my shit.
See above, re: middle of three. Boundaries, people, BOUNDARIES.
This one kid on my study abroad trip used to keep his books SEALED IN INDIVIDUAL PLASTIC BAGS! He was so neurotic about books (and other things) that he and I couldn't be friends.
OK, now THAT IS CRAZY.
My other pet peeve is pens. My mother is always leaving the caps off pens when she's finished using them, and turning books upside down WHILE OPEN to mark her place. I short circuit.
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