I think most e-readers will stop working if you cut them in half to be more portable. Books still have the upper hand on this

I mean, if you had like a hand bound copy or rare out of print book or something like that this sentiment makes sense, but if it's just some abundant mass produced edition, I'm not so sure. Surely the artistry there is in the words, which aren't damaged and exist in other copies anyway, rather than the cheap machine made physical medium.

No works of art were hurt for this. Mass printed paperback spines being damaged doesn’t hurt the words inside or the hundreds of thousands of other copies. Everyone should feel free to write on, highlight, and cut apart mass printed books, because the actual object itself was never the point.

I mean, I think we print enough books that there’s no great loss if a couple get cut in half.

Works of art? I mean, the words in the book, of course, but surely not the medium itself, these look like those budget $15 editions that are mass printed on toilet paper...

Doesn't it fuck up the binding? Sure, a softback is still going to stay together in the immediate term, but the covers are almost always a single stronger piece, whereas the pages will now be free to work loose from the cut side.

So... I'd say it is objectively worse.

Infinite Jest has extensive footnotes, which are at the back of the book. Some of them are 12 pages long and contain multiple subplots and plot points and gives history and context to how and why the Infinite Jest of the book is so deadly.

That's why I cut mine in half through the middle of the cover; top and bottom halves. Sure, makes it a little harder to read, but worth it when I can fit each half in my pockets perfectly.

infinite jest is half footnotes, which are at the back of the book, which is part of the "joke" of the book, being based around extreme academia.

I can sense Booktokers rushing this way to tell you you broke one of the book rules

Easy to spot, they're the only firing squad with silencers

It's destructive but it's also constructive. That conversation with the material gives future owners new perspectives. At least in my opinion as someone who collects old subcultural texts. Notes in the margins adds to the experience of an old book

Since I turned 30 I write in the margins of books I read. The better the book is the more notes. Its much more engaging.

I like the idea of this. It would make a re-read or even just flipping through the book years later a lot of fun.

Almost all of my books are thrifted, which gives me the luxury of no guilt. And I get to argue with previous marginalia, which is fun because they can’t respond.

This is kinda how books worked throughout most of medieval history. Paper was expensive and anyway, the margins often become teaching tools in and of themselves. It becomes a centuries long comment section, so ideas get passed down and develop through the centuries. Like one of the most important books of medieval philosophy that probably no one without a doctoral in theology gives a shit about is Peter Lombard’s Sentences which is just a collection of common comments people in about books that he thought were good for teaching. (I have been working on implementing a HTML cross reference version of it using Twine, and have been trying to parse [pun intended] a theological discussion about what it means to enjoy not use god. Larger project is to recreate an accessible “medieval curriculum” through Twine)

As much as I’d fantasize about all my books preserved as a library, they’ll probably be separated from each other someday. The least I can do is put my soul in them - tuck a pamphlet or bookmark, a movie ticket. I’ve never been unhappy seeing a comment in a book - I was reading a 60 year old middle school text recently, and discovered a kid had wrote “[clearly female name] is a MAGGOT F_GGOT!!!!!!” which was just so fucking hilarious.

When you get right down to it, that's true for everything. Everything self-destructs eventually. So, that seems like a strange reason to destroy it prematurely.

Of course, if it's your book, you can do whatever you want with it. It just seems needlessly wasteful.

had this occur with my first copy of ninjas and superspies and ended up punching holes in it and putting it in a 3 ring binder. the binding - and slimness of the book so it had a thin spine - wasn't meant to lay open.

Warren peace

Guessing you're dictating this to your less-cultured secretary?

Seeing how Paul McCartney is on Lemmy news today, I just learned that he also used to do cut-up at times.

Possibilities...

hip 90s youth pastor energy