Worst bound book?

[Marc]

Possibly not worthy of a thread, but out of place in What are you Reading. Recently one of my key notebooks has started falling apart, which draws me back in time to this.

When I was a teenager I bought the first book in the fantasy Shannara Trilogy. A large soft cover with colour plates in the middle by the same artist who did the first Star Wars posters. Fantasy books along the Lord of the Rings type were thin on the ground at the time, but here was a new one!

I got a third of the way through it and it snapped in half! Then when I started reading that portion. It snapped in half again! This happened two more times before I finished. Never had such a poorly bound book before or since. Can anyone else match or beat this?

 

[Artyczar]

It was perfect bound? That can happen sometimes.

 

[stlukesguild]

When I first began obsessively buying books on my own I had a limited budget and often bought the cheapest copy of books that I could find in the used book stores. Over the years, I learned what to look for. The "penny dreadfuls"... cheap pulp fictions meant to be read once and tossed away... date from the mid-19th century. These employed the cheapest of cheap pulp paper and even newsprint. Many paperbacks... even of "classics" from the 20s-60s also used cheap wood pulp paper that yellowed became brittle, and broke down the glue binding. The glue itself was often just as bad. I discovered that many older hard-cover books... even inexpensive ones by publishers such as Modern Library or The World's Classics or Penguin paperbacks used better bindings and better paper. I have a good number of books from the 19th century that are in good shape... and a couple from the 1700s that are also still quite usuable. Over the years, I've had a few expensive art books that fell apart due to poor binding... and also due to their size. Volumes that are 4 and 5 inches thick are often too much for the binding to handle... especially if the book is printed on heavier glossy paper that is best suited for color reproductions.

 

[Terri]

That's been my experience, as well, SLG. Most of my old paperbacks are suffering from the cracked binding syndrome. I bought tons of paperbacks too, as they were super affordable back then, and are of the Penguin/Modern Library variety. Great way to build a quick library, and I still have them all.

The worst one that fell apart was a copy of Elmer Gantry, which fell apart in my hands when I was only halfway through! By then I was smitten with Sinclair Lewis so I was ready to invest in a hardcover, but geez.

The second worst is a copy of My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok, which is precious to me as it was a gift, way back when I was in high school - it lasted several years but has now cracked in a few places and I'm afraid to touch it. I wanted to re-read it badly last year, so just bought another paperback (which may not have been the brightest idea).

Since all my books are currently in storage (or boxed up in the garage waiting to be put in storage), I can't say who the publishers were. I know it's not perhaps the optimum thing to do, to keep buying books, but I just love having a library and being surrounded by them. I weed them out on occasion but continue to add, too. It's calming to me.

 

[Triduana]

There's a book that we use at work a lot - it's a reference book for classifying vegetation types. It's over 400 pages long and is perfect bound. Virtually every single page is loose in both copies we have. We have to keep them with an elastic band round them. I'm not the only person that's dropped one and just watched the pages scatter. Thankfully, the book is also available online (I prefer physical copies of books, but for this one I make an exception).

 

[stlukesguild]

I had a number of paperbacks from the 1950s and 60s of Cervantes, and Checkov, and other classics which disintegrated due to high-acid paper and glue and ended up tossed away. Dover books always impressed me with their quality in spite of the price. Even though I eventually got better and more complete editions of works by Blake, Byron, Keats, etc... I kept these little Dover books because they are so nice... and easy to use being slim as they are. Perhaps the book that I have kept that is in the worst condition is this volume of the pastoral poems of Theocritus...

Theocritus' pastoral poems were likely one of the inspirations for the Biblical Song of Salomon... although those who believe the Hebrew text was literally composed by King David would argue against this. A few years ago I found and purchased a second copy of this book that is in far better shape.

Actually... the damage to books that I truly despise is that of messy student notes and underlining:

Having said that, many of my favorite books are filled with notes in the margins... but NEVER written over the actual text.

 

[Marc]

Having said that, many of my favorite books are filled with notes in the margins... but NEVER written over the actual text.

At my old city library, before the internet, I got a small taste of what was to come. A book on Versailles had a running strong, but still cordial argument between three people in the margins. Normally I hate notes and underlining, but this I found delightful.

 

[Marc]

It was perfect bound? That can happen sometimes.

Well, it seemed well glued and square, but I think wrongly constructed for it's thickness. There didn't seem to be a way to open it without making a sharp crease in the spine. Needed sewn pages or a canvas spine or something.

 

[Artyczar]

Sounds like cheap glue to me. A cheap perfect bound, as previously mentioned. It's too bad. I wonder what the original price was.