Artifact from the past

[mteson]

There's a discussion on Christina's book blog Stacked (where I am the occasional guest poster) about whether books should be beat up or taken care of and all the things in between. For a post due to appear on Tuesday, I took a few pictures of some beat up books of mine, and there's one in particular I wanted to share (really just to show paperthinwalls):

Comments

[paperthinwalls]

ohh!! i LOVE it! i remember that handwriting all over my essays from AP english, ha ha! she was my absolute favorite teacher, what a treasure you have with that book. :)

on a side note, i had that exact edition of 'the witches' when i was a wee one, always liked that cover.

and on the topic of whether or not books should be taken care of (i mean to say, whether they should be 'preserved' or loved & read and become somewhat battered in the process)......it's funny, because mike and i were having a similar discussion over the last week's issue of the new york times. he was reading to me from the rare book auction page of the ny times magazine, and i was wondering aloud just what is the big deal about first editions and books in mint condition and so on. i don't understand it, obviously. to me, a book is valuable because of its content, not the object itself (mike agrees), and as long as it is still legible, it's still valuable. i guess you could say i'm of the 'velveteen rabbit' school of thought on this: the more love and use