Booking Through Thursday: Imperfection

The questions today are from Deb.

1. What is most battered book in your collection? The one with loose pages, tattered corners, and page edges so soft that there's not even a risk of paper cuts anymore?
   
   Well, I searched through the bookshelves and couldn't come up with any, which is probably a good thing since I'm a bit zealous about being nice to books and keeping them in good condition. For better or worse, I’m one of those people who cringe that the mere thought of folding a book page, creasing a paperback spine, or, horrors of all horrors, actually writing notes in a book. I always felt like I was committing an unpardonable atrocity if I actually damage or otherwise irreversibly mark a book. For the same reason, I always feel irrationally annoyed and angered when I come across abused books that are stained and torn and decorated with unnecessary marks (like unrelated doodles...I do understand the need for people to occasionally underline passages...).
   I did used to own a paperback of a beloved novel in middle school that was in horrible condition, though not by my hands.



2. Why is this book so tattered? Is it that you love it so much that you've read it a zillion times? Is it a reference book you've used every day for the last seven years? Something your new puppy teethed on when you weren't looking?
   
   So about the tattered paperback that I used to own...I had lent it out looking brand-new to someone who subsequently returned it stained, torn, and so beat-up that the cover promptly fell off as soon as I touched it. That person didn't give a flying bleep about what they did to my poor book either. This was the first time I realized that not everyone treated books like little sacred objects. Came as a bit of a shock, really.