Book hacks

Life hacks is an annoying term, it's true, but there are some useful ones about. The whole 43folders thing is supposed to be good, and I really like the way that it revives the old 'household tips' genre. But what I was really wondering about today is customising books. I am awaiting with eagerness the arrival of my pre-ordered copy of Thomas Pynchon's latest, though it might be a while given that online stores seem to be low on copies. I thought it might be a good thing to take with me on my trip to Israel in December, given that I loathe being at an airport without something to read, and even my more-than-usually-interesting travel companion might not be adequate compensation.

The problem is that the thing is the size of a smallish breeze block and would take up a substantial amount of luggage allowance. Back when I first read Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy I was struck by his suggestion, both within the text itself with regard to Shakespeare's plays (it goes down very badly with an English faculty as I recall) and in an article he wrote for a newspaper at about the time it came out, that we should chop books up into sections freely and without regret. In the article he said that A Suitable Boy had been specifically laid out with this in mind, so that each of the twenty chapters started on a recto, and he urged people to take out razor blades and have a go. I did this to my copy, cutting it into five not twenty pieces; not only did it make it a whole lot more manageable to read, but it gave me a pleasant feeling of transgressing middle-class mores. Also it shocked my then boyfriend. On another occasion I had to buy (due to reading compulsion) the second volume of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle before it came out in paperback, and to save my wrists I customised it into a paperback. I took the cardboard boards off either end, wrapped the dustjacket round the end pages, and covered the outside in sticky-backed plastic to make an improvised flexible cover. Its second-hand value may have been affected -- but I was unlikely to sell it ever anyway.

If the new Pynchon becomes as beloved a Pynchon to me as, say, Mason and Dixon, then I'm not going to be too precious about keeping it a nice copy, because I'll get through more than one anyway. And the paper of hardbacks seems, perversely, to be more vulnerable to reading than that of paperbacks. Perhaps a future post will be: what is wrong with hardbacks.