Mending old books with thread and glue
Loose pages, torn pages and broken spines. How I mend the books I cannot replace.
Most of my favourite books are falling apart. Pages come loose, spines crack, covers hang by a thread. For years I kept them together with rubber bands. Last winter I took a bookbinding evening class at the library, and now I mend them myself, at the kitchen table, with thread, glue and a lot of patience.
Why mend a book
A paperback that falls apart can usually be bought again. But not the copy with my notes in the margins, the one my father gave me, or the one I read on a long train across France when I was nineteen. Those books are not replaceable. ((My copy of Persuasion has three different colours of pencil in the margins from three readings, twenty years apart. It is closer to a diary than a novel.))
