Book spines...

[Guest]

I'm curious! When reading a paperback book do you tend to break the spine or not? And if possible I'd love to hear your reasons why/why not! 

Personally, I always break the spine. Sometimes even before opening the first page! I much prefer how much easier it is to read the book when the spine is broken as opposed to all the pages squishing together and refusing to let me see the edge words! I also love the look of a well read book, and broken spines are a sure sign of that!

Though I've always admired people who can keep their book spines in pristine condition... I simply couldn't even if I tried, so if you have any tips then feel free to leave them below LOL.

[emeowly]

usually yes! books tend to feel so stiff and hard to comfortably hold it open if i dont

[BananaBoots]

I pretty much always do, I find them harder to read if I don't! My girlfriend on the other hand hates it. She doesn't dog ear pages, doesn't break the spines, all her books are pretty much in perfect condition. I'm annotating my favourite book for her as a gift (The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, if anyone's curious) and she gave me one of her copies (because she has, like, three for some reason? Even though she's never read it??) and, when she did, she specifically said that I was allowed to break the spine and dog ear pages because that's how I read books and she wanted it to feel like one I've read

[sunosin]

I read something once about how to safely "break in" a book and I've been doing that ever since! This isn't the same source ( I don't remember) but here's someone demonstrating it!