I LOVE the idea of reading in a bath but I have never ever been able to achieve this, I get too hot and start fussing. I just can't get comfy! I tend to read in bed or on a comfy chair. Sadly there is not much time for it at the minute!

I used to just try and remember what page I was on. Last year I found a bunch of Star Wars bookmarks. Now I always use a bookmark. Being a collector the thought of folding the page is forbidden <section 56/a--3346.9978 of the Collectors' Code>

Nooo, sniffles for book's demise. I read in the bath from time to time, but the water always gets cold and interrupts the flow. Usually smaller books that My dear old Strange and Norrell.

It is hard to have a decent bath these days, with serious water restrictions!!

Nostalgia time:

Millions of years ago I heard joke:

Two hippies standing at a pedestrian crossing waiting for change of lights when a nun walks up with her arm in a sling.

One hippie asks her what happened.

She replied: 'I broke it in the bath.'

When this is relayed to hippie no 2 he asks:'What's a bath?'

Hippie no 1 replies:' I don't know. I'm not Catholic."



<I pray to whoever is looking after this universe, or this part of it, that when they return from lunch, that they forgive me for having a mind which is an endless fountain of absolutely useless information, and a lack of self discipline in that I don't keep it to myself.>

I also have a habit of spine breaking (only my own books though). How do you read thick paperbacks without breaking the spine in the middle? I mean without contorting ones wrists like an elderly bonsai, by only having the book open by two millimeters, and craning your neck to read through the crack?

MY other half is soooo particular about not spine-damaging his books, he cranes his neck (and crosses his eyes I think), he has some epics -500+ pages - and still you can't tell he's been near them. Even with very careful handling my larger volumes tend to have a single crease down the centre of the spine.
I really dont know how he does it?

Talking of which I'm reading a great book on this subject at the moment, its actuallly 15 essays written by the same person on her observations of people's reading experiences, how they treat their books etc. Its fascinating and really funny too. There's a great chapter on the chaos it caused when, after 10 years of marriage, she and her husband decided to amalgamate their collections (who's duplicate gets thrown out, how are they organised etc)
Its called "ex libris - confessions of a common reader," it got great reviews on Amazon
TTFN

Maybe he reads by osmosis!

I do my best to keep them in good condition so that they don't fall apart in the next ten years of extra heavy reading. Still, I always get that crease!

Suggestion: design a small periscope for reading big paperbacks without creasing them.
Called a papierscope

Really starting to feel like a pimp today & it's still early-
oh well, it's in the name of reading...

OK, this will hold your book open while you read:

[www.gimbleuk.com]

Doesn't crack the spine, but may wear down the edges on thicker books.

These are the bookmarks I mentioned earlier, now you can see what they look like:

[www.addedtouchstore.com]

Speaking of reading, I must go to the library today- books are due back...

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Signature or shameless self-promotion?
You decide:

[www.myspace.com]

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Hey the gimble looks like a cool thing, I can eat my chocolate whilst reading n bed without hassle, have to get me one of those
TTFN

Spent years as a folder, but now have 2 house rabbits who kindly chew the corners off any pages foolishly left open instead. What does that make me? A rabbiter?

Pancetta makes excellent bookmarks, but you cannot beat tearing out the page as you finish reading it. This way, every time you open the book you can start at the first page! Unfortunately, if you stop reading partway down a page or at the bottom of the right hand page you can easily lose whole sections of the narrative.

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My computer beat me at chess, but I won at kickboxing

Pancetta makes great omelettes! HAd one only yesterday with pancetta, cherry toms, cheese and mushrooms. Deeevine!

NEW BOOK ALERT! Foundling by D.M Cornish

I read most of it last night and finished it this morning- a very intriguing book! I cannot wait for the next one!

I use the memory method - I think of it as a brain workout. I also find when I go back to the page that I automatically pick up at exactly the word I left off at without rereading anything. Weird, eh? At the moment I'm on page 85 of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. Whether I'll get to page 86 remains to be seen... it's a slog and I bought Something Rotten at the same time which is just begging to be read, so let's see how long I can resist.

A range of Jurisfiction bookmarks would be good, just to remind us who keeps our fiction in check. And on the bit which pokes out of the top of the book, you could have a Jurisfiction agent so it looks as though Miss Haversham is running along the top of your book, hunting cyclops, etc.

Louise

Nextian bookmarks would be excellent - someone suggest it to Jasper

Maybe it's just the effect of pie floaters and deep fried mars bars but whan I close a book and have top return to it I open it somewhere near where I thought I had reached. Start reading . If familiar move on a few pages, if not commence reading at that point.

Occasionally I use a bookmark when I have something flat and not sticky to insert or I remember the chapter.

When younger bookmarks were not required as I would read right through a book from start to finish in one go. Got to see more dawns from the front than I should have, but it trained me when I was doing one job in a finance area where I had to have the legislation, operating procedures, three different financial accounting systems and various reports and requests to handle. I had to learn the rules very quickly and I could read from introduction to appendix and remember where everything was and mostly what it meant.

Now I have trouble remembering where I put my glasses.

Sometimes I believe that my glasses really can run and hide from me, because they show up in a room that I haven't even been in that day (I could swear!).

I never lend my books out to anyone. Well, except my sister. There's no way I'd be able to stop her. But apart from that, I'm quite lucky on the lending front. My folks don't like my taste in books (Patricia Cornwal, John Grisham, blah, blah, blah... don't understand how they can't enjoy Pratchett, Adams, Fforde, Milligan... tsk tsk tsk), my sister only ever borrows the Harry Potter ones (that I'm not nearly as concerned about as my holy Pratchett collection - the gold leafing is coming off the title of The Fifth Elephant, and those little rust-colour spots are appearing along the edges of the pages! I don't know what to do! AAAAARGH!) and my brother's only ever read Papillion for a book report at high-school, and Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimm when he was about 6, so that rules him out.

I generally remember the page number, and even if I forget, it's fun to catch up again.

Question: How do you arrange your books on your shelf? By size? Author? Chronologically? I wish every book was the same size, then I could do it by all three...

I tend to sort out the books into a similar size shelf, then put them author A to Z with series of the same size in chronoligical order, it is actually quite theraputic! When I was younger series often used to be arranged by colour!

I have my main collection as my Bedhead, the actual shelf is too small, so I have four 2 and a half foot hight stacks of books piled on top as well. I order mine so that my absolute favourites are closest to my head when I am in bed, and then my next favourites who won't fit, on topmost (if room) for easy reaching.

High Fidelity is a movie for getting interesting ideas for arranging book/music collections!


Here is a book with Plot holes in and similarities to Fforde. It was released at the same time as The Well of Lost Plots

Poison by Chris Wooding, not half as good though as his The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray.