Vent: My garage sale book find literally fell apart in my hands

I was at a church sale in Dayton last Saturday and grabbed this 1920s mystery novel for 50 cents. The cover looked fine, but as soon as I opened it in my car, the binding cracked and pages just spilled out everywhere. I tried to glue it back together with some bookbinding tape I had, but three pages ripped clean off. Now I'm scanning the loose pages into my phone before I lose any more, and I'm wondering if anyone else has dealt with a book that's too fragile to even open. How do you even read something like this without destroying it further?

2 comments

2 Comments

victor_carr545d ago

Oh man, I had a buddy who picked up an old paperback at an estate sale and the same thing happened - pages just crumbled like dry leaves. I mean, @umaadams might be onto something with the freezer trick, but my friend just ended up framing a few of the less-damaged pages as wall art and called it a loss.

umaadams5d ago

Has anyone tried storing these fragile books in a freezer for a bit before handling them? I remember reading that some people do that with really old paper to make it less brittle. Might be worth a shot if you want to save a few pages for display. I've had luck scanning loose pages on a flatbed scanner with a piece of glass on top to keep them from curling. At least you got the mystery half-read before the disaster happened, right?