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Each title is given its own look and feel by the publisher. The
quality and appearance of our dishes, silverware, glasses, and
tablecloths is part of enjoying and appreciating food. When we
want another person to like us, we dress nicely. So why would we
not care about the physical appearance of our books? Cover design,
paper quality, the craftsmanship of the typesetting, all these
things are part of what we enjoy about a book.
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Over time, the individual copy of a book that we own becomes a
personal item that we treasure for the memories that it carries, like
that old faded denim jacket or an ancient pair of boots. Dog ears,
coffee stains, a name and address scribbled on the inside cover, the
fading scent of a certain kind of incense that we used to burn next
to a row of books in an apartment in a city long left behind, those
are things that can bring back memories, memories that might
otherwise be lost forever.
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We can give a book that we have owned and read to another person, or
receive such a book from someone else. When such an offering is made,
the receiver has not only a book to read, but something personal from
the giver of the gift, like an item of clothing or a piece of jewelry
that has been worn. One does not have to look to Voodoo and its use
of personal items for spells and charms to understand that there is
magic in such a gift. And what about that line in the song where it
says, “I still have the book you left that morning, I guess it
doesn't matter anymore.”
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The user interface is simple and intuitive. There is virtually no
learning curve for operating a book, and there is little about it
that drives a person crazy like the million things that drive me
crazy about the Kindle. The one exception is the fact that books do
not stay open when laid down flat, like a spiral-bound notebook. This
is an annoyance that is rivaled only by the tenacity with which the
shrink-wrapping on a CD case defies even the most determined attempts
to remove it.
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Books have many useful applications other than reading them. The list
of possible uses is almost endless. I will give just a few
examples:
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In my childhood, books were used extensively for disciplinary
purposes. For example, to make children sit up straight at the dinner
table, they were given two books which they had to hold under their
arms until they had finished their dinner. If one or both of the
books fell to the ground before dinner was finished, any one of a
number of possible punishments would be applied.
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In certain parts of the South such as the City of New Orleans, the
cockroaches have become resistant to being hit with a magazine or
newspaper. Unless you happen to have the full Sunday edition of the
Times Picayune at your disposal, a hardcover book of at least several
hundred pages is your only option.
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In a bold move that really pushes the envelope, a certain group of
hippies in New Orleans that I happened to be loosely acquainted with
decided that nobody was going to do the dishes anyway, and therefore,
they were going to switch to paper plates. However, buying a product
that was designed for this purpose at the supermarket was not their
style, and it may have overstretched their budgetary limits to
boot. It so happened that someone had a whole case of old books that
were deemed useless. Paper, as in paper plates! So what they did
was—and I'm not making this up—open a book near the center, give it a
good whack to make it stay open, place some food on it, and eat. The
same book could then be reused several times by going forward a good
number of pages. The practice has not gained widespread acceptance,
but it remains to this day a shining beacon of determination to get
the most out of Gutenberg's invention.
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