Part of the joy of having a physical book is that the book has many lives. Its first life begins the first time it is picked up off of the shelf at a bookstore, where it is opened and read for the first time. It may later have other lives as it passes from hand to hand, garage sale to used bookstore. Each time a book is read it gains more character, from the notes in the margins to the coffee stain in the corner.
Eventually a book, especially a well loved and well read tome, will reach a point where it is no longer in a useful or readable condition. The content may be out of date, or the book itself may be worn and battered beyond the point of practical reading. In this case we are able to let books go out with an artistic bang, by up-cycling them into something beautiful. For the next several days we will be focusing on ways to give old and abused books a new form.
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