Unread and to-be-read books are an asset, if we think about it. They're like a treasure chest you have in your house only not discovered yet. Some fragile, some preserved. Well, some of us are hard-core readers, some of us book-haters while some of us can be book-lovers who do not get the comfort to read ever. That's totally okay but salute to the people who ACTUALLY honour books even if they're not readers and even if those books temporarily belong to shelves. I mean, if a person comes to my bookshelf and takes a book, flips it with saliva, I'm sorry you're being crossed off my list. It's not about book lovers valuing hygiene better than others or something, but it's about treating their favourite things with no concern.
Note these tips if you have unread, dusty, fragile books in your shelf:
1. Dust them unapologetically (especially hardbacks)
Hardbacks accumulate dust easily. Those babies are a bit delicate even though they have tough outer appearances. The edges are prone to damage upon standing, dusty always, really heavy, risky and I could go on. It's always better to keep them in a place away from direct sunlight, So we got to take care of them with an effortless precision. I suggest using a brush to regularly dust books.
2. Rearrange them in genres, colours or authors
Fragile books become more fragile if we frantically search for them, or grab them. Therefore, for easy access, arrange them in genres or colours so that we don't grab them unnecessarily to cause more damage.
3. Enjoy their covers (don't judge a book by it's cover but DUH you can enjoy them)
Romanticizing book covers is my thing. How about you? Sometimes, if you're too busy to read a book, taking a few seconds to appreciate the beauty of its cover page wouldn't hurt.
4. Love them
Look at them, show them off to your guests, story them on Instagram, do word-of-mouth. The more you talk about a book, your listeners think about other books too. If you are a person who believes in keeping the reading cult alive, work for the cult. Increase vocab for everyone around and within no time, you'll see them asking you for more book recs.
So, that was a list of things I would do since childhood to keep my favourite books intact and most importantly, remind them that I love them. Sometimes as time passes by and because it's an over the top streaming era, we often forget to revisit the little gems that kept us sane throughout our childhood. For people before the 90's, imagine the connection they had with books especially for avid readers.
The smell of old paper, the sound of the pages, the texture of the material, the font of the words, everything is beautiful in its own way. The font is what heightens my mood when I read books. What's yours?
Hope we all live off our books :)
Peace out.
Good one Aamina
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