The Mistreatment of Books

By Camoron

We live in a society that revolves and intelligence and education. Now, while the vultures of schooling like our education minister Christopher Pyne get my blood boiling, it is everyday mistreatment of the book that gets me really pissed off.

We are one of only a special few who get access to books and technology. We have textbooks at school, novels at home, and a menagerie of literature masterpieces at a selection of local libraries. We can walk into one such library and be exposed to a huge selection of fantasy and nonfiction, long and short, mature and childish books, each with its own story to tell.

One of my earliest memories is of banging at the door of my kindergarten, yelling ‘Book!’ for across the road was my favourite place on earth, the library. Along came primary school, and with it mornings spent crashing into trees due to being nose-deep in a book. I started collecting books, and in my final year I donated the two hundred books I had collected to the school fair, and stated all over again. Now in high school I download books onto my iPad to read on the bus, and still have weekly visits to the library I have been visiting since before I could talk. My book collection has reached new heights, and I now own over three hundred books, all of them alphabetically ordered in the book shelves around my bed. I have a deep respect for books, and for the people who put the effort into their creation.

So when I see a carefully crafted piece of literature art, face down, open and spine bent at an uncomfortable angle, it’s fair to say that I am a little bit annoyed. Books deserve to be cared for! And if ever one should develop a crease in the spine, it should be as a result of countless readings, pages turned gently by the reader’s hand. It should be something beautiful, instead of mindless destruction of something so perfect! People who leave their books like this are the rapists of the literature world.

And so I have started carrying around bookmarks and rubber bands and cards, and just about ANYTHING to mark the place before closing the book, picking it off the floor, placing it carefully on a bench, and glaring angrily at whomever dared to mistreat such a delicate and beautiful thing. Because they have just done something that cannot, and will not, ever be forgiven.