{"id":1473,"date":"2020-11-04T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-04T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/?p=1473"},"modified":"2021-01-28T22:07:53","modified_gmt":"2021-01-28T22:07:53","slug":"if-you-love-books-cut-them-in-half","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/2020\/11\/04\/if-you-love-books-cut-them-in-half\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Love Books, Cut Them In Half"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Olivia Smith \/\/ Blog Director<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever cut a book down its spine?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in January, The Washington Post <\/em>published an opinion piece titled, \u201cIf You Love Books, Do Not Cut Them in Half<\/a>.\u201d The piece was a response to an editor\u2019s Twitter thread asking if other readers cut their bigger books in half to be more portable. Rosenberg, the author, argued that treating books in this way is nothing short of murder.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Editor Alex Christofi tweets: “Yesterday my colleague called me a ‘book murderer’ because I cut books in half to make them more portable. Does anyone else do this? Is it just me?”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some of her points focused on practicality. She pointed out that many books keep their footnotes in the back, thus making them inaccessible if you only have the front half. Some books can also be complex and require frequent flipping back and forth in order to be fully understood and appreciated. These are all fine and valid points, and there\u2019s certainly no need <\/em>to cut books in half. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the center of Rosenberg\u2019s argument is simply that cutting books shows a lack of appreciation for the book not just as an object, but as a symbol. As she put it, \u201cKeeping your books whole is a way of keeping them alive.\u201d And while I do think that books are alive, the inner contents often have little to do with that life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some of Smith’s most recent bindings<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As a bookbinder, I\u2019ve made somewhere between 650 and 700 books. My love for the codex runs deep, and I can safely say that yes, I do see the physical value of books. However, not all books are built the same. Books are rarely handmade or even sewn these days, and the age of mass production has made intentional preservation unnecessary. Sure, there are some books that I don\u2019t think should be cut in half (e.g., first-edition classics or extant manuscripts), but I\u2019d be willing to guess that if you are in possession of a rare book, you aren\u2019t thinking about slicing it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, Rosenberg\u2019s argument boils down to this logic: \u201cA book that\u2019s been cut in half is a book that can\u2019t be displayed, and that can\u2019t very well be lent or donated.\u201d This is another fair and logical point, but it very well misses a key fact: books don\u2019t need to be displayed or pass hands. This idea relies on the notion of a bookshelf as a status symbol, but it isn\u2019t. Your bookshelf will be no worse off if a few of its books are cut down the middle. And, of course, the magical thing about books is that they can be repaired and rebound. A broken book need not stay one forever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Book of Kells displayed at Trinity College Dublin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the perfect example of a \u201cmurdered\u201d book would be the infamous Book of Kells<\/a>. The gorgeous illuminated manuscript has managed to survive and become an icon of the extant codex and, in some ways, historic Ireland. However, the Book of Kells has been sliced at least three times to be rebound. In fact, it has been cut into four pieces and left that way: what once was a single collection of the Gospels has since become a set of four individual books.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the Book of Kells was rebound out of necessity rather than preference, it was still done out of a need for a different function. Though the bookbinder in me is devastated that its original binding did not survive, the realist in me knows that its rebinding was necessary, or else the entire manuscript would have been lost to time. And while a book cut in half for ease of transportation may not be revered, it is functioning as it should. The vast majority of books are meant to be read and enjoyed. If it\u2019s easier to read and enjoy a book when it\u2019s thinner, then it is fulfilling its purpose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many ways to destroy books, but reading them is not one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Olivia Smith \/\/ Blog Director Have you ever cut a book down its spine? Back in January, The Washington Post published an opinion piece titled, \u201cIf You Love Books, Do…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1620,"featured_media":1476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-publishing","category-about-reading","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1620"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1473"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1754,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions\/1754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}