Do you look after your books?

The bf and a mutual friend of ours decided to make the most of our final holiday day (after a bit of a wasted weekend of partying and being hungover) and got out into the hills for some climbing...and photo-taking on my part. This friend I learnt, much to my surprise, is a bit of a fusspot when it comes to keeping his climbing guides pristine (an absolute impossible feat in a dirty English crag as far as I'm concerned.) This got me to thinking about the condition I keep my own books in, something my parents love to joke about - 'Don't lend her a book she'll drop it in the bath!' ...Well .... that did happen once.

I'm not a materialistic person, I have no desperate desire to own very much but I do love my books and sadly, do like to sit on my sofa and ogle the pretty covers deciding what I will read next. However, as physical objects I really could take more care; I read in the bath with wet hands, I take them out and about and stuff them into bags that are far too small, I bend the spine popping them down open whilst I go to make a brew... the list is endless really. Cookery books therefore have an understandably harder life in our household.  I cannot now open my cupcake recipe book without ripping the pages as there is so much icing stuck between the pages and will now have to buy the bf's mother a new copy of Gordon Ramsey's Fastfood before she sees the state I've inadvertently got it into (!)  Yet I don't see this, as some might, as a lack of respect for the books, I see it as really using them and loving them in the way in which it was intended, fulfilling their destiny so to speak. Books are there to be read and that is why myself and the bf have no hesitation in buying second hand, whatever the state the physical object is in, provided their is a fabulous story awaiting inside.....