Book Crimes

With less than three weeks to go until my wedding, my reading time is suffering in a bad way. Every day is some kind of wedding related something: trials to make me beautiful, meetings to make the venue beautiful, fittings, running down the perfect ribbon/candles/stationary, writing thank you cards, crafting timelines, dropping off cake toppers, tracking down the right kind of rentals – these things take up an insane amount of time.

The good news is that it’s almost over and then! Then I will go to Powell’s.

In the meantime, I will try to put reviews up as much as I can but the (reading) future looks bleak.

Today though, I thought we could discuss book crime. Without any further segue way…here’s a list of things I consider bookish crime.

Seeing the movie before reading the book. The other day I won tickets to the premier of This Is Where I Leave You based on the book by Jonathan Tropper. And I was all excited until I realized that I hadn’t read the book. In my world, this is the ultimate book crime: seeing the movie without having read the book. Admittedly these days you really do need to be more choosey – seems like all movies are based on books and we can’t possibly read/see them all. But seeing the movie without having read the source material (when said source material is available) seems like a shortcut to me, one that can’t be undone. If the movie was great and then you want to read the book, you will go through the reading all “it was better in the movie” or God forbid “that’s not what it was like in the movie!” Thankfully I’ve now read This Is Where I Leave You and look forward to a proper comparison when I see the movie tomorrow night.

Buying move tie-in covers when the originals are available. Equally criminal. I get it – sometimes you have no choice because the movie poster covers are the only ones available and getting this version is a lesser book crime than not reading it before you see it. But given the option? Original book cover should win every time.

Destroying books in the interest of arts and crafts. Pinterest has been a great help to me in the months that I’ve been crafting my wedding day. But it’s also the reason that people keep tearing old books apart to make crafts. Paper roses made out of pages torn from your favourite books? Ink drawings on the pages of old dictionaries? Backdrops made out of stapled pages? Bookmarks made out of book spines?! These hurt my heart. It should come as no surprise that there will be a literary bent to my wedding but no books were harmed in the making.

Stealing my books. When I loan you my books, I expect that you will read them, look after them and then, crucially, return them to me. Otherwise you’re just stealing.

Defiling library books. I feel like the library has similar expectations and hopes that you won’t get nasty crusty detritus smeared all over the pages. Or drop it in the tub. Or spill food on the pages. Or let their books get infested with bed bugs. All of these things: book crime.

Having no books in the house and being proud of that fact. I know that people love their e-readers. I get the appeal, even though I still do not want one. But not having any books in your house because you have an e-reader is the worst thing I’ve ever heard. People that describe books as “clutter” might as well rip out my heart and stomp on it. Books are not clutter and a “room without books, is like a body without a soul” (Marcus Tullius Cicero) so there!

What do you consider a book crime?