I’m hard on books. I read them in the bath, dog ear pages (though never write in them), splay them face down. With paperbacks that is. Hardcover usually gets treated better. But yesterday I was reading a hardcover of Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea and had to stop myself from dog-earing a favorite passage. A sudden thought struck me—though in pristine condition, the book had been gathering dust in my bookshelf for decades; I checked the copyright page. Sure enough, it was a bona fide first edition. Rare, collectible, and worth many thousands of dollars. Or priceless, depending on point of view. And I came THAT close to ruining it.
In the future I will be a better person.