Hello, and happy Friday!! It’s only been two days since my last post, but a lot has happened: I started high school! My orientation and walk through of classes was on Thursday, and today was my first full day. I didn’t do much, mostly just getting to know teachers, and getting a syllabus for each class, but I think it went pretty well!

The school is so much bigger than my middle school though, and it’s very easy to get lost. I think that I’m sort of getting the hang of everything though (I hope!!).

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly discussion post created by Rukky @ Eternity Books and is hosted by Rukky and Dani @ A Literary Lion! This week’s topic is PETS/CHILDREN & BOOKS, (suggested by Dani!)

I just went for more generally how I take care of physical books, so that’s what this post is going to be about!!

Having physical books can be fantastic, but it can also be scary to have them damaged. If you have pets what is your experience with them and your books? Has your puppy ever chewed on a limited edition? Cat claws in a leather bound?

I have a lot of pets (two cats, a dog, a fish, and most recently: two bunnies!). They honestly aren’t really a problem with books. My younger cat Zoe, can be a bit annoying while I’m reading, but in a sweet way. She loves attention, so a lot of the time she’ll just come and sit down on top of my book. Loki, my other cat, for the most part just ignores my books, and the fish and bunnies don’t ever come near them.

My dog, Clover, is probably the weirdest with books. A lot of the time, she licks them. I’ll be reading, and if she is in reach, she’ll lick the pages. I don’t mind it; it doesn’t damage a book in any way, but it’s super weird.

Looking at my bookshelf, most of my most damaged books are in worse condition thanks to younger me. A lot of the physical books I have I had in elementary school, or maybe even were one of my parents when they were kids.

There are lots of violently cracked spines, and a lot of really old books where the binding is just flat out falling apart, and the cover has come off or is starting to fall of on a fair amount of ones I have.

My worst experience

Once upon a time, when I was much younger, I was outside reading. It was a pleasant afternoon (in Oregon, the land of the rain and wacky weather), and I was sitting on my fence, reading a book. This book was (and is still) quite special to me. I was reading for a while, but eventually had to go back inside. Unfortunately, my book did not make it inside, and sat on the fence for a bit in the rain.

Once I realized, I ran outside to grab it, but it had already gotten very wet. I did manage to save it however, spending hours that day with a hair dryer, drying each page, one at a time.

How do you protect books from destruction?

I lend my books to friends a lot, so I make sure to ask them to be careful. Don’t be nervous to ask someone not to get food on it, or to not dog ear it, because it’s totally reasonable to ask.

I also have a book sleeve, that I use when I’m going somewhere and taking a more delicate book with me. It’s essentially just a pocket of thick-ish fabric that I can slip a book in to keep it safe, so that it doesn’t get all dinged up.

I know that a lot of people are very, very protective of there books, and although I do think that I am, to an extent, I’m not really that intense about it. In my opinion, a book is supposed to be read, so if you are too scared to take it somewhere to read it, that’s not good. I take books to school, camping, and lots of places that might not be the safest for a book, but I always want to have a book on me, and it honestly just makes me feel better about doing out, and doing things with other people.

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Wrapping this up…

Keeping physical books safe is hard (and definitely is a lot of work.) What do you do for your books? Do you’re pets react weirdly to books at all?

Do you have a lot of physical books? What do you do to keep your physical books safe? Do you have any horror stories of things that happened to your books? Chat with me in the comments below!