From: "Erica VD Ginter" <eginter at klgai.com>
To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: The binding will not hold, pages fall apart
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 11:30:57 -0500
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Several years ago Lydia received a US-made book as a gift. The cover
sepatated from the body of the book the second time we read it. I wrote a
letter to the publisher and they sent a replacement, which fell apart the
first time we read it. I have no comparative data with UK books.

Erica

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Walsh [mailto:MJW at mail.press.jhu.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 10:17 AM
To: wsfalist at keithlynch.net
Subject: [WSFA] The binding will not hold, pages fall apart

Interesting piece here: http://slate.msn.com/id/2079769/ about UK books =
and why they seem to be so poorly produced.  I have fairly UK hardcovers =
that have rarely seen light and the edges are turning brown.

"The books from England - and only the books from
England - are falling to pieces. The unread American books in our
collection, along with those from Germany and France and Italy and
Mexico, still look brand-new. But even a 4-year-old English hardback has
warped covers, a binding that snaps like a saltine when you open it, and
pages so brittle and brown that the act of pulling it from the shelf =
leaves a
little confetti pile of paper chips on the floor. It's not just that these =
English
books are junky (aesthetically); it's that they're often unreadable
(logistically). They're dying."

In my more cynical moments I suspect that with all ofthe acid-free paper =
that is used in the US that we're shipping all the acid to the UK.