Imean paperbacks are cheap and would also probably do this on their own in due time anyway. If he was doing this to hardcovers I'd see it as a bit of an issue.
this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2026
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Rick Steves actually recommends people to do this with his travel guides
Soft cover, cheap books that'll probably never be significantly useful for collectors, I guess. You start tearing apart tomes and older works though and that's a line.
I once tried that with my copy of the necronomicon, I ended up blacking out for a few months. When my consciousness came back, everyone was talking about a lockdown and surving a plague... Not sure if that's related. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
YOU!
YOU AWFUL PSYCHO, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, THEY WERE SO YOUNG !!!?
Read on your phone or buy an e-reader
My grandfather used to do this but for every chapter because his wrists were too weak to hold on to a full sized book for too long.
In all honesty, in no way sarcastically, I consider this a war crime.
I love destroying the books I read. I buy ancient paperbacks used and choose not to care about their well-being, storing them in my pocket until the wheels fall off. When I read Dracula my book had no front or back cover and I kept the last 15 or so pages tucked in loose in the middle of the book because they would fall off every time I cracked it open.
Author here, I don't give a fuck, as long as the book was bought/is read. Stop fetishizing books or start fucking them.
I do wonder why this person wouldn't just use a e-ink reader, though.
I do wonder why this person wouldn't just use a e-ink reader
The batteries would explode, duh /s
E-ink readers are too hard to cut.
I feel like there is a lack of understanding how or what about e-ink. My partner only grasped the concept that it's not an emmisive display after the 5th time explaining. And some friends still don't seem to understand the difference between an e-reader and tablet. (they are extremely tech-illiterate)
If I extrapolate this, there have to be a lot of people who don't want an e-reader because 'they don't want to look at a screen'.
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To answer your question, I think that it's about value.
A book can be read by multiple people over time, so it can have a bigger lifespan and usage than a single lifetime. By destroying it, you cut that potential. For example, with what OP did, you might loose a part of these books, which make them worthless.
Beyond that, you have made a destructive modification on an object. Usually, there is only two outcome possible after this. Either you made it better in some way (like people who mod they cars or, to stay on topic, people who draw on the paper edge of a book) or you decreased the value of the object (if you were to resell it, this book has now very little value, except if it gain some notoriety for some reason).
I don't think we should strive and encourage the destruction of value or voluntary spoilage. This mostly struck a nerve as most of what we do is fight entropy (and that requires energy).
We are surrounded by products and we may sometimes loose the context of how something is made and what it took, especially when we are living in a consumerist society. Also many "made thing" are close to worthless and sometimes absurd ("who would need that?"). This and trends like fast fashion accelerate this feeling of spoiling on a mass scale, making this voluntary acts of destruction even more irritating.
One last point, book burning and destruction is usually done to erase culture and people, so it's related to very bad events and it feels deeply wrongs.
But, of course, if OP is honest about doing that to be able to read something that he would not read without (99% sure it's for the même), and the books modified in questions are not prescious or rare then I agree that it is not a big deal. In the end this is done for the laughs, it will not trigger a big trend and cause the destruction of precious books. But I just wanted to explain the triggered side and try to answer your question hoping it was honest.
PS: I not a native English speaker and you are an author so please forgive me for my spelling mistakes, I hope you and other still get my point across. Thanks
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"yeah, I just finished Infinite. It was pretty good, abrupt ending though. I hear Jest picks up right where it left off."
Skip jail. Straight to a firing squad of librarians.
Easy to spot, they're the only firing squad with silencers
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I cut mine cross-wise to save space. There is a lot of authors who make no sense.
Possibilities... 
I shred my books to save time reading
I don't even like it when they destroy books to scan them by cutting off their spines. I prefer when they use scanning methods that preserve the books as well as possible. This feels just straight up evil.
I shred the binding side with a saw, so I can scan the book with my Fujitsu scanner. Easy way to digitalize a entire book.
This guy works at Anthropic
You could just go to IRCHighway, though.
They do this for you in Korea. A lot of long novels are released chopped up into ~200 page chunks.
I've done this for coloring books before, but only to make the sheets more accessible. I have never once complained about the transportation issues of a book. Git gud scrub
As someone who would never, ever do this to one of my beloved collection: Go for it. Watever keeps you enjoying them. As others have said, we're not talking hundred year old first edition hardcovers here. You can still tape them up and pass them on, unlike those philistines who take one on a hike and rip out the pages they've read to use for campfire tinder.
There's no objective reason that this is wrong, but still, take that shit far far away from me
Doesn't it fuck up the binding? Sure, a softback is still going to stay together in the immediate term, but the covers are almost always a single stronger piece, whereas the pages will now be free to work loose from the cut side.
So... I'd say it is objectively worse.
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Clearly this is someone who actually reads their books. Given that they are mass market paperbacks... I have no problem with this. If I were an author I would much rather someone does this to my work and actually reads it and enjoys it to someone keeping a pristine copy unopened on their shelf forever.
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Oh shit, I left the half with the end notes at home!
You should cut diagonally. If it makes a sandwich better, imagine what it can do for a novel.
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