Transparent Tape

Many have extolled the virtues of cellophane, but few have eulogized transparent tape. Clear tape is an excellent way to laminate, for instance, a pair of Bill Peabody earrings.

-Joy Sikorski, How to Draw a Radish, 72.

Carnal and Courtly Love

Just think what courtly lovers [of books] miss by believing the only thing they are permitted to do with books is read them! What do they use for shims, doorstops, glueing weights, and rug-flatteners? When my friend the art historian was a teenager, his cherished copy of D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths served as a drum pad on which he practiced percussion riffs from Led Zeppelin. A philosophy professor at my college, whose baby became enamored of the portrait of David Hume on a Penguin paperback, had the cover laminated in plastic so her daughter could cut her teeth on a great thinker. Menelik II, the emperor of Ethiopia at the turn of the century, liked to chew pages from his Bible. Unfortunately, he died after consuming the complete Book of Kings. I do not consider Menelik's fate an argument for keeping our hands and teeth off our books; the lesson to be drawn, clearly, is that he, too, should have laminated the pages in plastic.

-Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris, 41-42.