michael adams wrote:
"Dan S. MacAbre" wrote in message news
Yes, I've always been rather careful in that sense; and it made me stop lending books
to other people. But the cracks are becoming harder to avoid in the older books. They
have become rather brittle.

Possibly the PVA is deteriorating.


I imagine it's drying out. If I could find something that would slowly
be absorbed back into it...

Strangely enough Penguins and Pelicans from the 30's are still fine.
But then instead of their being perfect bound, the pages of those were
formed as folded sections which were then glued together. So its
impossible for individual pages to fall out. For thinner ones
they were even stapled through next to the spine, before the cover
was glued on.

The glue used was presumably tried and tested whereas once they
started experimenting with PVA and similar glues the results were
variable; although I can't say I've found any problems myself.

Nowadays even hardback - or rather "case bound" books can be perfect
bound rather than stitched. A nototrious example of this is the
large format hardback "U-Boat/Boot War/Kreig" published both in
Germany and the UK but printed in the US which is a fully illustrated
documentary account of Buchheim's actual mission on U96; on which the
film and novel "Das Boot" was based. Where there was obviousy a problem
with the glue given the propensity for odd pages to fall out. However
given that the number of U-Boat nuts who are also avid book collectors
is probably strictly limited, this is hardly an earth shattering
revelation.

Paper is another thing. Pre war Penguins can be found still, with
cream coloured pages at the worst. During wartime things deteriorated
a bit obviously. Brown flecks, sandpapar texture etc etc. And yet
even today Faber and Faber are regularly using paper for both their
h/b's and p/b's which can be almost guarenteed to have gone brown
within a couple of years.


michael adams

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