Book Knife and Book Repair - the modern world

I am a Jane Austen fan, and a Greer Garson fan.  There is a wonderful scene in the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice - the one where Elizabeth and Darcy are sparring for the first time in the drawing room at Netherfield - where Garson uses a book knife to open the pages.  It was a common practice.  Book pages are printed on a large sheet, folded and bound into the book.  When a reader sets out to read, they do so with a book knife in hand, to slit the pages.

Today, handed in to me for repair, a book without the pages slit.  The reader, and my coworkers confounded by the pages awaiting a book knife so the information could be opened to the world.  And the book that has confounded them with this small mechanical solution?  Big Data: A Very Short Introduction. (QA76.9.B45H66 2017).

I recommend the Very Short Introduction series.  Even it you need to open the pages with a knife now and then.



           

Anticipation

 In the late winter, hummm, about February, there was a CBC interview on Q with P.D. James.  Delightful.  I love Unsuitable Job for a Woman.  I also love Pride and Prejudice.  And oh, amazing, P.D. James had written Death Comes to Pemberly. Oh, goodie.  Finally a sequel worthy of Jane.  I had great imaginings.  I order the book from the library and settled back to enjoy the anticipation of the coming read.  I got to enjoy it for months.  Who would die?  What new characters would I meet.  Had Elizabeth brought Darcy to the point of being able to laugh at himself yet?  How would they solve the murder?  It was great.  I must have imagined the book a dozen times.  And then it came.

What a disaster.  Same characters.  Elizabeth had become uptight rather than Darcy more relaxed.  Much time was spent reminding me of what happened in P&P, as though I had never read it for myself, or watched endless tv productions.  You really must try the 1940 one with Greer Garson.  Death Comes to Pemberly is, in short, deadly dull.  I couldn't even finish it.

All that anticipation for not you are thinking?  Au contraire (that's French for 'on the contrary', if I may quote Jasper Friendly Bear).  The anticipation was delightful.  I enjoyed that book for months.  Instead of a quick partial read of a disappointing book, I got months of enjoyment.  Wait for it.