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Tuesday, 25 January 2022

Having my books bound

 

Something that came to mind when I saw a torn book a short while ago …...

I am sure many Millennials, and all Gen Z, have never heard of the term, ‘Have your book bound’.

For the uninitiated, having books bound was something quite common back in the day. When a text book binding came lose, and there was imminent danger of losing pages, we did not discard the books- instead we took them and had them bound afresh, and they came back as good as new – at least that’s what we felt. I didn’t cost much either.

We did the same with story books which were far too precious to throw away. At times five or ten  thin comics were bound into just one book, and many a lazy afternoon were spent reading.

I vividly remember buying text books, second hand, before the start of the academic year in school – then taking the torn ones to a shop, and getting them bound. At times, the binding was a trifle too tight and one or two words at the start of every line were stitched in, but the main thing was we had a book to use.

The book was usually bound with dark blue or dark maroon binding and looked rather smart.

Do any of you older ones, who follow my posts, remember the ‘book binding’ process and did you or your parents ever tell you to get a book bound?

My friends from Allahabad would definitely be very familiar with having books bound.

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