[This post is from a previous blog; original date: 31 January, 2008.]

They can make you pick up a book you’d normally not look at twice or repel your hand as surely as if it were on fire. The loved, the reviled, the dust wrapper. Dust jacket. Dust cover. Whatever. It’s a misnomer in the first place, as dust collects on the top of the book, not on the covers. But that’s not what this post is about.

I’ve recently been having a very interesting conversation about dust wrappers and the people who love them or hate them and someone posted a site about the history of the dust jacket. [The site no longer exists, unfortunately. It was: www.readingbooks.info/Dustjackets] My fav bit is this: “The scarcity of surviving jackets, particularly early examples, results from their purpose and the perceptions of the buying public. Dust jackets were a selling tool, designed to book promote and protect the book inside. Once the book had been purchased and taken home, book buyers were expected to dispose of them. And many did. Keeping the dusk jacket was the equivalent of keeping the boxes in which perfume bottles are supplied today.”

I like dust covers when they’re designed well but as soon as I take a book off the shelf to read it I get that thing naked. The dust cover gets in my way. As one person so aptly put: “They flip, flop, slip, slide, pop out when the book is opened, get stretched out of shape if the end flaps are used as space markers, they can be completely unmanageable.” Yes, my friend. Yes.

I do keep the cover and will later put it back on the book when I’m finished reading most of the time, but sometimes, the book itself is so beautiful–-cloth covered and embossed with the title and author on the spine–-that I don’t bother. If the cover is offensive enough (the third Dexter book by Jeff Lindsay, for example) the cover goes in the bin as soon as it gets through the door.

Some people brodart their dust wrappers like librarians… This makes some sense if the book is valuable, otherwise it’s a little anal retentive. And by “a little” I mean, “get a hobby. Really.”

Oh, wait, that is their hobby. Nevermind.