the most evil thing resale culture ever did was convince people that books are meant to be kept pristine and looking new forever. this is a lie. your books are an extension of yourself. they’re meant to have cracked spines, dogeared pages, weird discolouration, mud stains, imprints from your bookmarks. they’re meant to smell like your bedroom, like the perfume you only wore once and forgot about, like the couch you lost them under, like grass from dropping them in the park one too many times. they’re meant to be written in with marginalia like stupid inside jokes that only you understand, shitty doodles from your most boring class, questions you’ll never google, definitions of words you like, and cringy comments about your favourite lines. books showcase all the beautiful imperfections of human life, both through the words inside them and the things surrounding them. there’s no such thing as messing them up. let yourself (and your books) feel.
