Book Modding

[lusentoj]

Hey guys! I'm going on exchange for a year (to Japan) and while throwing out all my junk realized I have a ton of books I own but've never read. If I wanted to bring them with me they'd take up a lot of space/weight. To try and solve this I'm reducing their bulk and (eventually) giving them new covers so they look like something I'd actually want to read. I think that ESPECIALLY if you buy large-print books, or textbooks, doing this could really help out. The books definitely feel more "accessible" and "readable" now, it's kind of hard to explain.

For example, this 477g (22x15cm) hardcover book was reduced to 295g (18x13cm).









I'm doing all my books except for the ones that have covers I actually like now, it makes things way more convenient:







The most annoying part is, it takes a long time to cut with scissors and getting that stump of a spine that's left at the very end is really tough. I wish I had something better to cut with!

At first I thought I'd give the Laura Ingalls ones the same covers and illustrations as the original printing (printing out / gluing in the illustrations), sadly no one's scanned those editions anywhere so that's impossible : / For now I'm thinking that when I get to Japan I'll find some cool wrapping paper or cloth or something and can make covers out of that. I was also thinking I could colour the page edges.


I don't know what to tag this as, sorry!

Comments

[calzephyr]

I can't offer any suggestions, but I know you'll find loads of cool craft supplies in Japan! I have craft supply envy! There are so many kinds of handmade paper, textiles and other things that I would bring an empty suitcase if I were to go!

[lusentoj]

Thanks! I know that's *technically* the case, but I've been living in Sweden for years now and we have NOTHING here (to illustrate: not even lipstick in colours other than red) so I just keep completely forgetting that in Japan there's a billion things out there that I can't even dream of! I'm like "well hopefully I'll find something" and I think the answer is probably actually "i'll find 500 somethings without even looking for them"... but it's hard to get that into my head haha.

[calzephyr]

Oh yes, it seems like you can't turn around for all the cool stuff in Japan. There's a chain of stores out there called Daiso that's just full of fun stuff - apparently there's one in Canada, but far, far away from me. I just dream of going there :-D

[lusentoj]

I've been to a couple Daisos near Seattle some years ago! Really handy stuff!! I tried Googling and it seems there's like 5 Daiso-like store chains in Japan at the very least, so I'm gonna get most of my household goods from there and try to get other stuff secondhand...

If only shipping were cheaper we could all just order this stuff online and it wouldn't matter where we lived! Sigh

[calzephyr]

It's a puzzler why they aren't set up for online shipping. I know sometimes people resell things through Amazon and I did find a lot of Daiso stuff, but I imagine going to the store is half the fun!