u/TXDRMST

I got this very beat up copy of The Stand for 4 dollars recently (early BCE holding no real value). I think this is a good candidate for my first more involved repair.

The endpaper on the front is completely detached, the one on the back is fairly intact and glued down. The hinges are very loose.

The spine is incredibly thin, and I'm not familiar enough with the original construction to know what its supposed to look like, so I'm looking for some advice. Here's my plan based on what I can see:

1 - Trim the mull to separate the text block from the case

2 - Reinforce the text block. Depending on how it looks I may reinforce with some kozo before putting new mull on

3 - Make a new hollow for the text block, glued over the mull.

4 - Reinforce spine somehow (not sure what would be best here but its basically a flimsy sheet of paper now)

5 - Glue the case back on at the spine on the other side of the hollow.

6 - Glue the endpapers back down

I tried to take the best photos possible to ask for advice. I'm also going to try to reshape the messed up corners after, but it'll basically just be to stabilize them. I kind of love the beat up look of it and don't want to fix any cosmetics, just want to address the structural issues.

If anyone has advice they can lend or even video links where this sort of thing is being done properly, feel free to let me know. I have a bunch of bookbinding tools, kozo paper in various weights, archival PVA and wheat paste, and am going to be making a book press soon, so I'm trying to do this right.

Thanks in advance!

I love the artwork of these 1980s UK Picador editions. It seems like they released paperback versions of Suttree and Child of God at the same time as the hardback, first UK edition of Blood Meridian with a matching art style.

There are plenty of photos of Blood Meridian's full dustjacket, but I have scoured the internet for days now and cannot find a single image of the back of these damn books.

If you happen to own a copy of either of these, would you be so kind as to post a picture of the cover, spine and back so the wraparound artwork can be seen? I'm working on creating some custom dustjackets for my own collection and would love to reference the art from these.

Thanks in advance!

Its not a true first edition, just an early trade / book club edition that Im trying to clean up.

One of my hobbies is reconstructing dust jackets in photoshop, so it'll be covered eventually. I figured I might as well see what can be done about the stains while I'm at it.

Any advice helps!

Just found a 1st edition of White Noise for 25 bucks, so naturally I jumped on it. I noticed there were a few pages where the edges started getting brown like you see on the left for about 30 pages. Most are just the very edge, and the browning sort of ends right here. What the heck is this from?