The case for taking an X-acto knife to your 850-page paperbacks

An 850-page brick like Lonesome Dove is miserable to hold on a plane, in bed, or anywhere else, so the author makes an unapologetic pitch: buy your own copy and physically cut it into smaller, portable volumes. The method is low-tech — find natural break points (Lonesome Dove conveniently splits into three Parts, otherwise use chapter boundaries), bend the spine fully open to expose the glue strip on a perfect-bound paperback or the gap between signatures on a stitched hardback, then slice cleanly into the bookbinder’s glue with a sharp blade so surrounding pages stay bound.

Because a bare page block will snag and shed pages, each new volume needs a cover. The author’s cheap, unpretentious solution is a manila folder: fold it around the block, crease it hard, trim to size, and glue it on with plain Elmer’s (heirloom binding isn’t the point), holding it with binder clips until dry, then label the spine with a Sharpie.

The underlying argument is a permission slip more than a tutorial — a riff on the ‘you can just do things’ ethos applied to your own physical property. The author is careful to distinguish this hands-on repurposing from the destructive book-destroying scanning done to feed AI training pipelines, and to note it’s for books you own, not library copies.