Annoyances part 1: Stickers

This post shall, I think, be a series on some little annoyances that really piss me off. ’Tis the little things in life, as they say, that get you in the end.

One thing that bugs me a lot—and I’m sure that I’ll be looking like a real book nerd now, but I don’t care—is book sellers putting little stickers on books I buy. You know, to show the price or put a barcode or just for proclaiming the company name. Idiots.

Putting up a sticker with your own barcode and ISBN over where the book already has it’s barcode, and the same ISBN printed, is just stupid. And when there’s a whole set of stickers on the back of a book showing which distributor bought it, which seller sold it and every stop the book’s been to in between, I get mad enough to almost put off buying a book I want.

I hate those things. I tried to remove a few once: it left such a sticky mess on the back of a great book that it felt weird holding the book to read. Dust and all sorts of unsavoury stuff set up home on the residue.

A good book is a work of art, and most people just don’t get this. And putting a sticker on the front cover is an even greater sin.

I was browsing through the Oxford book store yesterday—just browsing, had not money to buy anything—and I came across a gorgeous copy of Arthur and George. Just look at it:

Great cover, excellent quality paper and binding. Cool typography. But of course they could not sell that. They had a huge sticker proclaiming some discount applied up front, around ¼ the size of the book. Hideous.

I may be a pedant, and this rant is without a doubt pointless, but I just can’t stand such things.

Tags: annoyances books