Puritan Paperbacks(quality)

[DaveTheWhite]

Is it just me our are Puritan Paperbacks a waste of money? The quality of the books are horrendous. I mean the binding, within two years I can see the glue cracking. I heard tell that the older editions are much better, I have a friend and he has an old edition of The Sinfulness of Sin by Ralph Venning(Green cover) from the 60's and its holding up just fine, a little tatty but in pretty good nick all the same.

 

[Wayne]

The older copies have paper that yellows, a likely indication of paper with a higher acid content than is advisable.

I do think the paper is better now, but time will tell.

There's a method by which you can fix your BoT paperbacks. If you can neatly get the cover off, set the book in a vise such that only about 1/4 to 3/8 inch of the spine is clear of the jaws of the vise.
Take a saw with a thin blade and down along the length of the spine make three or four dovetail shaped pairs of cuts into the spine about 1/8th inch deep. Then take some thread and wrap it tightly down in those cuts, in effect tying each pair of those dovetail cuts together with the thread and wrap the thread multiple times around. When finished wrapping the thread in the dovetail cuts, carefully glue the end of the thread down somewhere, preferably on the backside of the book and near its respective dovetail wrap.

Then glue the book cover back onto the spine, applying glue only on the spine edge and/or perhaps just a tiny bit along either face side and only about 1/8 inch in from the spine. Set the book aside for the glue to dry, with some other books on top of it for clamping weight.

If all of that sounds confusing, do a web search on how to fix "perfect bound" paperbacks. Perfect binding is the name for the glued binding used on most paperbacks and some hardbacks.

When I was at Westminster years ago, my wife had a small side business fixing copies of one of Van Til's books that was a required text. Problem was, students would buy the text and barely start reading before the pages would start flying out every time you opened the book. She used the method I've described above to fix those books, and I'll bet they still hold up to this day, decades later.

 

[Reformed Thomist]

They don't make 'em like they used to. This is true for paperbacks (and hardcovers) across the board in my experience. Compare the Penguin Classics of the 70s and 80s to today's. As the price has shot up and up the material quality has taken a serious plunge.

At least the Puritan Paperbacks are still reasonably priced, more or less.

 

[JennyG]

there's quality and quality....a few years back, a well-meaning person gave me a CUP book on Bible interpretation. The content was so bad I decided to tear it limb from limb before I put it in the bin, but it turned out to be impossible. I tried taking the scissors to it, and I tried kicking it across the room and also throwing it violently from a height, but absolutely nothing was going to detach the pages from the spine.
The moral is.... be glad there's so much in print that's sound on the inside, never mind the binding!
(but if any of Cambridge's paperbacks happen to be worth reading, be assured, they're built like battleships)

 

[christiana]

I do love all my Puritan Paperbacks but must admit the ones that are the most read I've taken to Kinko's and had them spiral bound. I love handling them then as there are no tears, lost pages or difficulties opening the book without spliting the binding. It helps but still it is sad that lesser quality of original binding requires such an approach. The Christian in Complete Armour volume is one that is spiral bound as I refer to it often. The cost per book is right at $4. A better approach I suppose would be letters to the publisher requesting quality assessment and improved bindings.