perfectlynormalbooks

[perfectlynormalbooks]

trying to make the leap into learning binding in order to fix up some old favorite paperbacks of mine that are starting to fall apart. the thing that i'm most concerned about is the fact that some of them are old enough the paper is crunchy/wobbly - like it has that wrinkly look? several are secondhand buys, so it's possible they got wet at some point, but equally possible they're just old and the paper is extremely thin. i worry that it won't glue well, or that it'll tear away from the binding if it's opened up and read with any consistency. i have some experience in book repair as i work at a library, but most the things i repair are hardbacks whose spines are coming undone at the front or back covers. a bit of norbond and some tape is usually all it takes to keep those going another couple years. when i have to repair paperbacks, i'm pickier and we usually wind up replacing them, so this is uncharted territory for me. do you have any tips for making sure that a rebound old paperback with stiff, inflexible paper winds up sturdy and not liable to fall right apart again?

Unfortunately, I don’t really have experience with that sort of thing. Most of my rebinds are for fairly new books, and I rarely have to deal with damaged or old paper. I could make some guesses as to how to deal with this, but they’d only be guesses. If anyone else wants to weigh in on this and give some advice, I think it would be very welcome

[perfectlynormalbooks]

Mr. Brightside and the Atomic Bomb by @olivieblake. 129k, Original Work, rounded + backed at folio size! (+ accompanying slipcase, as usual with bindings I'm worried about sending in the mail.) A musical magical murder mystery set to the works of the Killers.

Done for lilithbindsanderads on Instagram for the Australian Spooky Season bookbinding exchange! This is fully illustrated, with a different doodle-border at the start of every chapter, and different scene break doodles all throughout. I pulled the same trick I did with The Strange Mixtape for all of the incidental musical numbers, so you can listen along as you read if you so choose.

Typeset in Georgia for the body text, with Bivoac Regular for the chapter titles and a neat font called Sam's Town for the big chapters and headings.

I played very hard into the lurid bright colors for this one, because it's a flashy dramatic story about performers, singers, and MURDER. It makes it a very hard binding to photograph well... but it's so pretty to look at. I'm so, so happy with it.

[perfectlynormalbooks]

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewksi - hardcover rebind of my own softcover copy, because a book like this deserves a fancy hardcover edition.

Tried some fun new tricks with this one - I sewed on headbands to it, with a thin strip of House-colored blue in the centres, and an even thinner strip of red within that. Used wax paper transfer to press the polaroid photographs from the original spine onto the fore-edges. The black square on the front and back is an inset lined with black velvet. This is a very, very nice book to hold. Can't wait to settle down in my lovely house and reread it all over again wait why are the walls moving

[perfectlynormalbooks]

Animal Farm by George Orwell, done in casebound quarto! A last-minute binding for a local arts and crafts competition (and I came in third place for this, well done me). Kept it pretty simple, both in terms of typeset and cover design - Georgia for main body text, CoventryGarden for all of the titles.

[perfectlynormalbooks]

We're off to the races! Come on and bid on me. I promise I'll make you something cool.

Perfectly Normal Books

See Perfectly Normal Books’s existing works here.

Preferred contact methods: Discord: anadvora Tumblr: perfectlynormalbooks

Preferred organizations: - Anything from the list of approved organizations

Will create works that contain: I have a fondness for Doctor Strange and Spiderman in particular, but am open to binding for anything that’s not a DNW!

Will not create works that contain: Anything explicitly sexual, noncon, underage, incest, A/B/O, Hydra Trash Party, and infidelity

– Other Fan Labor –

Auction ID: 1080

Will create works for the following relationships: Avengers fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Captain America fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Daredevil fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Deadpool fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Doctor Strange fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Iron Man fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Loki fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Spider-Man fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Thor fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe X-Men fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe

Work Description: I will bind your fic into a hardcover custom book! This fic can either be your own, or someone else’s (although in the case of it being someone else’s, you’ll have to get permission from them to do so). I can bind works of up to 200k in length, or as short as you want. I won’t bind any fics that feature my DNWs, but anything else is fair game and I’m open to any Marvel fandom beyond the ones in my relationship section. You can always contact me before bidding if you’re unsure if certain content, characters, or ships are okay. If you have any input on the specific appearance/details of the bind, I’d be happy to incorporate it. Alternatively, you can give me free reign and I can go wild - examples of my previous binding work is available at my blog. I’ll require for you to pay me for postage, so keep that in mind - I’m shipping from Australia, so double-check how much that’s likely to be for you.

Ratings: Gen, Teen, Mature

Can pods bid on this auction? Yes - Podbids welcome!

CLICK HERE TO BID ON THIS WORK

The auction runs from October 20 (12 AM ET) to October 26 (11:59:59 PM ET). Visit marveltrumpshate.com during Auction Week to view all of our auctions and to place your bids!

[perfectlynormalbooks]

Hey, y’all! It’s me! I’m doing this!

Perfectly Normal Books

See Perfectly Normal Books’s existing works here.

Preferred contact methods: Discord: anadvora Tumblr: perfectlynormalbooks

Preferred organizations: - Anything from the list of approved organizations

Will create works that contain: I have a fondness for Doctor Strange and Spiderman in particular, but am open to binding for anything that’s not a DNW!

Will not create works that contain: Anything explicitly sexual, noncon, underage, incest, A/B/O, Hydra Trash Party, and infidelity

– Other Fan Labor –

Auction ID: 1080

Will create works for the following relationships: Avengers fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Captain America fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Daredevil fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Deadpool fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Doctor Strange fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Iron Man fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Loki fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Spider-Man fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe Thor fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe X-Men fandom any gen and ship - Any Universe

Work Description: I will bind your fic into a hardcover custom book! This fic can either be your own, or someone else’s (although in the case of it being someone else’s, you’ll have to get permission from them to do so). I can bind works of up to 200k in length, or as short as you want. I won’t bind any fics that feature my DNWs, but anything else is fair game and I’m open to any Marvel fandom beyond the ones in my relationship section. You can always contact me before bidding if you’re unsure if certain content, characters, or ships are okay. If you have any input on the specific appearance/details of the bind, I’d be happy to incorporate it. Alternatively, you can give me free reign and I can go wild - examples of my previous binding work is available at my blog. I’ll require for you to pay me for postage, so keep that in mind - I’m shipping from Australia, so double-check how much that’s likely to be for you.

Ratings: Gen, Teen, Mature

Can pods bid on this auction? Yes - Podbids welcome!

CLICK HERE TO BID ON THIS WORK

The auction runs from October 20 (12 AM ET) to October 26 (11:59:59 PM ET). Visit marveltrumpshate.com during Auction Week to view all of our auctions and to place your bids!

[perfectlynormalbooks]

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - hardcover rebind, with page foiling! One copy for me, and the other for a friend who did a mini book club with me about it. The cover of this book in particular is notoriously hard to get right, so I went fairly minimalist with it. (The center of the O is meant to be a hand grasping a prison bar, I realized in retrospect that I didn't do the best job of conveying that.)

[perfectlynormalbooks]

pull the rider down, a 19k Bernice Summerfield fic I wrote as an exchange gift for a friend some time ago. Bound as a request for that same friend! Done in quarto - I went with a green-gold combination because I liked the look of it, and I always love working with this particular gold HTV.

[perfectlynormalbooks]

Quick little rebinding of The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe by Romain Puertolas, which I have not actually read, but IS one of my mother’s favorites. This is a birthday present for her! Used my favorite blue Duo for the spine, and leaned into the IKEA theming because I thought it would be fun (it was)

[perfectlynormalbooks]

Three copies of WELL WE ALL THINK YOU’VE PICKED A GRAND SIDE, my Sanders Sides surreal Antigone-ish Antigonick-esque playscript AU, done in casebound folio. Properly formatted and also fully annotated with all the references and in-jokes explained, as if I'm not pretentious enough about the things I write.

One copy is for my darling @lifewithoutrainydays (who made the mistake of saying 'sure, send me an annotated copy of your fic'), another's for @shadowling-guistical as thanks for EVERYTHING and who also made the same mistake, and the other one was meant to go to a specific person, but they never got back to me... so I guess I'm keeping it for myself for the moment

The book itself is half-and-half in a lot of respects - half plain white sheet-bookcloth, half Brickett Duo. I painted the edges with a gradient that hopefully matches up with that cover.

Typeset for the playscript side of things is Georgia, the annotations are in Gadugi. Tiny lil golden snake on the (red sash) bookmark, because it just seemed perfect, and I had a bunch of floral artsy paper for the endpapers that also seemd pretty perfect. This is my first time using Affinity to typeset a full binding, and I don't think I'm ever going back.

I modelled the typeset a lot off the plain-text edition of Anne Carson's Antigonick, which I took a hell of a lot of inspiration from for the fic itself. I briefly considered doing it in the style of the artbook script, but that would have required doing overlay illustrations AND probably writing the full thing out by hand... maybe next year.

[perfectlynormalbooks]

This is Sacred and Terrible Air by Robert Kurvitz, the unpublished-in-English Disco Elysium novel. Typeset kindly borrowed from @mythrilthread (thank you!!!). Rounded and backed at folio size.

I made three copies - one for me, the others for two dear friends. I’m getting good at making identical copies at this point! Top and bottom edges were painted in acrylics to mimic the Revachol skyline from DE. The title stripe is technically the background of the DE dialogue box, but you can’t see it very well. Don’t ask me what the little thing on the end of the bookmark is. I couldn’t tell you; it just felt appropriate

[perfectlynormalbooks]

Tiny little octavo binding of Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, that classic lesbian vampire horror story. Typeset by @kulapti for the Renegade Tiny Books Exchange 2024, and one of the copies (the one with the slipcover) is securely with her now!

I recently obtained a bunch of wax-seal tools for the purposes of sending fancy letters to friends, and this felt like the right addition to the book. I had all of the pieces lying around already - the cover fabric in particular was just perfect - which has made this one of my favorite binds I’ve done this month.

[perfectlynormalbooks]

THANK YOU SO MUCH i love how this turned out. mwah

Bookbinding of Wires got the best of him by TheBigCat @perfectlynormalbooks, June 2024.

Tiny book one for this year's Renegade Tiny Books Bang! Typesetting by the author, who collaborated with me to choose the colors and cover design for the book, which I bound. Lovely to work with you :D

Materials: Text laser printed on Hammermill "cream" archival printer paper. Covers and tapes made of two different colors of blue Verona bookcloth, with cover design painted on with gold metallic nail polish. The binding uses cotton thread coated in beeswax and archival PVA glue. Endpapers are marbled Italian paper by London-based artist Stephan Parenti (Peacock Paper studio).

I have successfully used non-structural endpapers on this, I forget what it's formally called, but anyway the pages are held to the cover by the tapes and stitching. Compare this to modern mass-produced hardbacks, which are usually held in by the endpapers: that's why many books can be accidentally torn completely out of their covers, especially if the book is thick.

[perfectlynormalbooks]

wouldn't it be nice by @judesstfrancis (Magnus Archives, 61k), casebound at folio size! Bound for Manda @pleasantboatpress as part of the Autumn Down-Under ficbinding exchange. I had a lot of fun typesetting this - formatting the text message conversations, the chapter titles pages, the recipe at the end (which I included, of course!).

Tried something fun with the cover, layering velum over golden-patterened textured paper for a cool subtle background effect. I love my inset cutouts! Painted edges, because I wanted the book to have a warm, cozy feel. Shiny paper for the cover, because.. I enjoy shiny books.

.....There's no real supernatural or spooky themes going on in this AU, but I had the eye-shaped bookmark charm on hand anyway and just couldn't help myself.

[perfectlynormalbooks]

One-volume binding of Shimeji Simulation, one of my favorite mangas of all time. Folio size, Polar Duo, metallic silver HTV + case (with a little hole so you can see the girls being tender together 💙)

I made this one for a friend who mentioned that he'd be interested in reading the manga, but preferred to read manga in physical form. There's no licensed English translation OR print run of this, so I decided to make my own - I downloaded the Orchesc/a/ns translation/scan on MangaDex, compiled it all into a single volume, and reversed the PDF page order before imposing it into signature-form, so it can be read right-to-left, as intended! The edge art is hand-drawn by me, meant to mimic those geometric doodles that show up throughout the story. Hand-sewn headbands, to pull it together! And a little mushroom + fish charm bookmark, because OBVIOUSLY!

Fun fact: this is the first book I've ever bound that's been too chunky to fit in my home guillotine. It was nearly too big for my bookpress, too - but only nearly.

[perfectlynormalbooks]

A selection of fun little notebooks I’ve put together over the last few months! Experiments in rounding + backing, as well as hand-sewn headbands

[perfectlynormalbooks]

I've done some smaller low-stakes blank-notebook bindings recently too, just to teach myself some new techniques and experiment a bit. I might put them all up in one larger post.