I am cross

I just realised I probably should have posted this in the am I being unreasonable section.

Iam inclined to agree- I also do not like people scribbling in books or underlining sentences. I care for any book I read be it hardcover or whatever.

Oh I agree completely!

You could buy her a bookmark as a 'thank you gift' if she passes any books on to you

Nope not unreasonable at all. I lent my Nigella Lawson recipe book to a friend because she was hosting a dinner party for friends. When the book came back it had food stains and scribbles down the ingredients, where she'd ticked off what she'd got. It was a mess. I'll never lend a book to her again!

I only lend books to immediate family, because of the non-return/damage done to books lent more widely.

With recipes I am quite happy to scan and email or print recipes from my cookery books. The same with poetry.

I am glad it is not just me. I would be furious with food stains so I definitely won't lend any cookery books!

I do turn down page corners, if I’ve no bookmark to hand. And my cookery books are a sticky mess, with scribbled notes about changes I’ve made, etc.

But I’m very careful not to mark books that don’t belong to me.

I think it is different if the book is your own though I still don't like creases and so on. But so wrong to do to someone else's and don;t get me started on the library books

Turning the corners of book pages is a total sacrilege! Just no!

I also feel very annoyed when a library book has bits underlined or comments in the margin.

I would be annoyed too. I also dislike notes in books to indicate other books read etc. One book I read, written by an American , had every shortened verb underlined. For example, ' she knit, she cook. Very annoying

Oh dear, I am a page folder, but can’t remember the last time I borrowed a book. I remember when I used a library in a small village there was a reader who drew a little circle round the number on page 37 on each book she had read to avoid borrowing them again! I didn’t fold the pages in library books, I used a bookmark.

I used to use a library in a large town where another user circled p24 of anything she'd/he'd read. I quickly discovered we had similar taste in crime novels so I started looking out for the circles!
Something that annoys me much more than folded over corners is a library book that reeks of tobacco smoke. That is just vile!

I turn corners in my own book, I even write in the margins if I feel the need BUT I wouldn’t do it in someone else’s book, certainly not a friend if it’s obvious they don’t! Disrespectful in my opinion!

Not in a friend’s book if it’s obvious

So many things can be used as bookmarks - a piece of tissue, a piece of string, a scrap of newspaper, a Chinese restaurant menu, a bus ticket - I can see no need to turn down corners.

Give your friend a box full of bookmarks for her birthday!

I do agree, I hate turned down pages and pages written on are even worse. I don't mind so much a tea/coffee stain as that would be an accident (unless it's a ring on the cover which is worse than writing).

I remember my mum complaining (although it was my book that I'd lent to her)
She opened the pages and a load of grated cheese and branston pickle fell out!

Next time she borrows a book I would give her a beautiful book mark that "you found and thought she might like". Hopefully she will take the hint.

I have a pastry brush the sole purpose of which is to brush other people's biscuit crumbs out of library books. Turned down corners and spines that look as of a book has been opened properly don't bother me. As for notes made in books, you aint seen nuthin' till you've seen my school English teacher's benoted volumes. She was a brilliant teacher.

Interestingly, an Ecuadorian I met in Oxford said his father (a German) maintained they hadn't used a book (one that they were supposed to be studying) if there weren't copious remarks and notes in the margins.

I write all over the books I use for study (but only in pencil), and would never do it to anyone else's books.
Someone borrowed a book of mine, (Nancy Mitford's Madame de Pompadour ) which she enjoyed so much she then lent it to her sister-in-law; most of the pages fell out so she laboriously stuck them all back with sellotape. It was impossible to close the book, let alone read it , and I had to throw it away and replace it.

No, I don’t think it’s right to turn the corners of a page in a book - ruins them. If it’s your own book I suppose you can do what you like, but if you’ve borrowed it from a friend or the library it’s a definite no no.

Ruins the look of them, I mean.

Bookmark all the time whether it's my own book, friends book or from the library.
We also have someone circle a page number at our library. He or she always gets the ones I like first.