Book Repairs  –  Puppet on a String

Spine repair with black card and brown paper, touched up with acrylic paint. This is a typical repair that I do on a whim if I think it's doable. Essentially, the top part of the spine was missing, but the book was still perfectly readable, so I glued some black card in place to cover the exposed spine. However, part way through I realised that I also needed to reinforce the covers where they joined the spine, so I added the brown paper. It was a bit fiddly because I had to remove the card after it had already been glued in place, but fortunately it went back without any problems. I then massaged glue into the cover joints and the black card before finally painting over the exposed white areas with black acrylic paint. That's it. I didn't attempt to recreate the lettering on the spine because I don't do that sort of restoration. However, the book is now a perfectly readable copy with a restored spine. The book is still slightly slanted, is still graded as Poor, and is priced at just 75p, but I actually prefer carrying out repairs like this rather than throwing these sorts of books away. Even a modest repair can give a worn-out book a useful second life.