“Don’t do what?” I asked.
“Hold the book open upside-down.”
“Why not?”
“Things fall out.”
“Like what?
“Commas, words, sentences . . .,” she paused, “. . . sometimes characters.”
I looked confused.
“Last month Boris Drubetskoy fell out of a copy of War & Peace. Not that it mattered much—he’s such a minor character—but I had to return the book to the publisher as flawed.”
“Even though it wasn’t their fault?”
“What choice do they have except to replace it? Who’d believe them if they tried to blame the library!”