fine book, lousy binding

this small and huge book, turning leaves of mind is, what chela metzger called, eye candy for book workers. purchased from granary books, the first time i opened it the spine glue cracked crazily, the yellow glue ripped some pages. so i tried with much care to rid it of most of the mess, and as you can see the sewing is fine. the cover is now separate. but oh, my, this is one wonderful book.

the authors nora ligorano, marshall reese structured this book so that the text, a poem by gerrit lansing, meanders around the pages that are photographs of old bindings. the end papers are notes which are a poem of sorts. is it irony that the beauty of this book about decay is itself glued up poorly? 

and, for me, the only readable bits are the poem, all the handwritten words from the books themselves are indecipherable. i study and study it, and find it rich.