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Vent: Spilled coffee all over an old library sale find and had to figure out how to salvage it
I was at the Goodwill in Maplewood last Saturday, drinking my morning coffee while flipping through a stack of paperbacks. This worn copy of 'The Keep' by F. Paul Wilson caught my eye, and I grabbed it without thinking. But my cup was sitting on the shelf above me, and when I reached up to check another title, my elbow knocked it over. Coffee poured right onto the book, soaking the cover and the first 30 pages. I was so mad at myself, just standing there holding this wet mess. I took it home anyway, blotted the pages with paper towels, and put the book in front of a fan for three days. The pages dried wavy and the cover has a brown stain, but it's still readable. Has anyone else rescued a book from a liquid disaster like this? What worked for you?
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eva24317d ago
My god, same thing happened to me with a Stephen King paperback. Found 'Salem's Lot at a thrift store for 50 cents and dropped it in a puddle of soda from my backpack. Let it dry for a week with paper towels between each page, now it's got a weird sweet smell but still reads fine.
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victorclark17d ago
Eva, I gotta push back on the "let it dry for a week with paper towels" thing. I tried that once with a paperback that got wet and it turned the pages all wrinkly and the paper towels actually left fuzzy bits stuck to the edges. I think there's a better way - I had luck just standing the book up with a fan blowing on the pages for a day or two. The soda smell you mentioned would probably be much less with faster drying too.
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