Comment by flir
12 hours ago
I've been in second hand bookshops that sprinkled their copies of The Da Vinci Code around the shelves so it wasn't so obvious how many they had.
(When I was a kid, Dennis Wheatley paperbacks were everywhere. Now I never see them. They were pretty cheap paper, maybe they literally fell apart).
A lot of older paperbacks seemed to use a lower grade of woodchip fibre and truly awful glue. Admittedly I live in the subtropics which is very unkind to books but it's my airport thrillers, cheap scifi and old penguin and pelican books.