Tearing Up Tour Books

I don't tear my guidebook up. I just photocopy the relevant pages (2 to a page, and double-sided photcopies), put the pages in a folder with other travel info, and then chuck out the pages when I don't need them anymore.

almost all my tour books are property of my local library ...and i don't think they would appreciate this.

All of my tour books are digitized and downloaded to my iPAQ. They're already torn to bits...

I just can't bring myself to. I admit that I spring for the books on each city, as opposed to each country.

It is a sin against god and nature to tear up a book, any book.

These threads are getting more and more ridiculous.

Wouldn't it be loverly if publishers were to offer travel books binder-style?

Or how about as iPOD books that could be downloaded under Apple DRM? This is the twenty-first century, last time I looked.

On our last vacation we tore pages out of the guidebook and felt the guilt. Turned out that we could have used a section we didn't cut out. It must have been that book karma coming at us!

I still have my first "Europe on $10.00". This book was stripped and into sections, depending on what I was visiting. The great weight was way too fat to carry on a trip.

I still have that book and the sections which were sliced. If someone wants to keep this, let me know and I'll send it along.

I guess it should go to a burial book cemetery but it wasn't marked in the book.

Blackduff

We just got back from a 3 week trip to northern Italy. We tore out pages of a fairly old Rick Steves book, and were happy to have the small number of pages- it worked well. Copying pages from such a thick book was difficult. My husband carries a PDA with lots of relative stuff, while I carry files. When we return to Italy in a few years, we'll buy another book if we want and it's relevant.No guilt at all, and I'm a book collector.

Tear up tour books??? Absolutely!! We used the Rick Steves "Germany, Austria & Switzerland 2005" Book. We were not going to Berlin or Frankfurt or the Mosel Valley. So I ripped out those pages.

As we traveled I would tear out the pages we no loger needed. This lightened our load (more room for chocolate bars & other goodies). By the end of the trip we had no tour book.

The book becomes outdated anyway. If we return to Germany, Austria or Switzerland it will be in a few years. We will need the newer edition then.

I have cut the pages out of tour books for years. If I want to keep the book, I reinsert them when I return. All of the cut pages for a particular area (city) go into a lg. ziplock bag. This works well for me. CJ

I tore up my third grader reading and math books and that tragic act doomed me to a boring, meager life filled with nothing but trouble and dispair. Think before you act! Did I spell dispair corereckly?

Depending on the book, absolutely, I tear them up! I remove the pages for the areas I will visit and then use binder clips to keep those pages together and in order. I do bring them home and insert them back in the book.

I will not rip up my DK Eyewitness guides however, just the Rough Guide/Fodors type guide books with no pictures and thin, light pages.

I'm thinking of selling my travel books on Ricardo (Switzerland's answer to EBay) before they are really out-of-date. If a travel book is more than ten years old, I discard it and buy a new one before my travels.

I rip them up and don't think twice... I know that if I go back I will buy the updated version. (It's my book who cares if I tear it up?)

I only use guidebooks at home to plan the trip, I don't carry them along with me (torn or not!).

I've done it (when I was lugging around the Let's Go guides when I was a student) and wished I had other sections as our plans changed. I also felt a little sad when I wanted to go back and reminisce and I'd lost the 'details'.

Another alternative: take the book to a local Kinko's or copy shop - they can take the binder off the book for you and put a loose leaf one on. Might cost a few bucks to do so, but you can then re-assemble if that's what you desire.

I do it all the time, especially with out of date books...

I tend to think of guide books as if they were magazines and not precious tomes, but that's me.

I am always updating my guidebooks, so why not tear them up?

I get the spines cut off off my guide books, then reassemble the parts I need into one or two "books" which I get rebound with a spiral binding. I tear pages out as I leave an area and evenually abandon the remains before coming back home.

The first time I cut a travel book I felt a pang of guilt, but the convienience is so worth it, I never looked back.

Yes - we do it all the time - since we usually take at least 4/5 guidebooks with us we have room only for pieces.

It's not like you're shredding a Shakespeare first folio. They're inexpensive and out of date in 3/4 years anyway.

I do it with cheap books..not with good ones with beautiful photography... But if they are just cheap ones that get obsolete soon..I just don't mind

I take double-sided photocopies from library travel books and rip up AAA guide books. No, I don't feel guilty to rip up a free book. Probably I should, huh?

I don't think I've ever bought a tour book except as a gift. Maps, yes, I buy those if needed.

You mean the free AAA books that cost $67 a year? Or do you have the $106 version?

Oh well, they don't charge for passport photos.

Robespierre, it gets even worse! My son is a AAA member, he gets their books for me for free.

Just keep in mind, typing a reply, Fodor's will ban you if you tell me all you think of me being such a cheapskate

A sin against GOD to tear up ANY book? WOW! That Archie comic book I tore up 47 years ago has doomed me to hell!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway, since Gutenberg invented movable type, books have gotten cheaper and ideas have been able to spread faster and better. A book is a tool to be used, especially a tour guide.
I have torn sections out of such books as Fodor's and Rick Steve's to carry with me. I buy new ones every time we go back so it's no big deal. I have carried the whole book but they are bulky.
A tour book is not some great treatise or presentation of one's beliefs, philosophy, or anything like that; it's a tool. Use it as you will. IMHO

Oddly enough it was my librarian mother, who would have cringed if we turned down the corners of a page to mark it (I still can't imagine doing that) who tore her "Myra Waldo" car touring guides to Europe in nice convenient sections!

As I ventured out on my own, I also tore up my Let's Go guides to lighten my backpack. I passed the pages on to any interested fellow backpackers...

Now, I agree with those who say that they would not tear apart a nice glossy photo-filled book, but I have no problem with ripping into Rick Steves, for some reason.

Degas, u make me laff!

I prefer to make two-sided photocopies of the relevant pages. I hate the idea of tearing up a book, but compared to the expense of travel, it really wouldn't hurt to tear up an $18 book or two and maybe even splurge on buying an extra copy to keep clean and intact at home.

Tearing up a book...no, no, no! The pages scream as they are torn out.

Books are precious things. I write little notes of importance in them sometimes and no matter how old they are I could never part with them let alone tear pages out of them. Oh no, no, no...

Yes yes yes! I even tore out pages of a Michelin Red Guide. I will admit it hurt, but after I did it once, it was painless, lol.

For me it's a choice between all the tour books and reading material and I can't travel without books to read...

Right now I am destroying a Frommers Italy book...but we have to keep the weight down and our trips are so long and to so many different places, I can't see any other way. I figure if I like a book that much I can always buy another one.

Mine are all torn up and rubber-banded together. Who cares???

No, I can't - books are precious things! I did it once and felt REALLY guilty about it after. Now, I photocopy the sections instead and it is definately better than taking the guilde books.

Karen Brown offers PDF driving tours on her website that I download. I wish others would offer a printable CD so one could print the sections one wants to take.

We did it on our first trip and regretted it when we got back -- because as we were talking about our trip and wanting to look up old info, we no longer had the complete book to look up what we needed.

Personally, I don't think the saved space is worth it if you have to replace the book when you get home.

Jules

I even hate to bend the corners of pages, but I will make an exception for guidebooks. Here is what I posted on an earlier thread:

>> I took two guidebooks to Kinko's today. For $1.50, they chopped off the bindings. I then spent 10 minutes in the self-service area three-hole punching the pages. I put the pages I'm interested in into a small 3-ring binder (7x9).

When I get to Italy, each day I plan to take the pages out of the binder that I need for the specific area we're in and put them in my daybag.<<

I rip up tour guides all the time, but stopped doing it when I began revisiting some places in my travels and couldn't find the ripped out pages!

Books are not sacred. Your friends and other people are sacred.

I always take the shiny cover, the overview of the country and the TOC with me in addition to the sections I need. It makes me feel like I have the whole book with me.

I love taking just the pages for one day with me and also putting the book back together when I get home!

I think Rick Steves deserves some credit here - he's the one who first told me to go ahead and tear them up!

Rick probably just says that so you have to buy new ones next year - but you outfoxed him by putting yours back together!

If I tore up a book I know that Mrs. Taper would be spinning in heaven and I can't do that to her.

I generally xerox the pages I really need before leaving home and toss them as I go if I do not want to bring the entire book.

I used to tear out the pages--no guilt whatsoever. It wasn't a first edition of Proust's collected works, after all.

The last few years, however, I've read the relevant pages in the guidebooks, then surfed the Web and printed off things that interested me and took that along. I Do still carry dog-eared copies of Fodor's narrow city guides, when applicable.

With the weight limits in cattle class, I can't afford the precious pounds an entire guidebook takes up.

I wish I would have torn out the relevant pages now and then. What usually happens is I copy down what I think we need and then leave the book because its big and neither me or my DH want to be stuck carrying it. Usually we're only going to 1 or 2 of the places described in a tour book like Frommers Spain. So we get in a cab and say we want to go to such an such hotel. Where's that the cabbie asks. Oops, left the address at home in the book! One of these days I'll learn. If I paid for the book, and I want to rip it up, I can. Its not great lit. and I'm not burning it!

I'm a published writer. Believe me that no one cares if you tear up a book or write in the margins as long as you buy the book and enjoy it.

I'm a published author too....I tear up my own books ...

I make copies of the pertinent pages and leave the books at home, except for must-haves like the London AtoZ.

I have well over 100 guidebooks and some of them are kinda old! but I still cannot bear to part with them. so no, I've never torn one up. I don't even photocopy them - I just pile 'em all in the suitcase(s).