So I caught the First Tuesday Book Club on ABC today - I try to catch this show in an effort to improve my knowledge of Such Things.  It usually doesn't work, and doesn't do much more than deepen my baseless distrust of capital L-literature.  But that's just the reformed bogan in me, and I do my best to overcome these pre-conceptions I carry around in my skull.  ("Because a Good Book is a Good Book", breathe deep, repeat)

So again, I tried to watch this show.  There are often some great points made when analysing the various works, but (and I hate to admit this, in case it's proof positive that I'm a philistine and I Just Don't Get Things) they seem to spend an awful lot of time TALKING SHIT. 

But, this is not my biggest beef with this program.  Hey, Literature exists in just as much of a ghetto as SF does, if not greater.  We're just more honest about this, and it beats me why we SF folk are still suffering from cultural cringe when in self-comparison to the "serious" stuff.  We do literature sooooo much better than Literature.  In my opinion, of course :-)

No, today's beef is this:  Jason Steger, panellist for the above show and literary editor for The Age, was BUSTED on national TV bending the spine of a new book right around so that cover was touching cover, which then revealed several sections of the book that had been dog-eared.

YOU BOOK DESTROYING MONSTER.  If you come anywhere near my book-case, I'll be forced to shoot you in self-defence.  That's just how strongly I feel about the issue.  If you truly love books, you love bookmarks.