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I’m not breaking the spine. I’m flexing and creasing the spine in a very particular way to prevent it from breaking. An act people tell me is terrible sacrilege because it creates a visual crease in the paper covering the glue. If you do it right the book will last longer. Hell even if you do it slightly wrong the book will last longer. You get a spine made of flexible glue not prone to breakage, rather than a stiff plank of glue that will split the first time you open that shit fully.
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Dog earing doesn’t do much to the book. Even if the dog ear eventually breaks off, which they sometimes do after repeat reads, in older books or books that have been read repeatedly. The page is still intact and the text uninterrupted.
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In terms of bookmarks damaging the spine. If your using the sort of decent bookmarks that tend to stay in place (I use slips of paper in hard covers, they like to slip out) like say index cards, thick card stock or paper, metal, leather, or origami bits and pieces and the thickness builds up quick. Take 5 business cards and stack them up (these make great bookmarks). See how thick that is? Now stack up ten. Imagine snugging that thickness of additional paper right up into the spine, where a book mark is most likely to stay in place. It tends to stretch things out, and yeah I’ve got several books just a few feat away from me with upwards 10 marks or dog ears in them. With paperbacks it tends to strain the spine, causing it to split. With hard covers it tends to stretch out the binding, loosening the stitching. Which leads to dropped pages, and tears. I’d rather fold over a corner and have a permanent, immobile mark that does little damage to the functionality of the book.
I do this with hardcovers (though I don’t tend to annotate much, my handwriting is shit). Sometimes I use post its (though I’m not sure if the glue is exactly good for the paper, so I usually remove them later). Like I said paper backs aren’t meant to last to begin with. My goal is to keep them readable longer, not pristine and untouched on I shelf so I can point at them while I talk about how much I love books. Hardcovers on the other hand are built to last. So it makes sense to me to minimize the stress I put them under. Still occasionally dog ear them (mostly cook books though). And I’ve no use for dust jackets. I understand they are important for collector value (something I don’t have much interest in). And they have a sort of base functionality for protecting covers. But really they just sort of get in the way. Unless its pretty good looking or sturdy I tend to lose them (not deliberately though).
