What's the best way to dry out a book?

Factual Questions
1

Millions,

So, I was spoiling myself with a long bath, a few cigarettes, and a novel whilst I soaked. While extinguishing one of those luxurious cigarettes, I knocked my book into the bath where it sat for a good 15 seconds before I found it. That was depressing. So, now I have a 500 page, sopping wet paperback.

My question: anyone have slick ideas as how to dry this puppy out? Right now, I’m breaking the spine and it’s hanging on a towel rack, but there’s got to be a better way. Any brilliant suggestions?

2

Hair dryer? That might work. An oven turned to the lowest setting might work as well. Just don’t let it stay wet for too long.

That book is going to have pages like potato chips when it dries but you should still be able to read it. White-out the copyright date and tell people it is a very old family heirloom.

3

A friend had the same exact thing happen with her organic chemistry textbook. She continued to lug it to class, even though it was 12 feet thick.

Best of luck.

When a friend had photographs get soaked in a flood, we got help from archivists via this thread:

4

A microwave oven is a POOR choice for book drying.
I tried it on a wet paperback, and the book caught fire.

5

Squink: I was literally on my way to the microwave but thought I’d check the thread first…bad birdmonster. Wait for the learned ones, then act. I just really want to finish this puppy.

6

I always used to put my bathed books (and there have been many) on a radiator. The effect this has is to dry the book, while fluffing the pages out like a little baby chick, and making them brittle as hell in the future, and making the book semicircular from above at about five times the width that it was.

I have since learned the technique of taking the wet book and compressing it under something very heavy, like several telephone directories and a table, and leaving it thus for several days. Alas this means you can’t read it during the process. Then place it flat on top of a radiator for a couple of weeks. It restores the book to almost its original mode of tactility.

P.S. Cigarettes in the bath? I like it. Combine with coffee, or a really big glass of chilled white wine, for extra effect.

7

The Library of Congress recommends this:

8

…I dropped my paperback copy of Children of Dune into the sink once when I was like 14. In a fit of teen nerd ingenuity, I squeezed (squoze?) out as much water as I could by pressing on the closed book. Then I doused, nay, drenched the book with rubbing alcohol (85% isopropyll alcohol) and left it on my sunny windowsill, open. It was bone dry in less than an hour, and in good shape.

9

That is brilliant although I can see some inks not reacting well to that treatment.

10

I was going with the fan, but this is too cool not to try. It’s like a middle school science project. To the grocery store!

11

There was a gigantic flood in Florence (?) in the 70s I think. They put thin blotters between the pages of all the ancient books. I’m sure that cost a fortune, but…

12

Freeze drying might be the method of choice today.
Review of methods: Drying Web Books and Records
If you don’t have a vacuum pump and chamber: