Of course it is! If you just want a quick wash, that’s what shower stalls are for.
I’ve dropped more books into the tub than I care to remember (only one a library book, and that was in my reckless youth). I once left a Bible out in the rain at church camp - that’s the one that I still feel guilty about.
My bunny showed a great desire to eat the Communist Manifesto. So I let him.
It was a Dan Brown novel. The jury members all shook my hand and the judge bought me lunch.
Margaret Atwood’s Bluebeard’s Egg also makes an excellent pellet trap for a Benjamin Sheridan HB22: hunting pellets give better penetration, but wadcutters make bigger holes.
When I was is sixth grade, I was reading Ella Enchanted and propped it up behind the taps on the bathroom sink so I could read while I brushed my teeth. I’m not sure why it did that. It wasn’t a very good book. It was wet behind there and the book got water damaged along the bottom. The library made me pay a fine.
More notably, a few months ago I went along to a friend’s fire night (he makes the best of the fact that he has a concrete pit for a backyard by regularly hosting bonfires). I threw my copy of The Handmaid’s Tale onto the flames and we danced around it and roasted marshmallows.
See how I’ve progressed?
Bibble papers are great for rolling joints ala Cheech and Chong style.
(Man, I sure hope I’m right about this whole Atheism thing.)
I’m actually pretty hard on books, in a completely innocent way. I’m reading pretty much whenever I can – while I’m cooking, while I’m eating, while I’m washing my face & brushing my teeth, while I’m doing my hair and makeup, while I’m on the treadmill and, definately, while I’m in the bath. So my books are water-marked, splattered with oil & food, sprayed with hairspray and face powder and toothpaste, and dogeared and ragged from being held in one hand while I’m jogging. I also read and re-read my favorites, so the pages are often loose and ragged. Plus, my son is also a re-reader and a bathtub-reader, so any of my books that he also likes are doubly damp & frayed. My copy of Florence King’s Wasp, Where Is Thy Sting? is a favorite with both of us and is such a sad mess I need to replace it. I did replace my paperback copies of the Great Brain books by John D. Fitzgerald with hardback copies – between the two of us we read my old paperback copies (bought when I was in high school) into shreds and chunks. And, like most bathtub-readers, Nick and I have both dropped a book or three into the tub by accident.
But I’ve never harmed a book on purpose that I can remember. I just love them to death instead.
Well, this doesn’t really count because I never did it, but I was going to.
In college I really hated Computer Architecture. Really hated it. I had to take it more than once to graduate. When I finally graduated I was planning on having a book burning ceremony.
However, many people objected. One professor even offered to buy the book back at full price to prevent it.
I still have my CA book on my bookshelf.
A friend of ours did the same thing - ripped her paperback copy of Shogun in half because it was so unwieldy and hard to hold in one hand.
I don’t think I’ve ever done anything awful to a book, although some terrible things have happened . (Juast recently had a water leak that saturated a box full of books – got my copy of Shogun and Roots – hardcovers. Also all my William Tenn paperbacks and many of my Robert Sheckley’s. Sob.)
Spider Robinson used to write about his days as a book reviewer and how most of the stuff he got would fit nicely in his woodburning stove and made great fuel.
The worst that I have ever deliberately done to a book was to piss on it. It was a symbolic gesture of sorts, but oh, was it ever satisfying. Physically and emotionally.
It was a collection of essays by Albert Camus, including The Myth of Sysiphus as well as The Absurd Man, and comments on the essays. It was required reading in freshman English class and to this day, I am convinced that Albert Camus suffered functional brain damage at birth. That’s the only explanation for his tripe.
Our roommate regularly microwaves books.
You see, she translates manga for a scanlation group. Apparently, you can’t quite scan a book just by opening it and slapping it on the scanner; particularly not a small book. So you have to take it apart page-by-page. She microwaves each volume to soften the glue and takes out the pages.
Back in high school, there were a few books I read nearly to pieces: The Devil’s Day, Player Piano, Breakfast of Champions, and Deathbird Stories.
I also ripped my copy of *Shogun *in two. I like to refer to it as “a novel in two parts.”
I had a pug growing up who had quite a taste for Shakespear. Or maybe it was the leather binding. Later, a basset hound who would devour cheap romances, but leave the literature alone. That dog had no taste.
I’m pretty hard on my books, but it’s because I view them as old friends, the kind you don’t have to watch yourself around but can just be your sloppy, inconsiderate self. I dogear all the time - never understood why it’s considered immoral for your own property. I also leave books opened and turned page down, which I do understand is bad for the spine. But most of my paperbacks are read so much their spines are all mushy anyway, so what’s the big deal?
I have friends in the bookselling business, and they are skilled at reading paperbacks without creasing the spine, so they can place it back on the shelf to sell as new. I spent years trying to treat my books that well, but all I got were sore hands and wrists from trying to hold open long novels without creasing the spine. I even bought copper bookdarts to use instead of dog-earing pages.
Something recently went click in my mind. These are not sacred texts. I bought them and they are mine, and the ones I pass along will still be in better condition than most.
Small pleasures add up.
There was a book I had to read over 6th grade’s Summer Vacation. I don’t recall the title, but it had a green cover and the plot centered around an orphan or an indian who ends up joining the rodeo and becomes so in sync with the horses he ends up killing them when they try to buck him off.
It wasn’t that great of a book.
I was reading it over the weekend on a boat and decided to go for a swim. I got about 30 feet out from the boat when I realized that I hadn’t just left the book out on a table, I had stuck it in my back pocket! I swam all the way back to the boat and immediately fished the book out of my trunks.
Surprisingly it wasn’t soaked all the way through. There were a few chapters in the middle with nice dry centers of pages, but they were few indeed. I spent the next several hours holding the book open at various areas hoping the sun would dry it out. When that didn’t work fast enough, I got home and used a hair dryer. After a few days the entire thing was dry but I had to finish the book turning from one slightly-miscolored-and-hardened-wavy-page to the next. It made an already boring book completely agonizing to finish, but finish it I did.
The worst thing I’ve ever done to a book is lend it out. Most I never got back; one I got back with camembert smeared in it, and a couple of others got waterlogged. Some people… The thing that hurts worst is that many were special editions – my gift copy of The Silmarillion with the fold-out map; my book-club edition of the Foundation trilogy; my first mass-market paperback of Seventh Son (Orson Scott Card), with the die-cut cover. I don’t lend books any more.
Dropped in a toilet. Reasonably clean toilet, but still. And I still have it. 
I know people will disagree, but I’m of the belief that if a book isn’t dogeared, creased and bent, it isn’t truly loved. I’m not really sure why, but it is the same thing as people wearing out cassettes from playing them so much.
Just for future reference for those of you that like books in the tub or enjoy swimming with them, put a waterlogged book in a self-defrosting freezer for a month or so and it will draw the moisture out of the pages.
This is a little personal and probably TMI, but when I was in high school and my dad left us, I got angry one day and threw one of his books against the wall, tearing the leather binding. He came back to get his stuff and I remember him saying, with utter sincerity, “You know better than to damage a book.”
And it bothered me that I had damaged a book, but somehow him being upset about damaging a book and not seeming to care about tearing a family apart seemed very incongruent to me.
You don’t have to know who he was. Just reading his dreck will make you hurl your lunch and book both…
I’ve learned NOT to borrow older books from the library. I hate to turn the page and find someone’s “surprise” left there for me. No telling what some of the stains might be. Yuck!
In high-school, I once peeled-out on a math text book with studded snowtires.