Hey, it’s not that terrible!
I once saw a home-decorating show (Trading Spaces maybe?) where the designer wallpapered a room with pages from an old paperback.
It felt so wrong. And yet it was just a yard sale book she got for a quarter, not some first edition.
I hear ya totally. But I wanna do a project with an old book anyway.
But due to its small size, the book will only hold the flimsiest of contents. Yet…that’s what you had to begin with so I don’t see the trouble. Carry on.
I did this once when I was 16 or so. Straight up xacto knife style. It took forever and the result wasn’t that pretty but it was deep enough to hold a small bag of weed and some paraphernalia. IIRC, I had just read a digital edition of the Anarchist’s Cookbook and wanted to make something cool but also something that wouldn’t explode in my face.
Those look awesome.
I finally made it through all 700+ pages of the book. It took me two full afternoons and at least 8 hours of solid cutting. I sanded down the interior edges of the cavity and it ended up looking pretty nice. Now I just need to find something to put in it. I also need to find something to do with all of these pages I have sitting on my desk now. Perhaps I can blend it up and make my own paper with it.
Would you mind posting a few pictures? I’d really like to see the final result, as well as how inconspicuous it looks among normal books. 
Also, allow me to congratulate you on the choice of book title, as it will be a very secure hiding spot indeed.
I know exactly what you mean. It took me ages to do anything but mark my school textbooks with anything but light pencil. And I gasped audibly when my SO out an old novel in the recycling bin.
I also just read an article about an up-and-coming artist who paint on collages of antique books (egads!). Apparently he doesn’t tell the book dealer what they’ll be used for because he knows very well that, if he did, the guy wouldn’t sell them to him.
Sure thing. Here is a shot of it on a shelf (its the red one in the center). Here is one of the book closed, and here is one of the interior.
That review is the most awesomest thing I have read today.
My grandfather had a secret compartment book…that he got FROM Reader’s Digest. He had a lot of those “Condensed Books” and the hollow book looked just like them.
He used it to keep various important crap in. We have it now that he’s in a nursing home – my dad uses it for Pap’s important cards and documents and stuff.
My cousins and I thought it was the coolest thing ever when we were kids.
Destroying books? Please. If I could, I’d get my hands on every copy of Twilight that exists and hurl them into the biggest bonfire I could manage, and then dance around it, cackling like mad.
I mentioned this last year, but Christmas 2008 I opened my gift from my boyfriend and saw that it was a copy of Twilight, which he knew I had a HUGE amount of disdain for. I was very WTF and sad for a moment. Why would he buy me Twilight when he knows I think vampires are dumb? 
He had gutted the book and put an iPod Touch inside.
I still have the gutted copy of Twilight because it was a very awesome gift prank. He didn’t do a beautiful job (didn’t glue all the pages together, it was the paperback after all) and he had to wrap a ribbon around the book for the iPod to stay inside, but it worked. He had to tell me to take the ribbon off before I started to get it.
I burned a book on New Year’s Eve. We tore the pages out and made paper airplanes and flew them into the fire.
I was tipsy.
It was great.
I don’t know what book it was.