I’ve recently gotten into learning book binding.

It is hard for me to recall exactly how I developed this interest. I’ve always enjoyed reading physical books over ebooks – the ability to hold the book, the freedom to write notes in page corners, the tactile feel of the pages – all of this lends itself to a better reading experience for me. A chance encounter with the book “Rare books uncovered” helped me further appreciate the beauty of books as an art form itself. The pandemic and resulting video calls further increased my desire to make something with my hands vs be glued to the screen at all times. One thing led to another and somehow I developed an interest in learning book binding.

There is a lot of joy in making something that you can touch and feel with your hands. While the notebooks I’m making right now are far from good, they bring me so much happiness! 🙂 Making something with your hands can be very meditative. Plus, they make great gifts for friends and family.

In parallel, listening to an episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast with Seth Godin, led me to start thinking that as I go down this journey of learning book binding, I should blog about it also. Seth Talks about the merits of blogging daily, and sharing my journey of learning book binding is perhaps a good reason to finally start a blog, although I’m sure I’ll be talking about other things too.

I will start by sharing three resources that I’ve found super helpful as a beginner:

1. Udemy course on book binding for beginners
2. Peg and Awl – this is a small business based in Philadelphia. They make a variety of products, and their videos on book binding are super helpful (and inspiring!). The cover photo of this blog features one of their books.
3. Sea Lemon – Youtube channel on book binding