I dislike finding cockroaches setting up home in my books. Last week I found 3 boxes of books stored in my garage. Today, I opened one of those boxes to find a favourite old set of art theory books from the 60s and 70s published by Thames and Hudson, and Praeger. I was dusting them off when I reached the bottom of the archived box the books were stored in when 3 coackroaches, not tiny German ones, nor big kinger bush cockies, just brown in between medium sized cockies crawled out of the spine of Eroticism in Western Art. Why this book and not any of the other 20 books in the box? Is it because it is hardback? Did they like the pictures? Why not Surrealist Art or Metaphysical Art?
Can I spray book spines with bug spray? How do I know there are no more vile cockroach eggs waiting to hatch and subsequently populating my home until one night, while I am sleeping, one of those creepy, dirty insects crawls into my eardrum and starts beating to its own beat.
I don’t like cockroaches.
Shallowreader 
http://www.howtocleanstuff.net/how-to-clean-books-with-pest-droppings/
Unfortunately it looks like book damage is inevitable – you could have a bonfire of western european vanities instead!
Thank you! I was in such a rush yesterday I didn’t do a search. I guess my blog piece was very much a lazy web moment 🙂
To add to that – I know it would have been easier to do a google search than to blog but I am not always imbued with common sense.
You asked your friends who doesn’t do that? It’s one of the things we are for 🙂
Also, when storing them, I use the following – whole cloves, dried bay leaves and dried lavender. Keeps things away 🙂
Oh! Thank you! I might put stashes of it around my bookshelves anyway. I love the smell of cloves.
You’re welcome. I’ve used that mix for everything. Books, teaching resources, clothes. I think at least one of the three works on something so using all of them, covers most creepy/fly-ey/crawlies.
Just be careful of cloves on pure white if you intend on leaving forever and ever. They can (though not often) leave a mark (assume the oils in the cloves).
Agree – heady aroma. Love it myself.
I was planning on using small plastic containers. I put cloves in my bolognese. Mnom mnom mnom!
Make sure you leave air holes or whatever you call them to let the aromas out 🙂