The ballad of the ice-worm cocktail, Part 1.

My friend Mike had an interesting fact to share the other day - apparently, if you drop a book in the bathtub, the best way to dry it out is in the deep freeze. Given enough time, the water in the icy book will sublimate, escaping from the paper without warping it.

"Of course," he cautioned, "the problem with that idea is that you'd have to risk ruining a book to test it out."

A very good point indeed... but really, it's all the more reason why someone should be willing to try it out, and put the results on his blog. So, here we go!

Step 1 - Apologise to everyone for using "Dune" as the test subject. I actually have a few reasons for this:

a) If it was a book I didn't like, why would I have a copy to begin with? For that matter, if I drop a copy of "Twilight" in the toilet, do I really want to blog about all the trouble I went through save it?

b) Sure, I've got some old beat-up paperbacks I could have used. But I know that, should worst come to pass, I'll be able to pick up a shiny new copy of "Dune" from Chapters.

c) Of all the books I own, drowning this one really does seem the most ironic.

d) It's all for the setup - months from now, I'll have some friends over for a dinner party, and suggest they get the ice cream from the freezer. I'll have forgotten about this completely by then, but when they ask, "Why is there a copy of "Dune" in your freezer?", it'll all be worth it.

Anyway: Sploooo-ooo-ooo-oo-ooooosh!

Apologies for the blurriness, but I had to act fast:

These pages were warping quickly. Next stop - the cryogenic chamber, to preserve the subject until some future date as it can be resuscitated!


(As with all cryogenic chambers, that invariably means getting stuck underneath a frozen turkey.)

And now -- we wait. In the meantime, a friend loaned me his copy of Baudolino. I'll think I'll finish reading that!

Because I don't think anybody's going to be willing to loan me their books for a while now.