Capn’s Reviews > A Walk Out of the World > Status Update

Finished, but will have to sleep on it to decide what to say about it. ;)

Might review this as "Tolkien-lite", alongside the Alderley books of Garner: warm-up to the big show of LotR when attention spans can cope.
A White City with usurper ruler in place of the exiled king, sentient forests, dwarves under mtns (& kobolds), bird spies, a council called, a party of diverse characters against poor odds, Lady Iorwen is white and ancient yet young (sees images in fire), Angwen is her decendant

Cornstarch WORKED! Back to acceptable levels of mustiness! Forgot to put starch between a single pair of pages, and those pages did smell more strongly. So you have to powder each and every page, which = a lot of clean-up (water soluble, at least - kitchen sink!). Not efficient, though. For a whole box, I'd try rice as per Hilary, or dehumidifiers (hoard and repurpose all those little silicon drying packets?)

(Temp. disruption: in cornstarch. Didn't fit in the rice container. Will update on efficacy of the cornstarch vs. musty old book smell technique!)

It's available for free on OpenLibrary!!! :D
So the question now is: do I lob this dank and musty book into a jar of rice, and then follow-up with Bob Villa's cornstarch trick (dude has NEVER let me down..!) and read the online version? Or do I stick the stink out? (It's either getting better with use, or I'm going nose-blind).

...anyone got any solution for VERY musty old books? Bob Villa says cornstarch overnight. I'm compelled to try this, because the microbes that eat paper might prefer to much much starch than cellulose, and also because the kitty litter and baking soda and newspaper (and dryer sheets, urgh - I don't want to ADD more stink!) methods are all week-long endeavours.
Are there odor-absorbing bookmarks?

Thank you, SEM, for this recommendation. :) Book one of the FANTASY READATHON at Middle Grade Madness: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...