A small rant

This is just a small rant. For me anyway as I am known among my friends and family as quite the ranter (is this a word?) .
Why, oh why , would anyone in their right mind publish a "how to " book that is not bound in such a way as to lie flat?
I am a huge book lover and own many of the things (this is an understatement) . My novels tend to be treated as royalty- I usually use a book mark to mark my place. This can be an old receipt or a ticket stub ,whatever. I would never put a stitched book mark in a book. I would be afraid 1) of ruining the stitching and 2) ruining the book. See , this is why my family runs and hides when I start to rant. I have trouble staying on the subject. You guys are lucky , you can just click off my blog if it is too tiresome to read any further. Anyway..... although I have seen many beautiful stitched book marks I would collect them and not actually put them in a book.
Back to the laying flat thing. I just don't get it. Why print a book on knitting, stitching, cooking , home improvement, piano notes, that someone will need at least one hand to hold open ,while they are trying to do something that they don't know how to do (Otherwise they wouldn't need he book . Right?) that probably already requires two hands. ( I had to go look up how to spell "require" don't want to be the subject of someone elses rant about people who rant,but can't spell . Which I can't ,but I like to pretend) . I can't tell you how many times I have tried to hold open a knitting book with my elbow or knee while reading how to slip some stitch that isn't happening for me any way,and the dang book keeps flipping closed, or watched my son try to keep a book of music open on the book holder thingy ,while he tries to learn a song on the piano. I mean they give you notes for both hands, how do they think you can see the notes if thebook keeps flipping closed?

We have a small advantage here ,in that I own a pretty good, copy , printer, scanner. My excuse is that I need it for my english lessons .Which I do . But, the real reason I bought it was to be able to print out free patterns from the internet and to copy pages fom "how to "books so that they can easily be clipped or taped to something at eye level . Some books, though, are bound in a way that prevent things close to the binding from being copied without hurting the book.
You all just got lucky. My next English student just showed up so I am forced to stop this. If anyone has an answer for me I would love to hear it ,but I am afraid there just isn't one.