Book collecting

I really want those art books on the far right

Oh, I meant books, I have one modern library signed. Also a Richard scarry and a Kissinger

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You'd like the stuff in my office and the in laws house, I like middle ages/ renaissance the best, Skira books are grand

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The top left one. What is that?

they're just not practical
you can't pirate them
you need to store them
and god help you if you have a significant library and decide to move houses.

its just problematic in many respects
a decent e-reader and libgen is just so much better in so many ways...

Today I got a box of Verne from the 70s and 80s. They are not perfect but quite alright for reading. I'm going to buy one from the 1880s to compare and see if I like them more.

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>and god help you if you have a significant library and decide to move houses.
Last month I moved with 2000 books. :^)

Bruh my book collection is worth the two extra boxes

user, contrary to what the faggots on this board thing, collecting books as works of physical art is based. Not as based as genuinely enjoying reading and striving to find and curate beautiful additions of your favorite works as a magnificent physical expression and embodiement of the ideas, narrative, and artistry contained therein, but still based.

I'm realizing now that I should maybe get into book binding and turn my favorite books into really nice hardcovers. Could be nice but it would probably take a lot of practice and also cost a lot to get the tools and materials I need.

>billy graham memoir right next to "white trash"
a schizo owns this book shelf

>just like the cover and sleeve to a record.
ok but buying records is 100x more consumerist than buying books so that's a dumb example

Madame Bovary trans from Marx's daughter folio society, circa 1970s. It's gilded silver and pink

I have each translation and the Pleiades in French, I don't have a Norton critical yet, mostly because I don't have room.

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You really need to get another shelf.

Lots of firsts and older modern library books

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This is overflow

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>Me too, but humidity is destroying my leather bound books. I fucking hate Tokyo's jungle tier spring/summer.
According to some guy who works at one of the oldest leather care manufacturers in the country, leather likes to be slightly acidic as far as PH goes, and you need to keep the leather moisturized.
This is the reason leather book covers are oiled or conditioned.
The problem, is that paper really needs to be kept acid neutral, or PH buffered a bit.
This creates an issue, were book pages, and leather book covers, require different PH values, which may be why old leather books routinely have work out covers, that look bad.

The exception as far as leather goes seems to be Vellum, since that usually handles non acidic PH values well, and may even be better off at a neutral PH or a buffered PH value.
Old Vellum bound books are routinely in good shape.

As far as later books go.
Many publishers fid, and still do, use buckram cloth for binding books.
Buckram is cloth that has been “sized” with some type of glue or paste formula.
The glue or paste usually doesn’t handle high humidity well, and will get screwed up if water or other moisture gets on it.
The most highly flexed areas of the buckram will also get worn out, over time.
Non sized cloth might be better, but it is not usually used for book binding, although Everyman’s library, and maybe Library of America choose not to size the outside cloth in their book covers.

As far as paper goes, there was a period of decades in the USA after wood pilp started to be used for making paper, when the paper was acidic, even in higher quality books, because the problems with Lignin and acid weren’t understood.
I forget when the issue was realized, and when counter measures were taken, but some historically important books have somewhat crappy paper in their first editions.
Some of the Scribner first editions of Hemingway for instance from the 1920s.
By the time ‘A Movable Feast’ was published, the issues seem to have been fixed.

Lol I got both those for free recently and haven't read either.

I do lots of old leather restoration myself, and it does need a good near neutral conditioner applied a few times a year.

Who here /booksaboutbooks/?

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I'm something of a collector myself.
> love the physical book more than the contents of said book
I wouldn't go this far. The book can be an object of art unto itself, beyond the contents of its text. This goes for illustrations and the format, binding, method (letterpress, custom papers), typeset.

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What is the printing year of these books?

my approach to book collecting is that buying online or retail is cheating. i love the hunt. finding a first or rare book that's unrecognized in a box at a sale or thrift shop is so satisfying. especially when i know that if i hadn't found it the book would likely be lost.

Varied. This bookcase is mostly Easton Press and Franklin Library. Franklin is now defunct, EP still exists. Franklins editions begin in the 70s and runs to 2000, but the quality trends downward during this period and if you want to collect them you need to be aware of how they printed their series - often you'll find the same text block reused in inferior bindings they sold for less.

Once you get a hang of identifying which are real leather bindings they have some of the finest editions.

EP also began in the 70s. They did a lot of reprints of Heritage Press editions which were in turn the 'cheap' versions of Limited Editions Club, a Macy publisher. LEC has a huge variety in quality and often a great focus on the illustrations picked for the edition. Some of said illustrators are great, some are imo horrid. This is of course reflected in the EP reprints. The best EP you can find are the deluxe editions where they hire their own illustrators.
OP has two such editions (Moby Dick and Kalevala).

Eh, some are alright, most are meh.

When you get a program with a production book it's also fun

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And the diplomatic gifts are neat

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>if you want to collect them
I actually don't. I hate how cheap and tacky they look with their artificial old-timey binding. It's as if someone wanted to mock old books and created those abominations. I despise this look with a passion.

>i love the hunt. finding a first or rare book that's unrecognized in a box at a sale or thrift shop
I used to love this but the last 10 years every barn yard thrift has someone that's looked up the approximate value of the titles online and finding a steal is close to impossible.

The hunt is the most pure and sublime way of book collecting but since I started searching for very specific authors that have been out of print for over 150 years and for rare art books that have been printed in other countries or continents I now have to resume to buying books online.

I know all about the old limited editions club/heritage. Easton's are still a bit gauche in large quantities

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>artificial old-timey binding
What a bizarre comment. Only a handful of publishers are keeping bookbinding traditions alive.

>Easton's are still a bit gauche in large quantities
If you say so. I like the uniformity. A fair criticism would be that they have often simply bound the text blocks of existing editions which is certainly a lack of creativity and artistry. Still, the paper is archival and the leather and gilding is good. It's only in the deluxe editions you get a sense that they're really trying to provide something exceptional.

But then it's all about tastes at that price point, your options are very varied. I see some collectors that won't touch anything not letterpressed. I have some Suntup incoming and it'll be interesting to see how those stand up. I've not yet hit the Thornwillow type private presses level of collecting.

I've spent time in fine, European libraries, royal libraries in central Europe and some in the Netherlands. The colors Easton press uses are like plastic diorama copies produced by Disney. They're not exactly understated. It's like Walter Benjamin's ideas about aura and reproduction. Easton press is just a shallow, hollow, and pallid reproduction of great books.

You're very upset about stronger dyes. Under some pseudointellectual idea that this was some deeply thought about artistic choice by the height of bookbinding which would be what? 1700-1900?

These are the eras of rococo and baroque. Even the victorian era was absolutely filled with garish colour. The idea that strong leather colours on books would have offended anyone throughout this period is absolutely laughable and ahistorical.

tryhard

Okay. I wouldn't know.

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hideous kitsch. throw yourself down a well you tasteless provincial

The fact that you choose not to rebut anything but double down on some assumed authority says it all. It's fine for you to think they're horrid, garish, badly made, whatever. I'm only objecting to your tortured pseud reasoning that you gave out freely.

You seem more upset about it than I am. Here's a pic from the height of bookbinding in the years just after Aldus Mantua.

Your opinion is easy to discard based on your lack of knowledge. Stronger dyes mean chromium based toxic dyes applied to "Genuine Leather" which is just an industry name for low grade leathers sanded of their deformities taken from less firm areas of the creature.

You do well to justify your taste in these books. You've fortified your opinion and that's all well and good. Easton Press seems to be striving to recreate the Everyman's idea, that one could make both handsome and affordable books for the aspiring middle class to replicate the private libraries of the wealthy. One sees this often in the homes of first generation middle class people. They buy knock off Scalamandra, Ethan Allen rather than Henredon, and put Easton Press books on their plywood bookshelves that have a Mahogany fascia. I imagine you also have some fine prints from Kirkland adorning your halls. The finest tapestries made by ikea, eh?

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You post a picture of vellum to make a point about leather colouration while touting your expertise. Have a nice day.

based Reader's Digest collector

Not much of a reason to try and sway someone so devoted to a publisher as degenerate and common as Easton.
Do you think there's anyway I could change an opinion as entrenched as yours?

I could tell you about Robert Darnton, or Elizabeth Eisenstein, or even some of the great writers on illuminated manuscript binding traditions, we could talk about the development of Biedermeier and Bourgeois taste during the 19th century, but what would the point be?

Ultimately, you've made your easton bed.

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The notion that he considers this art confirms my suspicion that it must be a dishonest attempt to undermine the board. This post intends to incite.

Agreed, we don't often see such wonderful staging from real estate agents now that real estate sells itself.

>devoted to a publisher
One bookcase out of 10, with half the content being Franklin Library. They're also not more expensive than a hardcover on the secondary market so there's no devotion required.
> illuminated manuscript
Known for being subtle and avoiding strong colours right?

It's hilarious how absolutely assblasted people are about this one picture. I'll make sure to post it more often.

based épic trolleur

You're missing the point again, because you're so devoted to Easton (owners of the Franklin). There is a difference between a hand copied and drawn illuminated manuscript, and your mass-marketed eastons that live in the age of mechanical reproduction. Your books have no aura. They are soulless imitations of taste.

Like your bookcase, you don't have the warmth of real books. These are shadowy representations of the idea of a book.

>White Trash
>Isenberg
Congratulations, you have monetarily contributed to subversion

Oh I see the only real books come from the era before mechanical reproduction? My bad. That Gutenberg must have been a real thorn in your side.

There's a difference between gutenberg's press, that required enormous effort to set and press the letters, on high quality paper, hand-bound with boning and all, compared to your abominations printed in china, made with chinese leather, and assembled in the US.

It's just an imitation of everyman's with a higher sticker price.

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Now that we got that out of our system, can we get back to comfyposting?

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Man, that's a nice setup, ideal even, except, is that a European window? Are you German?

Had I spent as much on those readers digest books, I'd be similarly defensive. can't feel good being confronted with discomfiting ideas.

>Man, that's a nice setup, ideal even, except, is that a European window? Are you German?
I'm pretty sure it's Arno Schmidt's setup.