In praise of real books

They say they are on the wane. Disappearing. They call them "dead-tree books". "Fetishes". And worse, probably. Well, I for one don't care about the names. Real books made me a bibliophile, at about age three, when I signed my name for the first time, in a Ladybird book about the lives of composers (vol.2). Real books fed my passion, and still do. In my life at least, nothing can replace them.

Hardcovers and paperbacks, luxury editions and mass market, presentation volumes and rejects rescued from the trash (yes! I Dumpster-Dive For Books!)--as long as they are real, you'll find you can love them, sometimes as much as a pet, or dare I say it, another of our species.

Litmus test for a real book? You can bite it. Also, you can take pictures of it.

Sebastian Brant, The Ship of Fools, 1971 (Folio Society)

Take note of the first Fool: he of "Useless Books" :) (click to enlarge)

Hear, hear!

Count me among those for whom a book is a fetish, or, more properly, a talisman. Nothing on an e-device can match the thrill of discovering on a shelf in a secondhand bookshop an almost pristine 1937 edition of Departed Glory: The Deserted Cities of India (Epworth Press, London) or that Penguin Modern Classic with the pale green spine that you didn't even know existed.



And any decor without piles of books is just, well, sterile in my reckoning.

Hey, no cover! You owe us PICTURES, Mak!

'I have made a heap of all that I could find...'

'...these fragments I have shored against my ruin.'

3
Well, I'm working on it. Old dog, new trick.

ETA: Got the photo up, just need to get sizing/focus right. The image is much clearer in my LT gallery.

This activity is perilously close to "work".

*sigh*

I'm with Maki, unfortunately, tech challenged. Do you upload to a pic site and link to it? It does sound like work. There must be an easier way?

I'm kicking myself for not having placed my lovely Cellini pipe next to the book. Would have made a nice composition.

Or a glass of Jameson's...

Or....

#7

I can hear a budding artist talking! :)

Tros, Maki--as long as you have a digital camera, you're set to go. There are many free online pic sites--I use http://www.photobucket.com. Once you upload the pictures, ONE click copies the thumbnail code (as in #1), or any of the several options they provide.

Uploading to LT gallery works too--just give us a link so we can see the bigger picture.

Btw

that Penguin Modern Classic with the pale green spine

Those are my fave Penguins! Best pictorial cover design of the series (although the older black/greys in the smaller format are nice too).

The obvious question is why doesn't lt let users upload directly to talk?
It would enhance talk to have pics integrated. Must be other issues?

Real books are so different from each other.

A few days ago I received a copy of Edward Bellamy's Looking backward published in 1941 by the Limited Editions Club, illustrated by Elise Cavanna. The colours and the paper, 70 years later, are amazing.





Endpapers:

#10

The interwebs is all magic to me, tros, all I know is you gotta place the image somewhere online before you can link to it. It's very easy once you get the hang of it!

And this anthology of Jules Laforgue's poetry, by a French book club (CFL, 1952), reproduces Laforgue's manuscript with drawings in the endpapers:

Hubert Dreyfus had a bestseller in the seventies, What computers can't do. I don't know how it held up... Here's what e-books can't do! For example!

Robert Sabuda's The mummy's tomb and The night before Christmas

Some hellfire to brighten up your day. ;-)
http://www.librarything.com/work/1116741

Guy Endore is the last member of the hellfire club. For real hellfire;
The Werewolf of Paris

ts kaput!

11

That book is in AMAZING condition!! Absolutely gorgeous!

12
you gotta place the image somewhere online before you can link to it

I'm quite happy to hear this. Glad to know I'm not an idiot for not being able to upload to the thread from my computer. But then again, I can upload to my gallery from my computer....

I'll never understand how the internet works.

Your gallery is an "online place"! Like Photobucket, flickr, et al.

I will most definitely be using it for posting book photos, etc.

Well, you post to these online album places the same way--there's an "upload" button, you choose the pic source on your computer, and that's it. I don't know whether there's a limit to how much you can upload in the LT gallery... In any case, the principle's the same.

> 14

One of our local newspaper columnists had a post on his blog touting eReaders. In a response to one of the comments, he said: "Here's the test: If you could digitize every book in your collection and store the entire library on a searchable and well-protected e-reader (make it two such devices, one for instant backup, lostt prevention) if it meant you had to discard every single ink on paper book in your collection, would you? I would in a heartbeat."

I'm the commenter who pointed out that I couldn't enjoy my pop-up collection on a Kindle!

#20

Or any number of art books, atlases, comics etc!

Lilithcat, btw, is directly responsible for my discovery of Sabuda and the world of pop-ups, hellcats-at-large. Would you have any images of your collection at hand? Or a link maybe? In any case, you're most welcome to post them here!

Fantastic books Lola! I am moist, moist I tell you!

Maki, you can also upload pictures onto your blogspot account, save them there as a draft, so they are not published there, and then grab the URL from the saved draft. That's how I do my pics. Sizing is easier that way too.

Ooh, the smell of wet cat in the morning!

Any fetishes-talismans, Murr? I`m only getting started... the full extent of my madness will lie revealed ere this thread hits #50, I tell you...

Yes, I'll post some pictures tomorrow.

> 21

Here's a favorite from one of David A. Carter's books:


And here's a video of Marion Bataille's ABC3D, which combines my love of pop-ups with my love of abecedaria: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnZr0wiG1Hg

A $600 steal. (Link to publisher, with gallery.)

El Lissitzky and Max Burchartz reprints from Lars Müller

"...a series that Verlag Lars Muller published in the mid-90s reprinting facsimiles of great graphic design from the 20s and 30s..."






When I'm rolling in money, etc...

A book I actually own, having been extravagant sometime last year.

Someone else's photos of the unboxing (packaging was identical, since I bought it new):

Of course, there is some irony in the fact these exchanges are taking place electronically...

... Although one of the most important factors in crumpling all my resistance in a bookstore has not been mentioned, and cannot be transmitted via bits and bytes: the smell of fresh pages in a newly printed book.

#30 Yes, Existanai, you are right; physical books are so much more sensual than electronic ones.

#27

Do remember old friends when you're rolling in the money--that Lissitzky would be just the right token of friendship. ;)

#25

Love it! Just beautiful. But now I must see more of the dot book. That ABC pop-up I actually saw in the store, a last battered demo copy. Want!

#32 - Sure, but with that much in my wallet, I'll be casting lecherous glances at your shelves too. :)

...French Decorative Bookbinding, particularly gold tooled works from the 16th to the 18th centuries...

Another thing e-readers are crummy at: conveying that delicious pulp badness. It's a sin to be bland!

These were collected with the kind help of LTers Bob & Maggie, collectors extraordinaire:

Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu series

#35 Wonderful collection. I've had to settle for the modern day omnibus.

#36

Omnibuses! Almost as bad as e-books! (How I'd love to replace each and every one of mine with original editions of the separate titles...)

I think I'm still missing at least two of the Rohmer Fu Manchus, in this pulpy incarnation. I have #1 as a Dover reprint with an utterly unprepossessing cover (just the title, no image at all), and--mayyybe--the last one in the sequence.

And now for a talisman! Of the thousands of books that passed through my hands, some of which surround me here in the house of books, only one is truly talismanic, in the sense of "bury me with this book, please"--my 1957 copy of Tri debeljka, a translation of Yuri Olesha's The Three fat men (Tri tolstyaka in Russian). It was my mom's school prize for overall excellence when she was eleven, and I got it from her when I was about seven...

I don't know how many books of huge sentimental value can have been written by writers of Olesha's calibre. Soviet literature is probably the richest in the world in this regard--writers were finding children's literature a relative haven for expression, and children's literature was held to be of highest importance, with talents of rank sought out and encouraged to create it.

Not that I knew anything about the author (or the USSR for that matter) for years after this work stimulated my imagination and taught me a new language, of poetry, imagery, metaphor, allegory. And new words my parents never used (I didn't know then that the Croatian of the book sounded a bit strange because it was the Bosnian variant.) The magic was in the panoply of extravagant characters and above all in the astounding sensory richness of the book--the vivid colour and sounds (Olesha's sound effects were often replicated thanks to the coincidence of language proximity.)

The story is properly revolutionary. Three fat oppressors of the people get their comeuppance at the hands of a conspiracy of freedom fighters: a couple of circus acrobats, an old scientist, a red-haired leader of the workers, the royal guard. The central figure is a fearless little girl, an acrobat and dancer with a secret past.

The story was a great success in the USSR and was made into a play and a ballet, and filmed at least once. Olesha's class sins, however, continued to accumulate, and although his fate was less grim than that of many (i.e. he lived, outside a gulag, even), his relationship with the Powers was never calm and unproblematic.

oh gosh, look at those endpapers!

Rustic jolliness!

Am I to be relieved of this yammer yammer yammer duty soon, o pic-promising cat?

The Glorious Adventures of Tyl Ulenspiegl by Charles de Coster, trans: Macdougall, published by Pantheon Books, NY 1944. A fetish for me, largely because of the glorious, glorious woodcuts by Frans Masereel, one of my favourite artists of all time. This book was given to me by my godfather, a Dutchman, when I was a boy.

If I was not such a techie dumbass, I would take pictures of all the illustrations and put them up on the web somewhere. As it is, it's taken me the better part of an hour to do this. Christ, I need a drink.

#37 You have me yearning to find a copy of The Three Fat Men.

I have a copy of Vanity Fair which was presented to my mother at school. I read it when I was twenty-one and loved it.

My Russian reading is limited so far to, Vladimir Voinovich, Pushkin and Dmitry Bykov, with some Sholokhov on my TBR pile. A wealth of un-mined pleasure available to me.

#40 Great pictured. A lovely book. I must take some photographs of my copy of Irishmen All by George A Birmingham. The illustrations are by Jack B. Yeats, brother of W.B. Yeats.

OMG!OMG!OMG!

I have THAT SAME BOOK! Lookee! MY book! Lookee the masonic bong party! (Now what was THAT about...?)

Yours is in better condition than mine tho'! You got it as a boy? Goodness, you must have been a much better boy than I was a girl.

I'll show you the French/Russian edition of Til I have (it's a fave--I have three full-length versions and various selections).

#41

You must! Yeats' father was a painter too wasn't he...

#42 Yes he was. I hate referencing Wikipedia, but it is the easiest way, so: here.

And here's one of my Tills (Tyls)--the Russian edition of the French original, Moscow, Progress Publishing, 1979, preface by Romain Rolland, artwork by one D. S. Bisti (French? Russian? Other?):

For an LT friend: posting what I hope is adequate illustration of a Folio Society edition of The Golem:

Drool! Drool!

I ordered The Golem last week; only a paperback edition. I had been bidding for the Tartarus Press edition but it got a bit too dear for my current reserves.

That is a beautiful edition you have.

OH!! The Tartarus Press illustrations--by Hugo Steiner-Prag--are a reprint from the first edition (on my wishlist for ages).

This is its cover:

A conceit of the bibliomaniac - that we are “salvaging” the past for the future. Here is an edition of Santinelli’s De Romanorum Veterum Nobilitae Dissertatio (Venice, 1717) which I purchased with some other Latin books at a yard sale in Texas some years back. Nothing so special about it, other than its age, but it is one of the older books in my library. I can’t read it, this obsolete book in a dead language, but it inspires wonder: who was the last person to read it? Will it ever be read again? Whose hands rubbed the cover so smooth? It will pass on from me, probably to one of my sons, and who knows where it will go from there. Will it ever be read again? Like a tree falling in a forest, is an unread book even a book? Or is it something else?

> 48

who was the last person to read it?
Assuming someone ever did! I picked up Riflessioni del signor Nicole sopra i principali punti della religione e de' costumi, the first Italian edition from 1769, and it's almost entirely uncut and untrimmed!

49
Quite right. After searching high and low, I finally stumbled across a late 19th century copy of Hawthorne's American Notebooks. I was astonished to find the pages yet uncut. My children watched in something like amazement as I cut the pages; for days afterward, my 6 year old would go pick up the book and leaf through the pages. It was so magical for him to know that he was looking at something so old, but that no one had ever looked at before.

http://www.librarything.com/work/9824498/book/58967456
The 1925 Symons trans of Flowers of Evil, with intermittent uncut pages. Obviously never read.

>51 tros:
* drool*

pictures?

Beautifully put Maki. Lola, I love your edition of Tyl!

We haven't mentioned an estimable LT member, ajourneyroundmyskull (Will Schofield), who salvages and posts fantastic sets of illustrations, book covers, and other ensorcellments on his blog http://50watts.com/ (formerly http://ajourneyroundmyskull.blogspot.com/) . If you don't already know his site, I strongly recommend bookmarking it, if not subscribing to it. Here's his selection of "Greatest Hits".

Fascinating Mr. ajourneyroundmyskull. I could get lost in "Greatest Hits", especially loved Poets Ranked by Beard Weight.

I wondered what happened to ajourneyroundmyskull! thanks for the link.

Don Quixote, 4 volumes published by John Grant, Edinburgh 1902, with etchings by Lalauze:

Lovely - new acquisition?

Featured on Abebooks' main page today is the illustrator Szyk and his version of the Haggadah. The 2008 "luxury limited edition" is selling for $18,000.





There's an official website for the Szyk estate, and you can browse a gallery of large images here.

What I'd love to get a hold of is this:




Les Amours de Cassandre, Pierre de Ronsard, illustrated by Dalí.

From listing: one of only 165 copies on arches blanc (out of a total edition of 299). Complete with 10 full-plate and 8 vignette drypoint etchings by Dalí. Paris: Argillet, 1968. Folio, contents loose as issued in pictorial wrappers; gilt-stamped black cloth clamshell box. Michler-Lopsinger 250. A hint of rubbing to box. A fine copy. Rare. Price: US$ 12000.00

(Edited: now clickable.)

delicious.

No, not a new acquisition, but another childhood gift from my godfather. I have lugged those four volumes all around the world on my travels. I tried to sell them once when I was very short of cash, but the antiquarian bookseller I took them to only sneered and said, "oh yes, Grant's Quixote, lot's of those around. Give you 20 quid for them."

I'm glad I didn't sell them. They are not in very good condition, but the etchings are of course divine.

"oh yes, Grant's Quixote, lot's of those around. Give you 20 quid for them."

Don't know whether the sneer was personal or professional, but I'm glad that, on occasion, I benefit when irony trumps assholes (there are shabby copies online for $2-300). One of the few remaining pleasures in observing the fleeting passage of time.

http://www.librarything.com/work/11190410
Max Ernst
Histoire Naturelle
Abrams (1972), Edition: Limited E. , Hardcover # 149 of 400, elephant portfolio of b/w prints intro by Jean Arp

Just reading this thread brings the smell of books to my nostrils; or is it from the more than 1,000 books surrounding me in my study.

No, it's definitely this thread.

I come to praise real books! Hallelujah! Brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts! Clap your hands!

Wesleyan U. (Connecticut) has been issuing some nice volumes in their Early Classics of Science Fiction series, as well as some modern sf in translation. I've a few (first pic); and here I concentrate on the (first English!) translation of Albert Robida's Le Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century), orig. pub. 1883. Illustrated by the author--see also Murr's posts above.





Ordinary paperbacks, but REAL books!

Here's one for Tomcat:



Aww, who da cute widdo waif? Who so cute? Ohhh, YOU da cute widdo waif! Yes you ARE!

From the set "The Novels of Victor Hugo" published by Peter Fenelon Collier, New York, "profusely illustrated with elegant wood engravings."

Oh, that's pretty famous, isn't it--who's the illustrator? Could you embiggen it some, Maki?

I think it's the image for the original poster from the musical. You can peruse a larger image in my gallery.

The set I have is obviously old, late 19th century I presume. The Dore-esque illustrations are quite nice, and I assume they came from an original French edition. There is frustratingly little bibliographic data in this set.

Ah-ha!

Émile-Antoine Bayard

All these beautiful books are getting me all hot and bothered.

I recently became the proud parent of this deluxe testimonial edition of infamous literary pirate Thomas B. Mosher's literary journal The Bibelot, 21 volumes complete including index, fine bound in 3/4 crushed blue morrocco over blue cloth. I am beside myself with joy.







The Bibelot contains many rare treasures including Simeon Solomon's A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep. Works by such notables as Swinburne, Pater, Vernon Lee, Blake and many others too numerous to mention here made their American debut in The Bibelot, printed without permission by Mosher. Translations of Baudelaire, Villon, and Sappho made their first appearance in the US in the Bibelot as well. The first copyright agreement between the US and the UK was a direct result of Mosher's literary piracy.

As a book collector I love my kindle because it eliminates the need to purchase paperback reading copies from print on demand publishers. Now I have more room and funds available for lovely old editions.

P.S. The maroon clothbound set on the shelf below is The Works of Theophile Gautier, Tarbes Edition, p. Sproul, 1908, 24 volumes complete.

WOW, David! Beautiful babies! I'm feeling mighty inspired to do some book (be)getting of my own! Did you find them online or in person? Wonderful shape they look to be in too. Wow. Envy here.

Now I have more room and funds available for lovely old editions.

Yeah, we were talking in several places about this likely outcome of the e-book revolution. But I can't help feeling a bit sorry for writers who'll never get to see their work in actual print. I know that I wouldn't feel I've really written a book without "a" "book" to show for it.

#68

I was just going to ask... So have you been buying more antiquarian of late or was it always a focus?

I have always had a thing for old books and antiques. As Keats said, a thing of beauty is a joy forever.

It's wonderful to be able to share them with people who love books as much as I do.

One advantage of the e-text is that it is much easier to self publish now than ever before. I hope the paradigm shift in publishing will result in more small presses printing high quality books for bibliophiles and fewer big publishers cutting down forests to print cheap paperbacks of garbage like Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer.

hear hear. I love that set of biblots as well. Serious envy here.

The illustrations for the first edition of les Mis are by Gustave Brion. I tried to find some online yesterday for the black and white thread, but I couldn't find any I could grab the URL from. I'll try again over the weekend. To my mind they are far superior to Bayard's

Greatly enjoying all your exquisite images.

Here's the title page to the original ed. of Salome. Would like to say it's from my collection, but that would be a fib. It's copied from a nice nugget I salvaged from the dreck of a library book sale, Into the Demon Universe: A Literary Exploration of Oscar Wilde.

Beardsley was something special... Do you know Franz von Bayros, EF? Similar to Beardsley in style and technique, but more "illustrative", less ornamental.

No, I hadn't heard of him. Thanks for the tip! I'm a neophyte in the finer things regarding books. Until recently I'd never paid much attention to illustrators and book design and such.