Bookplate Snobbery

I've been thinking about getting my own personal bookplates (or ex-libris, if you will). Since I'm a snob-in-training just anything won't do: I won't be satisfied with any of-the-shelf plates - I'm looking for a way to get a completely customized and original design. Does anyone have any tips on where to look?

Also, while I'm on the topic: does anyone feel have any book-snobbish habits they would like to share? I'm thinking of things like personal book plates, custom shelves, custom bindings, lavishly furnished libraries... that sort of thing.

A true snob does not deface books. There is nothing more irritating than paying hundreds of dollars for that signed first edition, only to discover that someone has pasted in book-plate. A true snob always has one eye on the value of their books...

I agree, Ian. Unless the book was owned by someone famous or important and such, I wouldn't want to deface my own books with a bookplate. Isn't that what LT is for? So I know what books I have?

What about marginalia? I would imagine a snob to of the type who make notes and comments in the margins of his/her texts.

I don't. Why would I wreck a book for that? Also, publishers like Oxford and Penguin give ample notes for curious readers.

That's still defacing a book. Books are objects to be collected and treasured. What you have on your book-shelves says a lot about you.

Not if you don't write in them.

I write in cheap editions sometimes, with pencil. At times I'll use postit notes to make little snarky comments or to highlight a passage I like. It's my way of having dialogue with the author.

Just can't bring myself to highlight or write in a book. Same with book plates. Most of my tomes don't even have my name written in them.

I don't do bookplates or put my name in books but I love to scratch notes in books and underline passages (especially in, but certainly not limited to, nonfiction.)

There are books in my collections and there are books I read to enjoy, for reference and to argue with. Some are written in (in pencil always), some are not allowed to sit in the same room with a pencil.

I use postit notes to bookmark pages I like (especially in poetry books).

I own cheap books almost without exception (except for the fancy illustrated LOTR I got last Xmas), and yet I don't want to dogear or write in them.

I sometimes buy used books that someone else has underlined/written in and I am invariably in disagreement with what they are trying to emphasize.

Oh, and since I grew out of the stage at about 12 where I loved using decorative rubber stamps, I've never had a desire to put my name in the front of a book. My father used to have what looked like handpasted squares with his name and address typed in, in some of those Modern Library editions he had. I don't think he's done that since he was in his 30s or so.

I picked up a couple of Simenon short story collections at my local library sale a while back and found, on reading the first story, that the previous reader had highlighted one particular name and penciled exclamation marks (!) in the margins at certain points in the story

At the end of the story I realised that the name highlighted was the person who "dunnit", and the "!" were key plot points.

All the stories were highlighted.

Both books were from the same original owner.

(I'm groping for the moral here).

14: The moral is, if one were the kind of person that writes computer viruses that he/she knows will target random people, one would probably also get a kick out of doing this to mysteries and getting them back in circulation.

I mean, WHY? That's just...cruel. It's like watching a movie with your younger kids who have already seen it and trying to keep them from spoiling it for you.

Poor old Jannes. Must be starting to wonder if they've completely shot their snob credentials...

In this group, no setback is unrecoverable. Except perhaps declaring a great admiration for the works of Kevin J Anderson, Stephenie Meyer or Dan Brown.

Thornton Melon: (in college bookstore) Hey, you guys get everything you need?
Jason Melon: Oh, yeah, we got it.
Thornton Melon: Good... Hey! What's with the used books?
Jason Melon: Well, what's wrong with used books?
Thornton Melon: They've already been read!
Jason Melon: Yeah, and they already been UNDER-LINED, too. Get it?
Thornton Melon: That's the problem. The last guy who under-lined them, he could have been a maniac! Hey, get these guys some new books. Huh? Get some new books, will ya?

Fromm "Back to School"

Some years ago I was given a set of bookplates as a gift. The picture bove my name was the cover painting of Dinotopia. I thought, what am I supposed to do with these? Not every book is Dinotopia. If I use two of them (one for the sequel) what about the remaining 98? All 100 are in a box in my basement.

Several of the books I own have bookplates, but they are from my Grandfather's library, and I treasure them. Old style Grecian art, like the side of an urn.

I absolutely cannot stand highlighting in books. Somehow marginalia I can tolerate, except for the fact that most previous owners of used books seem to have nothing relevant to say. Now if I get a book from someone I know, I almost enjoy their commentary more than the book itself. One day the other half of "sollocks" and I plan to reread House of Leaves and add our own layer of annotations, both commenting on the book and corresponding with each other. Not only that, my copy of Coraline was a gift from a very dear friend. Reading it recently I saw that he had written in the margins before giving it to me, which first made me slightly annoyed, until I saw what he'd written. After the Other Mother swears on her mother's grave, Coraline expresses doubt that she had really had one. The Other Mother assures Coraline that she did once have a mother, and says something to the effect of "and when she crawled out of that grave I put her right back in again." Next to this paragraph my friend had written "Oh, JESUS!" It was like he was right there beside me.

But highlighting is entirely different; pointless and annoying. If someone has something to say I'm fine with it, but leaving pink and yellow streaks throughout a book is the literary equivalent of a drunken frat boy's inexpert fumbling beneath the blouse of a once innocent work of literature.

18: WONDERFUL metaphor. I am in awe.

"...leaving pink and yellow streaks throughout a book is the literary equivalent of a drunken frat boy's inexpert fumbling beneath the blouse of a once innocent work of literature."

Yes!

Terrific allusion.

Well, I do like my metaphors extended AND mixed if I can manage it.

Highlighting is crude and ugly unless the text--say, an Ed. Psych textbook--is also crude and ugly and deserves the treatment.

Thinking too much about the value of your books--and making the decision to write in them or not based on that value--is fussy and stupid. Seeing a book primarily as an object turns it into a fetish and does a lot more violence to its contents than writing in it.

The bigger problem with writing in books is that you're bound to be embarrassed by your own comments five years down the road.

I enjoy my commodity fetishism, thank you very much ;)

Some books are fetishes, or quasi-sacred relics. Taschen, Abrams, Abbeville, Rizzoli, etc. produce beautiful objects that are art pieces in and of themselves. My Eric Kroll book by Taschen is a wonderful reliquary of 1950s kink art.

I guess it depends how much of an orthodox Marxist you are. Granted, all books will disintegrate and turn to dust ... eventually, but I'm with Barthes in taking "pleasure in the text" or illustrations. That said, I own several MAD Magazines from the early 1960s. I have them in protective covers, but I also like to read them occasionally.

22:

re: fetishizing books...
I think a book's object-ness is one of its main virtues. You don't need to see a book "primarily" as an object to acknowledge that yes, in fact, it is one. Object-ness is one of many qualities it has.

I never write in books (minus books that are vectors of information exclusively), and I don't highlight anything. I think a margin note or an underlined passage in, let's say The Sound and the Fury, is a kind of sacrilege. The author has spent countless hours agonizing over the words and the presentation of those words, and anything added by the reader alters the experience of reading. If you're using a book as a tool, e.g. to teach a class or lead a discussion, then I think marginalia is excusable, but outside that kind of thing, the exceptions are few.

One such exception, I should add, is House of Leaves, which I saw mentioned above. I count it as an exception (ie inviting marginalia) because of the way the book is written and the theory it engages with.

I have the Collected Poetry of William Blake and one of the sub-categories is his marginalia from other books. Fascinating stuff, given that Blake was an eccentric visionary and artistic genius.

I do enjoy books with an abundant referential apparatus (footnotes, marginal glosses, etc.). Check out medieval Bibles. They turned the text into a sacred collage of references, notes, art, etc. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool not-religious person (pick your pejorative, I could care less), but I loves me a well-annotated Bible. I'd love to get my hands on a Masonic Bible with all the symbolism and such.

I'm such a snob that I try not to fold over pages or harm the book's spine. I give this treatment to even my used and battered mass market paperbacks. Granted, I work in a Museum, so my reverence for objects and my completist / collector's bug may be more acute than others. Your mileage may vary.

I still maintain that using book plates is snobbish: Since I will definitely be famous (possibly infamous) It's only logical to assume that my personalized book plates will someday increase the value of my collection. At least after my death.

And to be clear: I would never dream of defacing something truly old and rare with an exlibris, but I am i n the habit of hastily scribbling my name inside the cover of books that are about to be borrowed, and a tasteful book plate would be much more preferable.

(And I would never either write my name - nor paste a book plate - in a Dan Brown book... that would be to damning in the eyes of future biographers.)

26: If you loan your books out a lot, I think the book plate sounds like a good idea.

I have a very good friend here on LibraryThing who gave me these two quotes on his welcome message to me when I joined:

"Never lend books - nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me." - Anatole France

The owner of a country house was showing visitors over a superb library. "Do you ever lend books?" he was asked. "No," he replied promptly, "Only fools lend books." Then, waving his hand to a many-shelved section filled with handsomely-bound volumes, he added, "All those books once belonged to fools." - Frank Hird, in The Times, March 7, 1928.

I can't believe you people don't underline in your favorite books! I ask you, who is more snobbish that and English major or grad student or professor? Any of these people will tell you that they must underline to do what we do! If I have written a paper about the book in question, it is rife with underlines and stars and notes in the margin. How else is one to find the important evidence quickly needed to support a thesis?

English majors aren't snobs, they're poseurs.

**Prepares to duck**

B***T. Every English PhD was once a lowly major! English majors are the ones who admit to enjoying and getting excited about James Joyce and Henry James! I admit a few do read Harry Potter. But most have their noses high in the air! I actually have a bone to pick because that twerp has stolen my name.

If we take a poll of every member in this group, I'm sure most would admit to being a major at one time or another.

I only wish I had seen myself clearly enough to be one when I was still in college.

Elizabeth got here just before I did--I'm shocked that so few people here have ways of marking their favorite passages. My favorite books are dog-eared and underlined to hell--the Proust volumes I'm ambling through these past several months are positively absurd. Generally, if I make it through a book without underlining something I want to return to someday, that book is then chucked from my collection.

Function over form, for me. As much as reading a new book, I enjoy picking a random volume off my "previously-read" shelves and revisiting all the passages I marked before, remembering lines I'd forgotten, assessing my changing relationship with what I found important before.

And I must say, Sutpen, I can't imagine an author being peeved at the physical signs of a reader engaging with the text. I met one of my favorite authors in person at a reading last year, and the sight of my well-worn and dog-eared copy of one of his books elicited quite the grin as he signed it.

Well said!

Most of the time when I finish a book you can hardly tell it's been read. The spine is barely wrinkled and I never leave a book splayed open on a surface, always use a bookmark.

I know, I know, I'm an oddball...

Ann Fadiman wrote a very good essay on this subject, entitled "Never do that to a book" (included in her Ex Libris: Confessions of a common reader collection). Her theory is that there are two kinds of book lovers:

- Carnal (marks it up, lays it face down, dogears the pages, etc)
- Knightly (or something like that) (tries to keep it as pristine as possible)

Love Ex Libris, Love Anne Fadiman!

Ever read anything by her father? The Lifetime Reading Plan is a kick. 400 pages of intelligent and witty recommendations from every period in western canon. I also have a collection of stories he assembled and edited called "Dionysus" made up of stories all about wine, which I've yet to get to.

37: The only thing I read by her father was his great introduction to the Dr. Seuss Reader. He is definitely someone I have to check out.

I really loved Ex Libris - every essay was wonderful.

I think there is a distinction that we are forgetting here. The Work vs the book.

The Work is sacred. I wouldn't dream of marking up a manuscript of some great novel. However, early on I learned that I needed a reading copy of _Jane Eyre_ because my grandma's hardcover 1945 edition was getting a little worn. So I don't read that any more. I have a copy to read. This I will lend out. Call me stupid, but I don't mind losing my reading copy. If I can turn one more person onto Brontë for the price of an $8 or $9 paperback, that's fine. I kind of see it as a pay-it-forward idea. (To date I have only lost one copy that way!) I have another copy that is my scholarly copy that has all sorts of secondary source in the back. This I don't lend out either.

I just thought of a story that will make you all cringe. It made me cringe. I work at a public library. There is some book abuse. Our books have loose binding and get coffee stained. Anyway the story I wanted to tell was this. One evening just before closing I had the delight of finding a book with a twinkie smashed in it. That's right. I don't know how it got in there. This book was not returned this way; it happened in the library.

You'll all be happy to know this wasn't a literary book. It was a bad novel about Lucretia Borgia, but still. (I know this because I had the misfortune of reading it, pre-twinkie of course.)

Perhaps it was a POISONED Twinkie?

I'm a courtly lover of my books, except I scent my bookmarks so my books smell like my perfume collection. But I realise I'm odd and kind of anal retentive about stuff like that, I wish I could write in books but it gives me the heebee jeebees, even textbooks.

35: You're not that odd, Cliff. I do the same thing. I think that makes us officially a subculture. You're matching t-shirt and newsletter are in the mail ;)

For your enjoyment:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/literal-book-covers.php

Jesus, Karl, I'd hate to see what any subculture we'd belong to would look like.

I do not have book plates, but since I don't plan on selling or giving away my books I fail to see what the problem is with them. If I had one, I would use one that made an impression, not a sticker.

A few friends and I loan books somewhat promiscuously amongst ourselves and sometimes I'll use an embosser (given to me by one of the loaner/borrowers) so that eventually one of us might notice that my copy is out circulating.

w/ used books sometimes i value the notations and/or inscriptions. I have several books from the collection of a close friend's dad who was quite a famous physicist and I enjoy having Alvin's signature/notes on those volumes. Marginal notes don't bug me - sometimes they're interesting. Underlining and highlighting ARE v. annoying.

Makes me think of Bilbo Baggins giving one of his relatives a bookcase for storing all the books he'd "borrowed" over the years from Bilbo.

I primarily use LT to avoid unintentionally buying multiple copies of the same book. And for the good company as it happens.

Clifton Fadiman. Didn't he leave in his will gallons and gallons of good wine?

The best wine comes from a box ;)

MD 2020 does NOT come it a box! say it's not so! The best feature of Boone's Farm, Bali Hai et al is that they came back up as easily as they went down, iirc ;-)

Would MD 2020 melt the box? I heard it's also good for taking oil off old car parts ;)

It's reassuring to know there ARE some constants in American life (besides a separate peace). I take care of a couple of acres of yard/roadside/ abandoned RRoad right of way that are around our home and i invariably pick up a bottle or three of MadDog 2020, and similar products in the grass or roadside. (We're 2 blocks from the center/traffic circle of a small town in a rural county in North Carolina - but a town that's becoming yet another bedroom community for the Raleigh/Durham/CHill area. )

We probably bought the last home one could buy for

"Her theory is that there are two kinds of book lovers:

- Carnal (marks it up, lays it face down, dogears the pages, etc)
- Knightly (or something like that) (tries to keep it as pristine as possible)"

I used to be the Knightly sort, but somewhere along the way I realized that to really experience a book and force myself to think about what i was reading, I needed to have a conversation with the author. Writing in books (and such) is the best way I know of to really actively participate in my reading.

I still like to keep the overall physical condition of my books good, but as long as pages are still readable, I have zero issues with writing, underlining, and even highlighting (YES HIGHLIGHTING) in books.

I also have zero problems reading used books from used bookstores which have been written in, underlined, and even highlighted. The only used book I've ever had a problem with markings in is one I bought just a few weeks ago.

I bought a copy of Reading the OED. The person before me didn't just underline, highlight and write comments about things he/she found interesting or points they disagreed with... He/she bowdlerized the book in a manner of speaking. The person went through and underlined all the 4 letter words/phrases and wrote "unnecessary vulgarity" next to them right over the top of the text. What a complete ma-roon.

Bob, real estate is insane--would you want to be a young couple today, shopping around for a house to start your family? Yeesh.

Our place is almost 100 years old and while we've made a lot of improvements, there's no WAY it's worth what a recent assessment indicated. We bought the place 14 years ago for FAR less and now it's value has more than doubled. Insane. And we're out in the boonies, hardly a major centre like Toronto or Vancouver.

Makes you wonder how our kids are going to manage without being strapped for debt for the rest of their lives and THEIR kids' lives and...

Cyril Connolly, not semi-carnally.

42: Yes, Courtly was the term she used, not Knightly (I knew it sounded wrong). I left that book in Egypt - it was so small, I really should have managed to take it with. Must buy it again one of these days.

52: Re your OED story: Oh god. Dictionary - Unclear on the concept. They are descriptive, you loon (the highlighter, not you), not prescriptive.

I chucked my highlighters the day I graduated college. A few years ago I even chucked the books from college because it was embarrassing how much yellow there was in them. I guess I have just had bad luck with used books because the notations I've found always sound so asinine to me. My favorite is when there are copious notes on the first chapter and the rest of the book is pristine. I guess they dropped the class.

#53 - a friend moved from Edmonton, where she'd lived for 20+ years in a small 1200 sq foot house. It was unreal, i think it sold for almost $300,000. She and her husband are living off that in Ho Chi Minh city (she's also teaching English there). I know there is oil in the region, but still.

And around here - there's all this dead, builtup space where malls have been built and then abandoned over the last 30 yrs. They need to be squats, at least. Otherwise it's just space that's been environmentally lost and absolutely no good to anyone (though it was arguable that they were good for anyone when they had businesses in them).