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      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeFeb 22nd 2012
     

    I’ve been meaning to start this for a long time.

    There’s two parts to this thread. First is for general discussion of books as physical objects. I will give examples.

    The best cover art is that which manages to be visually engaging, and I dislike the lazy approach of reissues where they just put the name and a watercolor gradient background or something equally lifeless. This is why I collect SF with oil paintings of spaceships and explosions on the cover.

    The coolest book cover I ever saw was the one version of Samuel Delany’s NOVA with a red-toned spaceship on it. The first edition, or second mebbe. Later versions are stupid. I will find a picture later.

    My favorite kinds of books to buy are mid-1800s or 1900s ones with that particular kind of rich, warm gold color to the pages. I have a copy of the Moonstone by Wilkie Collins which has the best page color ever. Best pages, period. They’re crisp and textured and golden and cut roughly, not smooth, and they. are. awesome.

    Okay, second part of this thread is just to satisfy my latent synesthesia or whatever.

    I typed the word “litigation” just now, and it reminds me of fire extinguishers. It just looks like a red, bottle-shaped word to me. And the last time I tried to start the “some words have cool shapes” conversation I was shunned as a certifiable, so I’m trying again here.

    • CommentAuthorCrunchy
    • CommentTimeFeb 22nd 2012 edited
     
    Words don't have shapes, what are you talking about? Words have tastes.

    I just re-read The Book Thief, and I couldn't get over how much that book tasted like custard. It just. Tasted so much like custard.

    And honestly, some days I like books better as objects than as actual things to read. Especially used ones. I don't even care if they're torn up and taped back together, those are the best. My copy of American Gods was trashed by somebody writing notes in it, and it just ADDS something. I don't even know, man. I like books that've been places.

    On that subject, I may have become somewhat of a book hoarder.
    •  
      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeFeb 22nd 2012
     

    Yeah. I bought a copy of The Left Hand of Darkness and found out someone had literally written on nearly every line in green or purple ink. It’s basically unreadable.

    And yet, I can’t bring myself to toss it. It’s a world-worn traveler. Who knows what it’s seen?

    Also why I like old books better than new ones.

    •  
      CommentAuthorSoupnazi
    • CommentTimeFeb 22nd 2012
     

    I like to smell the gap in between the pages of books. Sometimes it smells very nice.

    Also, does prose texture count as non-reading bits of books?

  1.  

    I just re-read The Book Thief, and I couldn’t get over how much that book tasted like custard. It just. Tasted so much like custard.

    Is that good or bad?

    I LOVE looking at book covers! This is cliche, but my favorite is the classic cover of The Great Gatsby. Something about those freaky eyes hanging in space…

    I dislike the lazy approach of reissues where they just put the name and a watercolor gradient background or something equally lifeless.

    Mmm, boring, but not actively offensive. Many YA paranormal romance books on the other hand, make me cringe.

    Any bookmark fans here?

    • CommentAuthorNo One
    • CommentTimeFeb 23rd 2012
     

    Any bookmark fans here?

    ME! I love the ones with a beautiful artistic design. I have an old bookmark that belonged to my mum, it’s royal blue with silver edges, it has a picture of a white unicorn outlined in silver and some Olde English words written in silver, in an unreadable Olde English font. You can really tell that it’s old because it’s faded and worn, but that gives it character. :D

    Personally, I like bookmarks made out of leather or cloth, because they last longer but some paper bookmarks I’ll keep because they have a nice design or message. :razz

    • CommentAuthorCrunchy
    • CommentTimeFeb 23rd 2012 edited
     
    Snow White Queen, custard is delicious and that book is delicious.

    And I don't use bookmarks, I just remember the page numbers. I lose all my bookmarks xD
    •  
      CommentAuthorWulfRitter
    • CommentTimeFeb 23rd 2012
     

    This is cliche, but my favorite is the classic cover of The Great Gatsby. Something about those freaky eyes hanging in space

    Have you looked into those eyes? If you look closely enough, you can see the form of a naked woman. It makes the eyes extra freaky.

  2.  

    Have you looked into those eyes? If you look closely enough, you can see the form of a naked woman. It makes the eyes extra freaky.

    Yeah, it really freaked me out when I first realized.

    Personally, I like bookmarks made out of leather or cloth

    Or metal. But I’ve found that some designs can rip paper, so I have to be careful.

    • CommentAuthorWiseWillow
    • CommentTimeFeb 23rd 2012 edited
     

    I have to admit, a tiny (huge) part of me deeply loves the girly set of book covers for the first three Tamora Pierce quartets. Same artist, too, I think.

    Hidden for pictures:

    Must admit, the last set is my least favorite. There’s a different set of covers I prefer, but I didn’t feel like looking up EVEN MORE pics.

    • CommentAuthorSen
    • CommentTimeFeb 23rd 2012 edited
     

    I actually hate it when I come across a book that’s been scribbled on, unless it’s a textbook. Textbooks are cold. I care not for them. Sometimes though, I’ll buy a second-hand copy of a novel that might have been a prescribed book for someone in college because they’ve made all these notes for every scene and I just can’t stand it. Especially if it’s very obvious that the book’s exchanged many hands before. I love old books, but when I see them that way, they look abused. ;_; They are supposed to remain untouched.

    I noticed that pages can smell like crayons, for no apparent reason. I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t even own freaking crayons and even if the previous owner did, that scent is supposed to fade. So it must be the page itself, which is strange. Well anyway, I don’t like it. Makes me feel a little sick. And with new books, they can smell fresh and new, with a bit of that horrible sharpness to them. Too cold. >.<

    I prefer the smell of old pages that are all sweet and musty. Reminds me of rain and always brings back memories that are soaked in sunshine or bathed with the last glow of the day. The kind of glow that always seems to accompany those last heartbreaking moments in which you’ve finally found peace after all the noise. But as soon as the sun sets, that still moment, that seems to have been frozen for only a few minutes longer just for you, is going to pass. There’s some bitterness in that. But also some sweetness. Because the afterglow of that always stays with you.
    Lol … yeah. That’s the kind of thoughts old books usually bring up for me.

    And for some reason, they also remind me of old rooms. Like an old-fashioned study (I think ‘old’ because an old book always smells like dust. :P ) stacked to the ceiling with books bound in dark and scarlet covers. I think the reason that image comes up often is that I really badly want to have that built someday. But first, for the room I have in mind, I need to be able to afford a beautiful and big enough house. :D As I always envision the one wall having nothing but wide windows with lovely, intricately curved, black metal behind the glass. There might also be some soft, thick drapes pulled off to the side there (in violet velvet maybe <3 )And the carpet’s almost the colour of wine, just a few shades darker, while the furniture is all dark and warm, sweet-smelling wood. Which … is probably extremely expensive. It’s gonna be a long while before I can have that room built. XD

    And yes, old books bring up very specific images for me, even right down to the carpet and drapes. :D

    I usually prefer to have the titles of old books faded out. I like the mystery, even if I’ve looked inside and already know what it is, I like seeing that quiet little object sitting in my bookcase and not giving any hint whatsoever to what it really is, unlike all the other books lined up next to it that proudly display their names. The old books have more personality. But they’re just reserved about it. :D

    The old designs on the first page, just inside the old books are also always lovely. With new copies, you’ll always just get the white pages. But one of my old books has this thick maroon paper as the first page. It’s a double-page, so the other half is actually attached to the hard maroon cover of the book. It has faded gold patterns in columns, like strips of lace running from top to bottom. I wish more of what I owned were like that. It feels as if more love was put into it the book when it’s done that way. It’s more of an individual, even if there may be another copy like it somewhere it’s still unique and not another soulless little thing that was just quickly run off the printers in a batch of a thousand others.

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 23rd 2012
     

    Things that bother me about some library books: Sticky pages and when they smell like cigarette smoke. :|

  3.  

    @bookmarks

    I have a huge collection of bookmarks that I keep inside of this tin that is made to look like a Harry Potter book. It’s overflowing.

  4.  

    They are supposed to remain untouched.

    I actually love writing in my books. It helps me understand things so much better, and I feel much more connected with the author and the text. I write in the margins, circle and underline things, etc. but I think I like my notes more than I like other people’s. My copy of Lolita was previously owned by somebody who didn’t know how to underline/highlight properly, which kind of sucked.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeFeb 23rd 2012
     

    Old books are awesome, with the dark, cloth-covered covers that are ripped and rubbed shiny at the corners and golden-brown pages… and that smell. I know most of the smell is general mustiness and probably comes from bacteria or rotting paper or whatever, but I just love it so much! Nothing is quite like opening up an old book and smelling just how old it is.

    I also have a thing against writing in books, the sole exceptions being textbooks (and even then, I rarely do it) and my Bible (but it takes me a while to get over my aversion if I start marking up a new one). If I start doing it, I can usually get over the aversion, but to take that first leap… it just seems sacrilegious, somehow. I don’t even like doing it to books I dislike.

    I’m generally OK with other people writing in books, though, because I like reading their notes!

    •  
      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeFeb 23rd 2012 edited
     

    YES.

    Like an old thrift store where you can just smell the centuries, the secrets. They’re like thousands of square paper Mona Lisas.

    And I’ve got a copy of Father Brown that someone corrected the annotator’s mistakes in a very polite way in blue ink. I love that unnamed person.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeFeb 23rd 2012 edited
     

    Mmm, yes, an old bookstore is the best. There’s this one in particular that I can think of. It’s in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and if we’re camping up there in the summer we’ll often go to it at least once. It’s just a little tiny house that’s been converted into a bookstore (I think there’s another house next door where the owners actually live), but it is stuffed with books. Every single wall has a bookshelf on it and every bookshelf is full. If there’s an empty space in the middle of the room, it either has another bookshelf in it or, if it’s too small for a full bookshelf, a stack of books or boxes of magazines. Books are ridiculously cheap, too, only a few bucks even for a hardcover.

    The best part? It’s all organized. I honestly have no idea how they keep it organized, but it is, for the most part—westerns are in the little front room, non-fiction is on the left side of the house, biographies are in that darker room in the back, with some other non-fiction bleeding in around the edges…

    Anyway, the point is that it smells delicious.

    •  
      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeFeb 23rd 2012
     

    I’ve got some cool old bookstores, but sadly they are in a rich, hipster town and they charge a soul and a kidney for books. :(

    •  
      CommentAuthorBlueMask
    • CommentTimeFeb 23rd 2012
     

    @bookmarks

    I collect boomarks. I like pretty ones, with butterflies and pictures of flowers, but I friend recently sent me a golden embossed black leather bookmark from the New York Library’s 100th anniversary celebration. It has tassels.

    I love books that have been scribbled on. I once had a copy of Oliver Twist that had little cartoons in the margins. I love people’s names and old phone numbers written in the front cover, because I love thinking that this book has a sense of history. I love finding old non fiction books, about mythology and plants and gods, with ancient, tiny writing and illustrated covers, because for me, paintings are much more magical than photographs.

    I once went into this old bookshop with books all over the floor. It was run by a man that looked like Olivander, and he had tiny half-moon spectacles. I sat behind one of the bookshelves and just read for nearly two hours. It was so cool and quiet and I bought a huge stack of books.

  5.  

    No interesting bookshops around here, as far as I know. :(

  6.  
    I love old bookstores. There was one in the historic part of the town of Van Buren in northwest Arkansas (they've also got a scenic train ride at the old station), it had this cool sounding german name and a cool looking cat and this really great middle-aged man who ran it and there was a little suit of armour perched on top of some old tomes at the top of the stairs.

    It was cool and dim and when you walked in you thought it was just a little dinky hole in the wall until you looked further, that store had a huge basement filled with all kinds of books and it went forever in the back. And somehow that dude knew _where every book was._

    And excellent prices :D
  7.  

    The only place I can get decent prices, other than the thoroughly unromantic Amazon, is the library, in their little bookselling corner. Most of the stuff is not worth even a quarter, but you can snap up some classics if you’re lucky.

  8.  

    @Sen: I am guilty as charged. I often underlined key passages in books (sometimes wrote in the margins also) for the sake of those who would come after, especially if the professor who assigned the book made students write the same essays every year. It can be very useful not to have to search and search in a 600-page tome for the precise page for a turning point in the arc of a minor character important to the book’s themes.

    Secondhand bookshops are lovely places.

  9.  

    I have underlined, doggeared, and written in the margins of my copy of Les Mis.

    But for my own enjoyment.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 27th 2012
     

    So long as the notes are legible/somewhat intelligent, I don’t mind if the books I get secondhand have been written in. But woe betide any that dare write in my books. Especially my textbooks.

    I sell them after the class is over, you see, and having writing in them seriously detracts from their value.

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 27th 2012
     

    Yeah, I’ve never written in a book. If I need to take notes or something for an English class I’ll just copy the specific passage, quote, description, etc. and type up my thoughts on it in word document.