Category Archives: Books

Medieval Manuscript Making

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In the second part of The Story of Writing we are treated to a demonstration of medieval quill pens and illumination coupled with a few historical announcements. One of which, towards the beginning of the section, reminded me of the pain I felt in 9th grade. The video explains that in Ireland during the middle ages, the art of manuscripts flourished. Ireland was the only bastion of literate society during this time, according to Thomas Cahill in his book How the Irish Saved Civilization. Unlike the article here, I would not consider this book a “small treasure.”

Back to the video: I was enthralled looking at the first pen presented making letters on parchment. From about 35:30-37:15 the pen made beautiful brushstrokes to create multiple fonts. The flexibility of this tool entranced me. It could make all sorts of Gothic variations depending on how you held it, bent your hand, stopped short, or pressed firmly. Unfortunately, they did not give the name of this tool; it was different from the feather quills discussed in greater detail later.

Lab Assignment

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For today’s lab assignment, I watched the documentary The Making of a Renaissance Book.  While the demonstration in the Experimental Printmaking Institute made me more appreciative of the hard work that goes into printing, this documentary enhanced that feeling of appreciation immensely.  The documentary shows many clips of artists creating the individual letters of the typecast for printing by hand.  From setting the mold to carving the letters, these jobs took an enormous amount of technical skill and artistry that I was previously unaware of.

The filmmaker did an excellent job of portraying these artists as real people.  Many of the shots focused on the artist’s hands as they were working, but the filmmaker also made sure to focus on the faces of the artists as well.  The documentary also included diagrams of the various objects used in printing that explained the parts of those objects.  This aspect of the film helped demonstrate how these objects worked and arouse even more appreciation for these artists and engineers of book history.

Altered Books

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I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday’s presentation in the library.  Every work we looked at was interesting and unique in its own way.  I was especially intrigued by the altered book on the last tabled titled Le Corbusier and Me.  This was an altered book, where the author takes a preexisting book and physically changes the book in some way to create a new work.  The author of Le Corbusier and Me cut portions out of the pictures of Le Corbusier’s art and architecture to give readers a new perspective on Le Corbusier’s works.  I was reminded by the book Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer (the author famous for Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close).  I absolutely loved Tree of Codes .  I read the book that it was altered from as well and found the connections (and lack thereof) incredibly interesting.

This article contains images of more altered books. They’re really cool works of art as well as different and interesting interpretations of texts that we may not think of.

Unique Books

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In class yesterday, I was fascinated by all of the different books.  Some books, more than others, stuck out at me.  When I went to look at the Alice in Wonderland book, I realized that if I hadn’t been told which book it was, or chapter for that matter, I would never have guessed chapter 5 of Alice in Wonderland. The artwork was so unique and I was blown away by the artists interpretation of that particular chapter of the story.  In Dr. Jekyll and Mr.  Hyde, I loved how the words became harder to read and more elaborate as the main character goes more and more insane. By the end of the book, I was unable to make out the story.  The Macbeth story also stuck out to me.  I found the little summary of the story to be quite comical.  This led me to do some internet browsing and I stumbled upon this website, which is by the artist of the Macbeth book, and shows some other stories done in a similar way.   In class, we asked the question, what is a book? After seeing all these different and interesting pieces, it has become much harder for me to answer that question.

What is a book?

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What is a book? Yesterday I would have agreed that this is an obvious question. However, after our book viewing today, I am not exactly sure what counts as a book anymore. Trying to make sense of all that I saw today and my previous schema of what a book is, I went to the Internet to find the definition. But to my surprise there were multiple, differing definitions to be found. Here are a few: def 1, def 2, and def 3. Although each definition has basically the same gist, there are small, yet important variations to them. As you can see, definition one includes blank bound pages to be books, while definition 2 does not. And definition three includes illustrated pages to be a book, while the other two do not.

One may think that by combining all those definitions you may get a solid definition as to what a book is, but I’m still skeptical. Judging from the range of books we viewed today, there are a lot of works that do not fall under those three definitions. For example, the skeleton book that cleverly only included text on the “skeleton” of the book (the covers- is that a book? The book essences- are those books? Or the unbound drawings of the turtles- are those books?…If such are not books, then what are they?

I think that these are hard questions to answer. And by no means do I think that there is even a correct answer. To me, this is a matter of opinion, so what do you think?

Old-ish Books

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If anyone has ever wandered the downstairs of Skillman Library, you know we have a vast and overwhelming collection of books. What I had not realized is how old some of these books are. After our multiple exposures to rare books, I began to notice the tell tale signs of high quality and aged printing. Walking amongst the walls of books, I found multiple books that were from the 20s and 30s which looked much like the rare books we have seen on display. It is interesting that although these books are old and have a similar appearance  to the rare books, they are left sitting on shelves for anyone to read. This started me thinking about the progress of the rare books and writings we have seen, as we go further and further back, the historical significance becomes less and less important. Any writing, if old enough, is considered interesting. Comparing the books we just saw, with the writings and books from our first viewing, we can see the trend towards historical significance over just existing. All of the book from our latest view were of hefty historical significance.

Tuesday’s Class

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In Tuesday’s class we talked a little more about a books history.  It was really fascinating to learn about the different places each book has been and how it ended up in our special collections department.  I particularly found it interesting that the Dickens set, which was beautifully bound, contained the original covers and spines within the books, or at least within A Christmas Carol.   It made me wonder if that is something that many people do when they replace original binding.

Advertising Books

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It’s weird to see the need to advertise for books, but why is that? when was the last time you saw an ad on the Tv or whatever, for a printed book?

The library got me thinking with their valentines themed push to get people to pleasure read. It’s not that people don’t pleasure read anymore but the use of physical books has declined. It makes sense though, why carry around a big clunky book when a Kindle holds 500 books. With the digitization of print media we lose something culturally, because of the vast amount of text available at a moment to us on the internet we have become addicted to instant literary gratification.

Everyday before I go to classes I read a certain humor website that in many ways is like a magazine; they publish new articles almost everyday and hey they make me laugh. But whatever happened to actually subscribing to a magazine, well it doesn’t work out anymore. Personally I want a new article everyday ready and waiting online when I get up I don’t have the time to wait around for a weekly or monthly magazine subscription.

So for the sake of printed books, go read something that has turnable pages, instead of on a screen.

 

“what if”

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“What if” some of this later technology had been available at the time of the earlier books we’ve seen, like those printed from a hand press?  “Senefelder created a press in 1817 that both wet the plate and inked it automatically, making the process practicable for mass production of images” (Howard, 131).  Had this press been available much earlier, works done by the hand press could have been much more easily mass-produced.  Saving both time and energy lithography also could have increased the amount of images in books as well, perhaps changing the character of some of these books.   Not only would more of the same book have been in circulation, but also books with more images within them.

E-books and the rise of self- publishing

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I have been thinking lately about the ways in which ebooks have changed the book market. There was a recent article in the New York Times about Apple’s iBookstore and their recent launch of a “Breakout Books” tab. This banner will showcase books from popular self- published authors. My first experience with a self- published book was when I was nine at a yard sale. I remember picking up an odd sci- fi novel about aliens and the end of the world. My dad inspected it and then told me that the author himself had paid to publish it and jokingly told me that it was definitely a “rare” find. However, thanks to ebooks, self – published books have more of a chance of receiving notice and much less of a chance of ending up at a garage sale.

The medium of ebooks allows writers to bypass the cost of hiring a publisher in a revolutionarily profitable manner. Most importantly, on an ebook there is unlimited shelf space. Bookstores can only hold so many books. In the past, writers would depend on the status of their publisher and marketing campaign to reach the shelf. Additionally, ebooks are immortal. In the old world of publishing, if a book sold poorly at first, the retailers would have to return them to the publisher. From an economic standpoint, if the quality of these “indie” books is up to par, then the ability to bypass the cost of the publisher leads to lower prices. According to the article publishers pay authors 25 percent for retail sails while self- published authors earn 60- 70 percent of the list price. I have noticed more and more self- published books appearing on my kindle and there is a recent surge in self- published ebooks becoming best sellers.