I was reading George Eliot’s Felix Holt: The Radical last week and the Penguin paperback basically disintegrated. Toward the end I was picking up pages off the floor and reinserting them in a futile effort to keep some semblance of authorial intent.
And it occurred to me that while Penguin does us a huge service by making great texts cheaply available at least in some form, their books are deplorable as examples of book-making. Most of my extensive collection of Penguins make me unconsciously careful when I reach for them.
I compared that to my old paperback Ignatius Press series: fantastic paper, binding, stitching, glue. They’ve shown no sign of deterioration in decades of hard reading.
And that thought led me back to the old Everyman series: bound in leather, gorgeous books, and sturdy: I have two copies of Lord Dunsany’s Book of Wonder printed in the 1920’s and 1930’s that are in fine shape, though the paper is a lovely yellow and smells of vanillin in the best way.
I’ve got a few Bibles and a Quran that I’ve had forever: religious people are awfully careful to make sure their books last.
What are your best physical books?
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This might just be anecdotal, but I’ve noticed that, in general, books printed in France tend to have better binding and be more durable than books printed in the US.
My favorite physical book is a a 1855 copy of Ben Franklin’s autobiography and collected essays. There’s a note written in the front that it was awarded to a James Wilson in 1856 for having punctual attendance at his Bible class lol
I have a copy of Poe’s complete works that is absolutely STUNNING, and also a few Qurans that are beautiful as well :)
I like books from McNally Editions, NYRB Classics, and Persephone, for just really well made books and lesser known titles.
I got 3:
- A Tale of Two Cities (Thomas Nelson Seasons Edition) - been out of print since 2019 and I got it on eBay for retail (currently reading)
- Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Thomas Nelson Seasons Edition) - first Seasons Edition, and that inspired me to get ATOTC, which was also on my TBR
- Treasure Island (Easton Press) - it’s a dark aquamarine with a large golden compass on the front, a kind of aesthetic you don’t see very often
Dinotopia, the amazing paintings.
When I was teaching high school history I would talk about how my favorite book was The Sun Also Rises when covering the Lost Generation.
Well, I was with one of the English teachers at the time and we went through a pretty public divorce during the school year. Nothing dramatic, but we went from “the married couple” to “the divorced teachers.”
I had a lot of awesome students that year, and at the end of the school year I had one gift me a copy of The Sun Also Rises hardcopy.
On the inside cover she wrote a short note thanking me for the time, energy as encouragement I gave her that year. Down at the bottom she wrote ”I hope you find all the happiness you’re looking for.”
I obviously already owned a copy, but now I have two, and that one is my favorite.
The classics from Barnes and Noble. They are gorgeous and so far have been durable
I have a few extremely old antique books I found while cleaning out my grandmother’s house following her death. All from the 1920s, they are small identification guides, one for birds, one for trees, one for flowers, and a fourth I’m not remembering right now. They are in rough shape but still holding together. The bird book especially has amazingly detailed full color artist made images throughout. I have no idea if they have any value, but there’s something cool about the level of craft and care that seems to have gone into them, the images seem impressive to me considering their age. Maybe it’s less impressive than I think, I don’t actually know how publishing worked back then, but they’re cool to me.