Quote:
Originally Posted by brecklundin
I guess the library books I sniff must have been dropped in the toilet or stored in a bucket or mothballs given their, um, distinctive aroma... 
The smell of a book never exactly "...blew my skirt up..."  so I really don't get that whole thing about the experience aromatic and tactile feel of a "good" mass market million seller hardback produced for the mass market, how is that anything different from a nice trade paperback?
I do, however appreciate the craftsmanship of a true quality book with sewn bindings, nice tooled covers, protective cover pages and nice gilt lettering and hand tipped artwork. Those are something to behold and treasure...and something to NEVER stop producing and I don't care if they cost a few hundred bucks each because I appreciate the talent it takes to produce a real book. A mass market hardback is just nothing special to me at all...they are called "best sellers for a reason" there are a LOT of copies out there. Like I wrote, I far prefer the feel and nice type faces and text size found in trade PB editions. I just get the sense they are intended for actual readers. |
I spent three years working as a book binging assistant, and yes, the experience of holding a first edition Charles Dickens or a book of Robbie Burns poetry or many other old and rare books that passed by my work station for the delicate task of restoration work was incomaprable to anything else on this earth (other than being with a stunningly hunky male). But for every day reading of mass produced novels, well the difference in quality and experience is sooooooo far from those ancient volumes as to be laughable.
We also produced quality leather bindings for magazine subscriptions (this is where I gained my love for photography, a customer would bring in his yearly collections of train magazines for binding, and the images were mind blowing in terms of the use of light(.
We also produced quality leather bound journals.
All our work was hand sewn and bound. Gold embossed lettering. True quality workmanship and the e-book experience will never equal what we produced, however this was production for a specialist market and not for the mass produced novel whcih is ideally suited to an E-ink screen.
Karen