I primarily read theology, and lots of early-to-mid-20th century Anglican theology. So, many of the books I read are out of print—and thus only available used. I’ve found that reading in a niche area tends to put some interesting copies in my lap. I have quite a few copies around that previously belonged to “famous” (at least within my little world) theologians. Many of these other copies are often ex-library, often from seminary or monastic libraries. It’s always interesting to see what libraries are getting rid of and to think about the monks or nuns who sat around reading them. (Or not, as the case may be—they were withdrawn, after all.)
My favorite is a copy of Martin Thornton’s The Function of Theology, which had been deaccessioned from the library of the Seminary of the Southwest at some point. I happened to flip to the back to glance at the loan card. It had been borrowed precisely one time—October 23, 1987—but it had been borrowed that one time by a priest who became a friend of mine in 2021 during a course at a different institution. The small world of Anglican theology! I texted him a picture of the book, and he still remembered checking it out.
noufalibrahim 14 days ago [-]
I used to hang out at used bookstores regularly. Mostly to find cheap but good quality books for my kids when they were younger. I once managed to get a used copy of Paul Graham's On Lisp which was discarded from the technical library of a company somewhere.
The main point of interest is that physical items age and retain artifacts of their lives. I found a childrens book that was discarded from an American library where a girl had scrawled in pencil that she was proud that she finished it. I've seen one which was awarded to a man for being top of his class in college in the early 1900s. The bookshop I used to visit once had a book sold to him which contained a letter from Rabindrnath Tagore in the original in between the leaves of the book.
It's a fascinating feeling and quite primal.
coldpie 14 days ago [-]
I recently read a sci-fi book from the library. A previous borrower had jotted notes/corrections/criticisms of the author's science in the margins, in the tiniest, neatest handwriting I've ever seen. None of the "problems" they pointed out detracted from the story, but I guess they really wanted to show off their personal theories of FTL travel to whoever borrowed the book next. It was hilarious, and I'll remember the book forever because of that.
noufalibrahim 13 days ago [-]
That's really cool. In some sense, it's like a precursor to internet fora.
babymetal 14 days ago [-]
I opened a bookshop after a long run in tech to try to slow down, and one of the pleasant surprises was the joy in accepting used book donations. I re-donate most of them, but have found some wonderful bookmarks and inscriptions in many. The words matter most, of course, but the tangible evidence of people decades or centuries ago is something that speaks to me profoundly. One inscription in a tiny book of prayers mentioned a friend passing it on after it had been placed under her deceased infant sister's chin, which was both morbid and moving. Autographs of spooks like J. Edgar Hoover conjure up other feelings. One other comment: the very old books will probably be around for a few centuries more after the newer ones have turned to dust.
throwup238 14 days ago [-]
> One other comment: the very old books will probably be around for a few centuries more after the newer ones have turned to dust.
Future historians will curse the 19th and 20th centuries for switching to acidic paper. Thankfully more and more books are printed on acid free paper via ISO 9706.
dlisboa 13 days ago [-]
From my experience this seems to be an American thing. I have US-printed books that I bought brand new about 15 years ago that look 100 years old today. On the other hand the Brazil- or France-printed books are still good as new. The paper color they use in Brazil is also very different (white as opposed to yellowish brown).
This isn't every US book though, seems to be mostly the fiction kind. The tech books I have are US-printed and are holding up perfectly.
But yeah the acidic paper thing is real and a big problem. The book I’m currently reading has these rust-like vertical streaks covering every single page. I don’t know how to recover or preserve them.
jfil 11 days ago [-]
To preserve acidic paper books, you might have luck with archival-grade boxes made of "buffered" material. The buffer is an alkaline material that's supposed to neutralize the acid in the paper.
greenie_beans 13 days ago [-]
what are you using for ecommerce? i need feedback on my app for booksellers if you're interested in trying it out: https://www.bookhead.net/. i'm also working on a squarespace plugin to sync a store's inventory from basil onto their website.
sofayam 14 days ago [-]
If you are going to collect books as physical objects, rather than their much more convenient digital versions, then it strikes me you should actually find the signs of previous interactions with that object (library stamps, marks from other readers etc) make them more interesting than pristine copies that no one has read.
dazzawazza 14 days ago [-]
Personally I do like these marks. But I buy books to read, not as an investment. I recently bought a book on "How to survive being gassed" published in 1934. It had a typed A4 sheet of paper in it with a poem about how to identify the different types of gas. Humourous and probably useless but real and very alive.
I also take umberidge with the idea that digital books are more convenient. A physical book is more engaging, more beautiful, more real and more present than a digital book. All things that I find convenient when I want to interact with knowledge and art. Horses for courses I assume.
vundercind 14 days ago [-]
The UI of paper books is better in most ways. Ebooks don’t need separate large print editions, and have full text search. Basically every other point goes to paper books. I don’t bother to defend the aesthetics of books, because their actual utility is high, too.
They’re damn bulky, though, especially when there’s an alternative that weighs nothing. Damn bulky.
dghlsakjg 14 days ago [-]
I tend to disagree, or at least argue that UI/UX is strongly subjective. I have sought out digital copies of books that I have in paper form just because I strongly prefer reading on an ereader for text. Obviously, something with graphics is likely to be better in paper.
You can't lose your place easily. Lighting isn't an issue if you buy a backlit model. Reading lying on your back or side is much easier. Traveling is easier with an e-reader. Access to wikipedia and the dictionary on the same device.
There are emotional reasons that I like paper books, but if I'm just trying to read, give me an ebook.
vundercind 13 days ago [-]
Ebooks will be on their way to being a match when readers come with facing-page screens, spine and cover screens (I've forgotten the authors of ebooks I'm actively reading because I don't get reminded of the title & author passively by just having the book around me) and some kind of much better interface for locating and bouncing between bookmarks, which interface will probably need to not reside entirely on the main screen(s) in order to make a real difference. Still missing a lot, but that'll close maybe half the gap.
nescioquid 14 days ago [-]
To add to your comments on travel, reading position, lighting, some books are just too large or heavy to lug around or even hold for long periods. There are a number of door-stopper books that I otherwise just wouldn't have read because of this.
If the medium makes the difference between me reading a text rather than not reading that text, I tend to think that makes it functionally "better".
sourcepluck 14 days ago [-]
*umbrage (I like when people tell me, so hoping that isn't taken the wrong way).
Otherwise, very much in agreement!
WillAdams 14 days ago [-]
Umbrage.
The thing is, I've had a number of instances where the paper copy of a book was so poorly typeset (usually overly long lines on too-wide pages, e.g., _The Inklings and King Arthur: J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, and Owen Barfield on the Matter of Britain_ edited by Sørina Higgins) that I actually purchased the e-book version so as to be able to read it comfortably.
criddell 14 days ago [-]
I'm guessing you don't (yet) need large type to read comfortably. When that time comes, you may gain an appreciation for the accessibility features of a good ereader.
dazzawazza 13 days ago [-]
I'm much more comfortable with a magnifying glass tbh. For most books I need my glasses and a good quality reading light though.
criddell 13 days ago [-]
That can definitely work.
Do you use a handheld glass, or do you wear magnifying reading glasses? I've thought about trying glasses and probably should - they aren't expensive. I'm assuming though that I'll end up feeling sick from them because of the distortion around the center.
dazzawazza 12 days ago [-]
I have a large rectangular handheld magnifying glass. I 'think' it was designed for map reading. I only really use it for inspecting electronics though. I can get by with reading glasses when reading a book as long as the light conditions are good. A good reading lamp really helps and I didn't think it would make such a difference.
It took me a long time to get used to reading glasses though. Eventually age just forced the issue though.
tenpies 14 days ago [-]
You bring up a good point about physical vs digital.
I'm still not sure if my children for example, understands that when I'm staring at an iPad I'm almost always reading a book. Does a vast library in iBooks translate to them as well as the same library on physical books in a bookshelf in the house? My sense is it does not.
And when I'm gone, will anyone find any interest in my iBook library? In its highlights and notes? In the books I've read and re-read dozens of times?
Some of my fondest memories are going over my older or deceased family members' book shelves. I have never, however, gone over anyone's tablet. Part of that is because it's newer, but something about the browse-ability of an e-book misses the mark. I can't see which book is worn from being read and re-read, or brimming with notes and scribbles. In digital, it's hard to tell which books that person found significant, but in physical it's obvious by the condition (or even number of copies) of the book.
seabass-labrax 14 days ago [-]
> I can't see which book is worn from being read and re-read, or brimming with notes and scribbles.
It's amusing to read that, for on one side of my family, scribbling in a book would be considered a most heinous crime! I keep any writing to the flyleaf if the book is a gift, but don't otherwise write in them. Another thing that complicates the matter in my family is that we have always been serial second-hand book buyers, and in such a case a book's physical condition is not necessarily an indication of how much it was loved by its immediate previous owner. On the other hand, my grandmother tended to insert relevant newspaper cuttings into the book for the benefit of future readers!
devilbunny 14 days ago [-]
I'm from a books-are-sacred family, though I don't particularly subscribe to that myself. But I've never understood the idea of annotating books in the margins; I don't reread them that often, nor was I a literature student.
Your grandmother's idea sounds wonderful, though.
SoftTalker 14 days ago [-]
> And when I'm gone, will anyone find any interest in my iBook library?
Probably not, but nor will anyone else find interest in your physical library. One's collections are invaluable to oneself, but usually uninteresting to anyone else.
I donated hundreds of books when I cleaned out my parents' house. Most probably ended up in a dump or recycled.
WillAdams 14 days ago [-]
One of my most treasured books is a copy of Goethe's _Faust_ (in translation) with notes from a nun.
iamacyborg 14 days ago [-]
That runs very much counter to how collectors actually collect books currently. The more pristine the book, the better, aside from particularly rare or valuable inscriptions.
defrost 14 days ago [-]
The story of a bookseller who made a fortune selling complete libraries to collectors, warts and all:
Glenn Horowitz built a fortune selling the archives of writers such as Vladimir Nabokov and Alice Walker.
Different collectors buy different things- some like books owned by specific people, others want works (drafts, letter, editions, etc) of an author.
Pristine is for some, a book that's been lived in is worth more to others who look for margin notes.
cge 14 days ago [-]
While that's true, and I do prefer books that actually have interesting histories, rather than being purely pristine and box-ticking, I have to admit that many collectors seem not to be, and are purely interested in box-ticking first edition first printing, pristine copies of books, with no marks, or just an author signature. Outside of the most exceptional and well-known of cases, this seems to extend to cases where other editions seem more interesting, rarer, or more notable.
Of course, this has the advantage of keeping prices down for those of us looking for those other editions and conditions, but it can at times be rather perplexing. I was once in an auction where it was evident that the auctioneer was also surprised by a case of this: in an auction with a first edition by an American trade press, and a first UK edition from a year later by a particularly notable private press, with a smaller print run, typeset and printed by hand by notable historical figures and friends of the author, and an estimate of around four times the first trade edition... the UK edition sold within estimate, and while the first edition sold for significantly more than the UK edition, vastly over its estimate.
In another case, I had a bit of trouble finding sellers online who even noted the edition of a particular 19th century book in its description if it was not a first edition, despite the second edition being at the center of a significant historical legal drama, being nominally banned and ordered destroyed, and making a mess of British blasphemy law in a case where no one, including both the government and the prosecution, wanted the publisher to be found guilty.
My guess is that many book collectors will set a particular goal, for example, collecting first editions or author-signed copies of a particular genre, set of authors, etc, and will follow that goal, rather than acquiring individual books for individual reasons.
More generally, collecting communities often seem to fall into purely seeking rarity, placing the highest demand on the items with the least supply regardless of why the supply is small. Thus at an extreme in book collecting, for example, you have collectors who see entirely uncut pages as being preferable, despite it making the book unreadable. I have a friend who is fond of antique pens who expressed disappointment that in seeking the rarest pens, the community often ended up placing the highest value on the worst: the pens with bad designs that didn't work well, the variants and colors that were particularly ugly, all the models that sold very poorly and were quickly discontinued, and are thus rarer.
iamacyborg 14 days ago [-]
Arguably the “lived in” copies are only notable if they’ve been owned and scribbled in by someone who is themselves notable. There’s no serious demand for books that have been scribbled in by nobodies like myself.
sevensor 14 days ago [-]
True, but collecting is generally a terrible investment from a pecuniary perspective, unless you’re the mercenary type of collector who sells to people making terrible investments.
iamacyborg 14 days ago [-]
Sure, albeit I’ve definitely got some stuff that’s appreciated quite considerably in price. Not that I intend to sell it.
sevensor 14 days ago [-]
Yeah, speaking as someone who inherited a stamp collection, the one thing to avoid is thinking you’re in it for the resale value when you really just want an excuse to buy the object of your desire.
sofayam 14 days ago [-]
Sure. But while I can understand this approach for rare objects which are the result of great craftsmanship (I would rather not have a crack in my faberge egg) a book is generally a mass produced article with little individual character until someone has left their mark on it.
iamacyborg 14 days ago [-]
Even still, most folks would prefer a pristine first edition than one that’s been heavily used.
GJim 14 days ago [-]
Speak for yourself!
emptiestplace 14 days ago [-]
Are you actually a bot? I'm struggling to imagine a literate human who does not know this.
iamacyborg 14 days ago [-]
My name clearly states I am NOT a cyborg.
14 days ago [-]
randomguy232 14 days ago [-]
[dead]
ThePhysicist 14 days ago [-]
My university regularly put discarded books in a cart in front of the library with a money box, so you could just take a book and put one or two euros in the box. Among other things I got a copy of Benoit Mandelbrots "The fractal geometry of nature" which I still treasure to this day.
contingencies 14 days ago [-]
That's one of my treasures, too. I paid full price for a hardcover. Many of our books come from second hand dealers, often nature/history/tooling/photography foci. I'm a sucker for thematic histories, large format photography books, and well researched non fiction in general. If you like the marks on books, try postcards! I have ~20,000 of them. Not really sure why, but they're very interesting to scroll through. A card is like a little clue in to a time and place you would never otherwise think of ... logistics networks, handwriting, language, printing technology, inks, subjects of interest, urban development, architecture, fashion: sometimes with messages to boot!
qup 14 days ago [-]
Today's his birthday!
7402 14 days ago [-]
Favorite ex-library book: "The Unix Environment" by A. N. Walker. Ex library: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NY. Cost from Alibris: $1.
kristianp 13 days ago [-]
Never heard of Alibris, any other good used book sites? I have bought a book from Abebooks: "Object-Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach", by Objective-C creator Brad Cox.
There is a charity bookshop in my city that exclusively sells ex-library books from the city's libraries. It's very tempting to buy the books there due to them usually being in very good condition.
vmilner 14 days ago [-]
I always liked the hardback editions of children’s books in UK libraries in the 70s and 80s , and have sought them out secondhand since. Favourites were the US Danny Dunn science story series - almost all of which were amazingly available in the UK, Dr Who hardback editions of the famous Target novelisations - pre-vcr the only way to access old stories (even in the Uk these were very rarely repeated). Hugh Walters 1960s/1970s sf books (passage to Pluto, journey to Jupiter, expedition Venus etc.)
Also the Agaton Sax comedy detective stories, and the largely unknown Uncle the elephant books by JP Martin.
oniony 14 days ago [-]
My late mother was an avid reader of library books. She used to mark the books she had read by filling in the loops of the letters on the copyright page. Apparently she noticed the hidden codes that other readers used to similarly mark books they had read: a circle around page 10, a line on page 20, &c.
I wonder if the author has come across such marks?
silentd 14 days ago [-]
My late father would put a little star on the last page of the book. He eventually discovered another patron was marking books in a similar fashion and that they had the same taste in books. Whenever he found the other mark he would check out that book.
GJim 14 days ago [-]
Your post has omitted the punchline.
kristianp 13 days ago [-]
> Whenever he found the other mark he would check out that book.
I think that was sufficient.
andai 13 days ago [-]
Do people forget which books they've read? If there's something I haven't finished, the sense of incompletion stays with me forever.
oniony 13 days ago [-]
Yes. I believe they would not recognise them by cover but would think "crap I've read this before" when getting to a certain part of the plot.
teachrdan 13 days ago [-]
Can't speak to OP's mom's experience, but I've heard of avid romance novel readers losing track of all the books they've read.
pglevy 14 days ago [-]
One of my favorites that I return to regularly and am continually fascinated by is an ex-library book, Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century. It's an "enthno-archealogical" study of about 30 families in early 2000s California.
I love the ambiance of libraries and used book stores so I tend to buy books with a little wear and tear and appreciate their uniqueness.
At the same time I'm loathe to make my own marks in books. I hadn't thought about that contradiction before.
vundercind 14 days ago [-]
I try to only mark if I think it'll be useful to me, or to someone in the future. I'll lightly mark the location of favorite passages in the margins (that's useful to me, at least, and minimally intrusive), record some information about some obscure reference to a location by an antiquated name that I was only able to track down in some decades-old humanities paper, mark up the TOC with information I wish it had, that kind of thing.
I don't mind most marks from previous readers. Usually I'd rather have them than not, as they're at least interesting in one way or another.
The category of used book with annotations that I don't ever like to buy is one where a previous owner highlighted or underlined seemingly half the book. There's a kind of reader out there who must highlight or underline their books the same way I compulsively select text as I read on a screen, and it wrecks the book.
Tyr42 13 days ago [-]
I don't write in most of my books, with the exception being cookbooks. Those are tools, they gets notes on what worked and what's tasty, etc.
About finding fascinating hand scribbled notes from books of the past ...
I discovered this in a scanned collection of old books maintained by our government ministry of culture ...
there are comments on some pages (see pages 8, 11, 17 for example) including the cover. in some places the scribbler who seems be an authority on the subject himself expresses some rebuttals/commentary on the text's shortcomings
PS: this was the first time I stumbled across, and discovered that "Gentoo" was another name used by the British for the "Telugu" language of Southern India. I am a native speaker of Telugu and I never knew this fact.
MPSimmons 14 days ago [-]
Can I just drop a word of love and appreciation for Abe Books? I don't buy physical books a lot, but when I do, Abe is definitely the first place I look. The books drop ship from the actual seller, and it's remarkable that I've never had a problematic delivery, after a dozen or so.
My favorite book I've gotten from them was A Psalm for the Wild-Built, which was previously a library book, funny enough.
andrepd 14 days ago [-]
Sad that it's part of the Amazon behemoth.
greenie_beans 13 days ago [-]
behold bookfinder.com
vixen99 14 days ago [-]
My beautifully bound 1898 score of Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words' picked up for a song (sorry!) in a junk shop, has the inscription "To Ethyl with love from Mother and Dad Aug. 16th 1911". A treasured item in my library with additional resonance.
Pannoniae 14 days ago [-]
My copy is just full of scribbles and circles around the "p"s by my teacher :D Yes, I was hammering the piano with so much force at that time...
dmd 13 days ago [-]
Just a few weeks ago I got an absolutely delightful email:
> Ні! This might seem a little out of the blue and it is but a few years ago at a library book sale I got the book "Pi in the Sky". It has your personal library stamp on it, so I guess YOU got it at a library sale and then re-donated it? I had never read anything about math before that was at all interesting and it got me reading lots of other "popular" math books and I got really interested in number theory. I am now a freshman at CMU and planning to be a math major!
hcs 14 days ago [-]
I have a fun copy of Mechanized Information Storage, Retrieval And Dissemination (1968) formerly from The Free Library of Philadelphia, covered in "identification required" labels for some reason. There's also a Cinema Props stamp inside the cover, so it may have been set dressing in between the library and the used book store where I got it. https://www.librarything.com/work/17927078/book/215905873
Lammy 14 days ago [-]
> Sadly, ex-library books have a poor reputation because an old library book can have many miles on the clock
Depends on the clientele. I love finding ex-Bohemian-Club-library books, for example, because they are absurdly well cared for. My most recent one of these was a copy of “San Francisco's Ocean Trade Pᴀsᴛ ᴀɴᴅ Fᴜᴛᴜʀᴇ — A Story of the Deep Water Service of San Francisco, 1848 to 1911.” (1911) because I was very familiar with the coming of the railroads but not so familiar with anything earlier than that: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/San_Fran...
Loved the bit about one of the early steamships used to carry freight up and down the Sacramento River getting outclassed by an ox team — moo moo moo https://i.imgur.com/GVCVY0r.jpeg
sriram_malhar 14 days ago [-]
I have a few ex-library books. Ex-library to 'ex libris', if you will! I bought them at used book stores and can't fight the sneaking suspicion that I am in possession of stolen property!
I love heavily marked up used books. They make me feel a kinship with another person. Me and "Dan" from 1956 have physically held the same copy of Terman's Electronic and Radio Engineering!
OisinMoran 14 days ago [-]
Two very important books for me were both bought in the same library clearance sale when I was around 6/7!
1. A biology text book which is how I learned about sex!
2. Children's Britannica World of Science & Mystery "FUTURE CITIES" which inspired my love for the future and technology, and still has pride of place on my bookshelf. I even wrote a lil thread on Twitter about it [0]
I have a copy of "New Rules for the New Economy" by Kevin Kelly, signed as part of the Global Business Network that he and Steward Brand founded a long time ago.
Having read Fred Turner's immensely great book "From Counterculture to Cyberculture", that is a valuable little piece of history to me.
mcswell 14 days ago [-]
Danger!
I made the mistake of following the link to AbeBook's list of books for sale. As a result, I spent $60.
You have been warned.
gadders 14 days ago [-]
Growing up as a kid with not much money, I think quite a few of the books on my shelves were ex library books.
My favorite is a copy of Martin Thornton’s The Function of Theology, which had been deaccessioned from the library of the Seminary of the Southwest at some point. I happened to flip to the back to glance at the loan card. It had been borrowed precisely one time—October 23, 1987—but it had been borrowed that one time by a priest who became a friend of mine in 2021 during a course at a different institution. The small world of Anglican theology! I texted him a picture of the book, and he still remembered checking it out.
The main point of interest is that physical items age and retain artifacts of their lives. I found a childrens book that was discarded from an American library where a girl had scrawled in pencil that she was proud that she finished it. I've seen one which was awarded to a man for being top of his class in college in the early 1900s. The bookshop I used to visit once had a book sold to him which contained a letter from Rabindrnath Tagore in the original in between the leaves of the book.
It's a fascinating feeling and quite primal.
Future historians will curse the 19th and 20th centuries for switching to acidic paper. Thankfully more and more books are printed on acid free paper via ISO 9706.
This isn't every US book though, seems to be mostly the fiction kind. The tech books I have are US-printed and are holding up perfectly.
But yeah the acidic paper thing is real and a big problem. The book I’m currently reading has these rust-like vertical streaks covering every single page. I don’t know how to recover or preserve them.
I also take umberidge with the idea that digital books are more convenient. A physical book is more engaging, more beautiful, more real and more present than a digital book. All things that I find convenient when I want to interact with knowledge and art. Horses for courses I assume.
They’re damn bulky, though, especially when there’s an alternative that weighs nothing. Damn bulky.
You can't lose your place easily. Lighting isn't an issue if you buy a backlit model. Reading lying on your back or side is much easier. Traveling is easier with an e-reader. Access to wikipedia and the dictionary on the same device.
There are emotional reasons that I like paper books, but if I'm just trying to read, give me an ebook.
If the medium makes the difference between me reading a text rather than not reading that text, I tend to think that makes it functionally "better".
Otherwise, very much in agreement!
The thing is, I've had a number of instances where the paper copy of a book was so poorly typeset (usually overly long lines on too-wide pages, e.g., _The Inklings and King Arthur: J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, and Owen Barfield on the Matter of Britain_ edited by Sørina Higgins) that I actually purchased the e-book version so as to be able to read it comfortably.
Do you use a handheld glass, or do you wear magnifying reading glasses? I've thought about trying glasses and probably should - they aren't expensive. I'm assuming though that I'll end up feeling sick from them because of the distortion around the center.
It took me a long time to get used to reading glasses though. Eventually age just forced the issue though.
I'm still not sure if my children for example, understands that when I'm staring at an iPad I'm almost always reading a book. Does a vast library in iBooks translate to them as well as the same library on physical books in a bookshelf in the house? My sense is it does not.
And when I'm gone, will anyone find any interest in my iBook library? In its highlights and notes? In the books I've read and re-read dozens of times?
Some of my fondest memories are going over my older or deceased family members' book shelves. I have never, however, gone over anyone's tablet. Part of that is because it's newer, but something about the browse-ability of an e-book misses the mark. I can't see which book is worn from being read and re-read, or brimming with notes and scribbles. In digital, it's hard to tell which books that person found significant, but in physical it's obvious by the condition (or even number of copies) of the book.
It's amusing to read that, for on one side of my family, scribbling in a book would be considered a most heinous crime! I keep any writing to the flyleaf if the book is a gift, but don't otherwise write in them. Another thing that complicates the matter in my family is that we have always been serial second-hand book buyers, and in such a case a book's physical condition is not necessarily an indication of how much it was loved by its immediate previous owner. On the other hand, my grandmother tended to insert relevant newspaper cuttings into the book for the benefit of future readers!
Your grandmother's idea sounds wonderful, though.
Probably not, but nor will anyone else find interest in your physical library. One's collections are invaluable to oneself, but usually uninteresting to anyone else.
I donated hundreds of books when I cleaned out my parents' house. Most probably ended up in a dump or recycled.
Different collectors buy different things- some like books owned by specific people, others want works (drafts, letter, editions, etc) of an author.
Pristine is for some, a book that's been lived in is worth more to others who look for margin notes.
Of course, this has the advantage of keeping prices down for those of us looking for those other editions and conditions, but it can at times be rather perplexing. I was once in an auction where it was evident that the auctioneer was also surprised by a case of this: in an auction with a first edition by an American trade press, and a first UK edition from a year later by a particularly notable private press, with a smaller print run, typeset and printed by hand by notable historical figures and friends of the author, and an estimate of around four times the first trade edition... the UK edition sold within estimate, and while the first edition sold for significantly more than the UK edition, vastly over its estimate.
In another case, I had a bit of trouble finding sellers online who even noted the edition of a particular 19th century book in its description if it was not a first edition, despite the second edition being at the center of a significant historical legal drama, being nominally banned and ordered destroyed, and making a mess of British blasphemy law in a case where no one, including both the government and the prosecution, wanted the publisher to be found guilty.
My guess is that many book collectors will set a particular goal, for example, collecting first editions or author-signed copies of a particular genre, set of authors, etc, and will follow that goal, rather than acquiring individual books for individual reasons.
More generally, collecting communities often seem to fall into purely seeking rarity, placing the highest demand on the items with the least supply regardless of why the supply is small. Thus at an extreme in book collecting, for example, you have collectors who see entirely uncut pages as being preferable, despite it making the book unreadable. I have a friend who is fond of antique pens who expressed disappointment that in seeking the rarest pens, the community often ended up placing the highest value on the worst: the pens with bad designs that didn't work well, the variants and colors that were particularly ugly, all the models that sold very poorly and were quickly discontinued, and are thus rarer.
There is a charity bookshop in my city that exclusively sells ex-library books from the city's libraries. It's very tempting to buy the books there due to them usually being in very good condition.
Also the Agaton Sax comedy detective stories, and the largely unknown Uncle the elephant books by JP Martin.
I wonder if the author has come across such marks?
I think that was sufficient.
I love the ambiance of libraries and used book stores so I tend to buy books with a little wear and tear and appreciate their uniqueness.
At the same time I'm loathe to make my own marks in books. I hadn't thought about that contradiction before.
I don't mind most marks from previous readers. Usually I'd rather have them than not, as they're at least interesting in one way or another.
The category of used book with annotations that I don't ever like to buy is one where a previous owner highlighted or underlined seemingly half the book. There's a kind of reader out there who must highlight or underline their books the same way I compulsively select text as I read on a screen, and it wrecks the book.
https://allpoetry.com/Marginalia
I discovered this in a scanned collection of old books maintained by our government ministry of culture ...
there are comments on some pages (see pages 8, 11, 17 for example) including the cover. in some places the scribbler who seems be an authority on the subject himself expresses some rebuttals/commentary on the text's shortcomings
Book Title: Vocabulary of Gentoo and English
link: https://indianculture.gov.in/rarebooks/vaokaaabaularaii-apha...
PS: this was the first time I stumbled across, and discovered that "Gentoo" was another name used by the British for the "Telugu" language of Southern India. I am a native speaker of Telugu and I never knew this fact.
My favorite book I've gotten from them was A Psalm for the Wild-Built, which was previously a library book, funny enough.
> Ні! This might seem a little out of the blue and it is but a few years ago at a library book sale I got the book "Pi in the Sky". It has your personal library stamp on it, so I guess YOU got it at a library sale and then re-donated it? I had never read anything about math before that was at all interesting and it got me reading lots of other "popular" math books and I got really interested in number theory. I am now a freshman at CMU and planning to be a math major!
Depends on the clientele. I love finding ex-Bohemian-Club-library books, for example, because they are absurdly well cared for. My most recent one of these was a copy of “San Francisco's Ocean Trade Pᴀsᴛ ᴀɴᴅ Fᴜᴛᴜʀᴇ — A Story of the Deep Water Service of San Francisco, 1848 to 1911.” (1911) because I was very familiar with the coming of the railroads but not so familiar with anything earlier than that: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/San_Fran...
Loved the bit about one of the early steamships used to carry freight up and down the Sacramento River getting outclassed by an ox team — moo moo moo https://i.imgur.com/GVCVY0r.jpeg
I love heavily marked up used books. They make me feel a kinship with another person. Me and "Dan" from 1956 have physically held the same copy of Terman's Electronic and Radio Engineering!
1. A biology text book which is how I learned about sex! 2. Children's Britannica World of Science & Mystery "FUTURE CITIES" which inspired my love for the future and technology, and still has pride of place on my bookshelf. I even wrote a lil thread on Twitter about it [0]
[0] https://x.com/TheOisinMoran/status/1389697743480926210
[1] https://archive.org/details/engineeringwithn00plowrich/mode/...
I have a copy of "New Rules for the New Economy" by Kevin Kelly, signed as part of the Global Business Network that he and Steward Brand founded a long time ago.
Having read Fred Turner's immensely great book "From Counterculture to Cyberculture", that is a valuable little piece of history to me.
I made the mistake of following the link to AbeBook's list of books for sale. As a result, I spent $60.
You have been warned.