"The Enchanted World" vol 1

[minoanmiss]

First, a picture:

Sometimes I really think some people believe that this is what [other people's] personal libraries look like.

Still haven't figured out how to filter out the book discussions that annoy me from the ones I want to read (I don't want to just filter out the word 'book' after all). I keep seeing people say "your paperback copy of [very common book] is worthless" to support their general argument for the worthlessness of books. This always makes me think of some irreplaceable or near-irreplaceable books I have -- I'm pretty sure my book about pioneering chemical archaeology work on the Minoans is neither digital nor still in print.

And then there are my copies of The Enchanted World, one of those Time-Life Books sets. When I was little my father worked in publishing: he gave me a poster he got at work about this upcoming series on folklore and mythology, and I went over that thing ovr and over until it came apart at the fold lines. When I was building up my library I set out looking for the series, and have about 10 of them now. They're not perfect (very Eurocentric, definitely) but they're written and illustrated sumptuously and I love them.

Which is what I should write more about. This is among other things a note to myself to review a couple of them for my journal here to share them with all of you.

Comments

[senmut]

I see far too much anti-book nonsense, I must say.

[minoanmiss]

OMG so true. This is me trying to say something more constructive than AGHGHGHHGHGHG

[caitri]

My main thought about that picture is that it is heckin' awesome so long as one avoids thinking about how difficult retrieving an individual volume would be, plus how stressful that arrangement is going to be on the spines/bindings.

[minoanmiss]

I should have included the caption -- this fort was built by a library out of all the copies of "50 Shades of Gray" they were given. It's meant to show that libraries don't need donations of books that popular and cheap. But some people seem to think any book someone would want to own would be that popular and cheap.

[amaebi]

I would love to hear about that series-- I'm surprised that I never heard of it before that I can recall.

*love*

More generally, oh, if no one confused books with points. :(

[minoanmiss]

It would be SO GREAT if people stopped confusing books with points.

*contemplates this project*

[princessofgeeks]

I love hearing about your library!

And I wish you could just mentally dismiss all the comments you see online by people who don't "get" the love of books or the desire to own books.

I really think we outnumber them by a lot, actually!

And anyway, their opinions don't count when it comes to deciding individually what we should all do about our books. I love having print copies of books and IMHO you can't have too many.

Also forgot to say that set of books you mention sounds awesome and so does the poster!
HUGS

[minoanmiss]

I am too permeable to people's dang opinions. BUT I should pay more attention to the books I love than to random people's opinions on whether people should own books. So.

[darkmarcy]

Haha, the 50 Shades of Grey fort!

I gotta take a Shelfie and send it to you one of these days! But first I need to move all the non-book clutter away from the shelf..

[minoanmiss]

Oh but I want to see your non book clutter too!

[oracne]

I love reading about personal connections to books, both reading them AND the physical objects.

[minoanmiss]

I know! I really enjoy books as objects, their shape and tactility and smell! And that reminds me, I keep meaning to look up more about the change from scrolls to paginated books

[cmcmck]

It's what ours looked like before we had the library built! :o)

[minoanmiss]

Ahahahahahah that made me giggle. :D

More generally

[redbird]

People seem to treat the statements "you couldn't get any money for that" and "that's worthless" as if they're the same, but that equivalence has multiple errors in it. One is that something could be both rare, and of interest to only a few people, so there is literally no market for it while the one you already have is irreplaceable. Or, more often, if you want a book in order to (re)read it, it doesn't matter that nobody would buy your paperback copy, what matters is how much it would cost you to replace it.

Re: More generally

[minoanmiss]

That is a really good point, that unsaleable is not at all a synonym for worthless. But then you excel at really good points.

[pensnest]

I can't really get my head around the idea that the worth of a book is judged by how much someone will pay to buy it from you. I mean, what? I do love the feel of a beautiful book - my hardback copies of The Ancestor's Tale (Dawkins) and How To Keep Dinosaurs (somebody Nash, I think), and most particularly my signed hardback of King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett, are all beautiful objects and I love them for it, but outer beauty is not usually the important thing about a book! I have some tatty old paperbacks which would probably get 20p at a jumble sale, but really! Tho' I love the sound of a series on folklore and mythology which is produced 'sumptuously'. Sounds gorgeous!

That wall of book is a bit scary, the more so when I read in comments here how it came to be!

[minoanmiss]

How to Keep Dinosaurs! I LOVE books like that!

I was contemplating my paperbacks recently, and reflected that I want to keep these stories to look at again, even if I don't know precisely when yet.

[goss]

This entire concept is so foreign to me. I have never met a single person in all my 44 years that has expressed objection to other people owning as many books as they want.

Or that view a book's value solely on whether you could or could not re-sell it.

The internet is weird. :b

[kore]

Dreamwidth got very very weird about Marie Kondo and books. It was ugly.

[sabotabby]

I want to crawl inside that book fort and never come out.

[minoanmiss]

Oh I wish you could. I'd build you one out of a better book, though.

[corvidology]

My house, my books, MY business. *juts jaw*

[minoanmiss]

Yes! And also.... I look at this miniamalist movement that says that wanting to own anything is being a hoarder, and it scares me.

[kore]

I LOVE THOSE BOOKS. I remember the commercials and I think I had a pretty good set before my parents sold everything for Moving To Italy Forever i.e. Nine Months and then they were impossible to get and then I found tons of them on Amazon for like less than the shipping costs. So I built most of it back up MWA HA HA HA.

//clutches re-purchased childhood books like they're stuffed animals

[minoanmiss]

EEEEE YAY I am delighted that you own them too!

[acequeenking]

Books are surely one of the worst investments now that an ebook version of your ~~rare book~~ could come out at almost any time and render it worthless? Or a new version of the book? Or have interest fall? If it's not signed and sealed its probably not extremely valuable. (Monetarily.) Get into videogames if you wanna rip off a clueless audience for more than its monetary value.

(Also, not sure how common it is, but the libraries near me take those donated copies that aren't worth much and sell them at library book sales for funds for the library. I suspect that's a common practice, but I want to highlight that one of the ones near me collects books for + sells books for the Books To Prisoners project which is very cool.)

[sovay]

And then there are my copies of The Enchanted World, one of those Time-Life Books sets.

I have several books in that series! I was given them by a friend. Dragons, Night Creatures, and Water Spirits are the three I remember most vividly.

[cellio]

Do those people foolishly believe that the value of a book is measured in dollars?

That's completely wrong. Sure, there's the occasional rare book that will fetch a grand price, but that's not why most of us have books. The value of a book is in its contents, in the memories it produces, in the enjoyment of sitting down together with a partner or child or random stranger and reading together. The value is in what happens in your brain, not in the dead trees or the digital bits that convey it.

Sheesh. This should be obvious, right? You know this, of course, as do your friends. Those other people who can't open their minds? Not worth your trouble. Don't let them live rent-free in your brain.

[anna_wing]

"Priceless" and "worthless" mean different things despite possibly looking the same to a non-English speaker or machine translation...


I buy physical books (and CDs and DVDs) because I like owning things and having them easily to hand it I want to enjoy them again. As for internet opinions, '"They say? What say they? Let them say."

While traditional Japanese domestic style is genuinely minimalist, everyone except the poorest had a separate storehouse (usually clay or stone built to be inflammable, unlike the houses), or at least a giant storage chest on wheels, in which to keep stuff that they weren't using right at that moment

books

[dialecticdreamer]

I was a die-hard paper book fan for years. Then I tried an experiment to see if owning an ereader would work for me. Yes for fiction or nonfiction essay-style books, NO, times a million, for language study books.

Ten years later, I'm reading a book for research that's in PDF, and have a very small selection of print books. Yet, I know that the vast majority of things printed on paper are STILL not digitized, even though the publishing IS digitally typeset.

[lunabee34]

I love hearing about people's beloved books! Tell me more.

*chin hands*

[vettecat]

The most important aspect of a book is whether it makes you happy. (Also, how on Earth could anyone take a book out of that stack without the whole thing collapsing?)