Building a library...

wrote in
ps.com:


Bud Webster wrote:
Okay, it seems to me that what you're looking for are nice copies of
inexpensive reprint editions, right? Nothing fancy, just good,
solidly-bound readable sets of what are considered the Best Books,
plus whatever other books you know you already like.

Bingo.


Look into the Harvard Classics, which are nicely bound and shouldn't
be terribly expensive.

Thanks; hadn't heard of these before, but I'm intrigued by the "5 foot
bookshelf" concept, and there do seem to be lots of complete sets out
there.

Beware the Harvard Classics. Most editions have tiny bad
typography,.soporific even if the basic volume is not. Baware P.F.
Collier, It's editions tend to be undistinguished. If you wanted the HC,
I'd go with Easton Press. (Gasp)



Time to scout book stores is time I really don't have. (I could
theoretically make time, but then I wouldn't have time to *read* said
books...) I'm logging (hopefully!) partnership-track associate's
hours, if that tells you anything. Oh, and, commuting by bicycle,
lacking time to go to the gym. L.A. is a bit too spread out for what
would otherwise surely be an enjoyable hunt.

Bicycle? Los Angeles?? Berkely, Boalt, Stanford, UCLA,? (I have money
riding on this.) Lightspeed or Trek?

Don't take to heart the crack about law books. If it's West, the case
law books are a bit tacky, but the commentaries are quite handsome.

It is quite clear your objective is collecting good books that you dare
read.

I quite understand your doubts about an all Easton Library. It does have
a sort of pretentious Book of the Month Club feeling about it. A second
problem, do you intend to invite senior partners over? If you do, and
one of them happens to know books, you may be put on the Easton track.

My best call, if you have sufficient funds, is to find a dealer who
traffics in your preferred books.

He/she should be able to find good copies of what you want.

The trouble is finding such a dealer in Los Angeles. Most of the dealers
I know are devoted to the truly rich. Do not, I repeat "Do Not" go to
Heritage.

There is a book shop in Covina A long way away, I know (every much so
longer by bicycle) If Metrolink goes there, you could perhaps do briefs
on your laptop. If you get the owner, you could look around. He has sets
and could probably find what you want or search for your desires. I'll
post his address and phone number. I think he could advise you and find
what you want. You could probably do this by phone, but I think you can
go, look at the stock and then better articulate your wishes.

Another reason why you may wish to step away from Easton, you may be
bitten by the bug. Once you have tasted really fine books, you may find
you want better and better editions, Then, your Eastons will taste like
salt.

All in all, Eastons are cool books. Franklins are really nice. If you
can tolerate multicolor bindings, check out the Folio Society. They are
very nice books at a decent price and a good introductory rate. They are
often dirt cheap on e-bay.

Ted Jones J.D. Thomas Jefferson.

p,s, If you used multi colored underlining or highlighting, glue thos
books shut. My bet is you didn't.

On Mon, 10 Apr 2006 14:35:17 -0700, eurosnob wrote:

Well, it's a done deal - I've closed on my first house, tiny though it may
be, complete with a nice wood-paneled study with built-in barrister
bookshelves. My law books will of course occupy some of these, but all
work and no play -- you know the rest.

Why would you even have paper law books?

However, I was also raised to believe that Mont Blanc was the
end-all-be-all in writing instruments, and I've since come to know that,
at least for my tastes, I can get twice the writing instrument in, say, a
Pelikan, at half the price. I'd like to correct, if and as necessary, my
knowledge of the book world, along those same lines.

I'd like to start building a personal library. I'd love to find books
that are attractive to shelve and high quality, but still readable. I
need to replace my dog-eared paperback and battered hardcover editions
(refugees from academia -- and wearing the battle scars of academic
carelessness and poverty -- all) of the classics (Shakespeare, Proust,
&c.), and beyond. I honestly don't really care about their value as
collectable items, so perhaps I'm posting in the wrong place (if so,
please direct me to where I ought to be?). Like pens, automobiles, and
wine, I seek Quality, but Quality to use and enjoy, actively yet
respectfully.

In that vein, are Easton Press titles worthwhile purchases (not
investments)? Or are there other, "Pelikan"-esque publishers out there
that I would be better off investigating?

It sounds like you're torn between the superficial and the substantive.
Let's face it. There is nothing practical about a fountain pen. They
leak, The ink soaks through the paper. You have to wait for it to dry or
blow on it. A 39 cent Bic is far more practical, although I prefer
disposable mechanical pencils.

Books are just information technology. I can understand the trophy
mentality. I've been guilty of it. Then I ran out of room. I finally
decided that if the book was only text I could get rid of it and keep an
electronic version.

So, if all you want to do is impress the Joneses go with the cardboard
boxes.

--
Mark Healey
marknews(at)healeyonline(dot)com

It sounds like you're torn between the superficial and the substantive.
Let's face it. There is nothing practical about a fountain pen. They
leak, The ink soaks through the paper. You have to wait for it to dry or
blow on it. A 39 cent Bic is far more practical,

You can write better and with less strain using a fountain pen, and
it's more fun doing it. A rollerball/gel-pen is not very different
in pressure, but gives you only a fixed-width line. A chisel-edge
felt-tip gives you the variable width, but goes fuzzy very fast.

I do calligraphic labels for the more expensive items in our shop -
works very well at selling them and it's a hell of a lot quicker
than using a computer. At present I'm using different sizes of
broad-nib fountain pen, but I'm thinking of moving to either a dip
pen (which I've used before) or quills and reeds (new to me, but
I can see why serious calligraphers use them).


although I prefer disposable mechanical pencils.

Okay if you like writing in thin-line removable grey. I find pencil
kind of depressing.


Are "indelible" pencils still available anywhere? They used them when
I was a kid for applications where erasing was illegal, like account
books and voting slips. They used some kind of purple dye which produced
a gross-looking smudge if you tried to erase it. They also stained your
fingers purple.

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

"Mark Healey" wrote in message
news
Why would you even have paper law books?

Because when clients walk into your office they can't see your subscription
to Lexis. A wall of books is worth about $75 per hour.



However, I was also raised to believe that Mont Blanc was the
end-all-be-all in writing instruments, and I've since come to know that,
at least for my tastes, I can get twice the writing instrument in, say, a
Pelikan, at half the price. I'd like to correct, if and as necessary, my
knowledge of the book world, along those same lines.

I'd like to start building a personal library. I'd love to find books
that are attractive to shelve and high quality, but still readable. I
need to replace my dog-eared paperback and battered hardcover editions
(refugees from academia -- and wearing the battle scars of academic
carelessness and poverty -- all) of the classics (Shakespeare, Proust,
&c.), and beyond. I honestly don't really care about their value as
collectable items, so perhaps I'm posting in the wrong place (if so,
please direct me to where I ought to be?). Like pens, automobiles, and
wine, I seek Quality, but Quality to use and enjoy, actively yet
respectfully.

In that vein, are Easton Press titles worthwhile purchases (not
investments)? Or are there other, "Pelikan"-esque publishers out there
that I would be better off investigating?

It sounds like you're torn between the superficial and the substantive.
Let's face it. There is nothing practical about a fountain pen. They
leak, The ink soaks through the paper. You have to wait for it to dry or
blow on it. A 39 cent Bic is far more practical, although I prefer
disposable mechanical pencils.

Books are just information technology. I can understand the trophy
mentality. I've been guilty of it. Then I ran out of room. I finally
decided that if the book was only text I could get rid of it and keep an
electronic version.

So, if all you want to do is impress the Joneses go with the cardboard
boxes.

--
Mark Healey
marknews(at)healeyonline(dot)com

Ted Jones wrote:
Beware the Harvard Classics. Most editions have tiny bad
typography,.soporific even if the basic volume is not. Baware P.F.
Collier, It's editions tend to be undistinguished. If you wanted the HC,
I'd go with Easton Press. (Gasp)

Ah. Again, many thanks; most (all?) of the sets I've idly come across
have been indeed been P.F. Collier...



Bicycle? Los Angeles?? Berkely, Boalt, Stanford, UCLA,? (I have money
riding on this.) Lightspeed or Trek?

Heh. Actually, for all my quasi-pretentious upbringing, I've been on
my own since my teenage years. Worked my way through the University of
Redlands, and then Southwestern University School of Law's evening
program. (I commuted on a motorcycle then.) My bicycles are both
Specialized, one for commuting, one for longer distances on the
weekends.




Don't take to heart the crack about law books. If it's West, the case
law books are a bit tacky, but the commentaries are quite handsome.

Those aren't so much for show, as they are (believe it or not, even in
this day of LexisNexis) handy references, and represent a big chunk and
major event of my life (law school). Whether or not they're
prestigious, they're going into my study's bookshelves. Only a
tiny handful are West, and I agree they're not much to look at (neither
are the Aspen titles). The Lexis and Foundation Press titles I
actually find rather attractive, but I'm biased.


It is quite clear your objective is collecting good books that you dare
read.

Precisely.


I quite understand your doubts about an all Easton Library. It does have
a sort of pretentious Book of the Month Club feeling about it. A second
problem, do you intend to invite senior partners over? If you do, and
one of them happens to know books, you may be put on the Easton track.

Heh. While I would certainly hope my taste in books doesn't dictate my
career trajectory, you've managed to capture the very essence of my
Easton concern; it's, again, right up there with writing and Mont
Blanc. If you don't know any better, you think you're getting a great
pen for $300 -- you must be, 'cause it's a $300 pen, and it's sold
through a high end store at the Beverly Center. But truth be told,
I've found Rotrings have better cartridges... Anyone who "knows pens"
knows you were taken.


My best call, if you have sufficient funds, is to find a dealer who
traffics in your preferred books.

That's a pretty universal recommendation for "a dealer." Anyone
recommend any good dealers in Los Angeles, preferably "Mid City West,"
Beverly Hills, Century City or adjacant thereto?



There is a book shop in Covina A long way away, I know (every much so
longer by bicycle) If Metrolink goes there, you could perhaps do briefs
on your laptop.

For the record, I actually do own a car. (Also a diamond in the rough;
it gets comments and questions everywhere from afficionados, and has
roughly the same exclusivity -- if not prestige -- as the Ferrari F360,
though like models -- mine's not for sale -- sell for about what a
nicely loaded Corolla would set you back.) I just tend not to drive
it, unless I have to. I keep several suits at the office (there's a
dry cleaners on the first level of the parking garage), and enjoy
keeping in some semblance of shape on the bicycle as I enjoy the
westside's weather. (You might infer that, lacking time to go book
hunting, I also lack time to hit the gym; you'd be correct. Hence,
bicycle commuting. An easy compromise.)


I'll post his address and phone number.

Please. Don't suppose you know if the store keeps weekend hours?



Another reason why you may wish to step away from Easton, you may be
bitten by the bug. Once you have tasted really fine books, you may find
you want better and better editions, Then, your Eastons will taste like
salt.

Also a concern. (My mom and I have a painfully humorous story about a
trip we took, before I had started to explore wine meaningfully, where
we paid, if I recall correctly, $22/bottle for two bottles of Beringer
white zinfandel at a restaurant in Miami's South Beach. I look back
and laugh, now, but...)


All in all, Eastons are cool books. Franklins are really nice. If you
can tolerate multicolor bindings, check out the Folio Society. They are
very nice books at a decent price and a good introductory rate. They are
often dirt cheap on e-bay.

Which of the above, if any, would an asprining home librarian add to
his collection today, with money not tight but not flowing in deep
rivers, and not feel like he was a rank amateur when he bought them,
ten years later?

p,s, If you used multi colored underlining or highlighting, glue thos
books shut. My bet is you didn't.

Books I bought new escaped the highlighter and the pen. (Occasionally,
some penciled notes.) Books bought used were often not so lucky,
though I did try to find the cleanest volumes where I could. Of
course, most (actually, from law school, all) of the used books were
paperback. For some reason I couldn't justify the high cost of
paperback books new, whereas I had no problem justifying the (somewhat
higher) new cost of hardback volumes...

Almost all my law books survived pretty much unscathed, except Cases
and Materials in Contract Law, which has a pretty chewed up spine.
Wonder what that says, if anything.


=========

Mark Healey wrote:
It sounds like you're torn between the superficial and the substantive.
Let's face it. There is nothing practical about a fountain pen. They
leak, The ink soaks through the paper. You have to wait for it to dry or
blow on it. A 39 cent Bic is far more practical, although I prefer
disposable mechanical pencils.

Au contraire. Fountain pens write with basically no pressure, can be
refilled
quickly and inexpensively (I keep a couple of bottles of Quink
blue-black
around), and if you use the right ink (again, I'm a fan of Quink, but
I've
also had good luck with Waterman's ink), dries very quickly -- faster
than
the gel and (disposable) roller ball pens I've used.

I injured my right (dominant) hand in a motorcycle accident several
years ago,
and I can write for an hour or so with a fountain pen. Anything else,
I'm
worthless after 5-10 minutes.


Books are just information technology. I can understand the trophy
mentality. I've been guilty of it. Then I ran out of room. I finally
decided that if the book was only text I could get rid of it and keep an
electronic version.

Quick reference texts, I'll agree with you, to a point. But even with
O'Reilly's Safari and PDF versions of texts and documents, I find I
print
the stuff out for easier reading. (And that's true even with my 22"
widescreen cinema display, which allows me to have a full-page-width
PDF window
open alongside a Word document.) The ease of doing a Boolean search to
quickly locate just the paragraph or table you're looking for more than
cancels out staring at the text on the screen.

But for *reading*, for sitting down with a good book in a comfortable
chair
with a reading light, to drill into the text with single-minded
determination
or for the casual release of the day (Gibson and Stephenson are my
favorites
for the latter; before law school, I was a computer geek), nothing
beats paper
and ink. And if you're going to have them around anyway, hardcovers
don't
take up that much more space than paperbacks, and survive much better.


So, if all you want to do is impress the Joneses go with the cardboard
boxes.

Enough of that. Seriously.

John R. Yamamoto-Wilson wrote:
rennick wrote:

If you don't intend to invest, then why bother?

Um, to read? Since even those who buy "collectible" books are unwise to
consider them merely an investment I would consider that a rather strange
question.

This is something we have discussed again
and again and no doubt will continue to
discuss. "Investment" means different things
to different people. From one standpoint,
Easton Press books are an excellent
investment because they hold their value.
With so much new fiction, self-help and
other books, you can find a vast number
of "used like new" copies on Amazon for
anywhere from one cent to three or four
dollars. (Plus $3.49 for shipping, of course.)
Yes, new Eastons generally cost considerably
more than books in those categories, but even
when you look at "used, like new" Eastons
on ADDALL and compare the price
drops of Easton as a percentage
contrasted with the price dropping of, say,
most 1998 Random House novels, you
will see that Eastons are a solid
investment as far as holding their
value in "used, like new" or "used,
near fine" very well. On the other
hand, you don't buy an Easton new
for $100 with the hope of selling it for
$500 or $1,000. A tiny percentage
of them have taken off like that for
one reason or another, but only an
idiot would bank on that. So, an
Easton is a good investment if you
mean something that can be sold
later for at least a significant percentage
of its original price is a good investment.

y own preference, for the "classics", would be nicely-bound volumes, as old
as possible, without being firsts. For instance, I passed up the opportunity
to inherit my father's set of Dickens (early 20th century, clothbound, but
very attractive and in pristine condition) because the print was rather too
tiny, and am now on the lookout for a similar set with decent-sized print.
Some good illustrations would be a bonus, but not strictly necessary and,
unlike a lot of people, who go for leather bindings,

Yes, and some of those jackanapes
don't know a damnable SKIVER (spit)
when they touch it and pay far too
much just because a book is
leatherbound.

I would be just as
happy with a good clothbound set.

I agree. For my money, when you are
talking about classics, it is hard to beat
many Heritages when they are in fine
condition.

One comment on age, though. What
some posters to this group have a hard
time grasping is that the overall quality
of the book can be far more significant
that its age. For instance, in the 1890's
Hearst and others pubished a huge
number of classic reprints, including
Dickens and many others. These
were cheap books in all respects.
Cheap paper, cheap cloth, etc. with
often one very mediocre frontispiece
illustration. I would not not give you
twenty bucks for a box of 'em. For
the most part, they are cheap lousy
miserable books with tiny font-sizes
to boot. Contrast those with the
beautiful Scribner classics (and some
of the other classics by McKay and
others) from WW 1 vintage into, say,
the Twenties. Now THOSE are
books...

[from the upstdairs office]

wrote in message
oups.com...

Ted Jones wrote:
All in all, Eastons are cool books. Franklins are really nice. If you
can tolerate multicolor bindings, check out the Folio Society. They are
very nice books at a decent price and a good introductory rate. They are
often dirt cheap on e-bay.

Which of the above, if any, would an asprining home librarian add to
his collection today, with money not tight but not flowing in deep

1. Discussion to date seems to omit current preferences,
e.g. the OP did not say he read mostly fiction, non-fiction,
19th century etc. In time most of us tend to specialize
(e.g. Trollope, fly fishing, India, poetry). E.g. I am currently
searching for attractive hard covers to replace student-life
paperbacks since reread to destruction (e.g. Natural
History of Selborne, Aubrey's Brief Lives, memoirs of
John Masters and Fitzroy Maclean.)

2. Folio Society selections of 1955-1990 would constitute
a first-class unspecialized library of lasting value both
literary and material. I should look carefully and twice at
special offers offered to the American market by FS in the last
10 or 20 years.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

wrote:

I agree. For my money, when you are
talking about classics, it is hard to beat
many Heritages when they are in fine
condition.


I'd second this suggestion about Heritage press. They generally are
very nice reading copies that are nicely designed as well. Indeed, if I
recall, Easton uses the plates from many Heritage titles.

Heritage Press books were the trade editions of the numbered and signed
Limited Edition Club books. Some of these are exquisite in terms of
design & binding -- and, to me, undervalued. Over the years I have
upgraded quite a number of my Heritage books to the LEC versions.

The only complication with both Heritage & LEC is that many volumes are
oversized, making shelving a bit difficult.

Mark

wrote:
John R. Yamamoto-Wilson wrote:
rennick wrote:
..

One comment on age, though. What
some posters to this group have a hard
time grasping is that the overall quality
of the book can be far more significant
that its age. For instance, in the 1890's
Hearst and others pubished a huge
number of classic reprints, including
Dickens and many others. These
were cheap books in all respects.
Cheap paper, cheap cloth, etc. with
often one very mediocre frontispiece
illustration. I would not not give you
twenty bucks for a box of 'em. For
the most part, they are cheap lousy
miserable books with tiny font-sizes
to boot. Contrast those with the
beautiful Scribner classics (and some
of the other classics by McKay and
others) from WW 1 vintage into, say,
the Twenties. Now THOSE are
books...

Here is one interesting thing
I left out in making the
above point (that the
Hearst and other cheapie
classics reprints from the
late 1800's prove that
there is much more involved
in value of an old book to
collectors than its age):
The books I refer to often
cost from fifty cents to one
dollar new. Well, when you
allow for inflation and consider
what you could buy for one
dollar in 1895, an Addall search
will demonstrate that many of
such classic reprints even
when in near fine condition,
have not increased their value
at all, one hundred and ten
years later! Then compare
that with what WW1 vintage
classics by Scribners and
some others sell for today
in near-fine condition. If that
does not convince Mr. Fundocs
and the others that
there is a lot more than age
involved value of a book, nothing
will.
[from the upstdairs office]

wrote in message
oups.com...

Here is one interesting thing
I left out in

Don't underestimate yourself blip. You left out a lot of interesting things.