It's smart of the folks behind the Loeb Classical Library to publish books that a person might actually read in uniform editions that appeal to the design sense of Martha Stewart, but if they were really smart they'd offer more colors, to suit a broader range of decors. Stupid classicists.
I wanted to punch Thatcher Wine in the head just for being named Thatcher Wine, which suggested I wasn't in the frame of mind to read the linked piece charitably, so I stopped reading. But I read enough to hate everyone involved.
The name Thatcher Wine is made infinitely worse when combined with the words "Northern California estate" right in the first sentence.
When I become rich, I'm going to have a house with shelves full of kindles loaded with the texts of Swedish law journals translated into Wendish. I won't actually live in the house, but I will have it maintained so that I might live in it. Instead, I will live in the cloud.
Back when I was in the trade (late 1970s), we got a letter from a guy we'd never heard of requesting £2000 worth of classics books. No further qualifications.
After some deliberation, we decided to send him the stuff that hadn't moved for longest and see what happened. Our old department manager, recently retired, had been an eccentric completist, so we had a lot of valuable shelving taken up by the entire catalogue of Bibliotheca Teubneriana (Leipzip and Stuttgart), some of which were so utterly obscure that they'd sat there for ten years (I notice they've pruned their list considerably since then). Likewise the other main scholarly series. We'd been wondering what to do with them.
So the guy got sent about three hundred volumes, new, most of which were, quite literally, of no interest to anybody on earth. And he paid up like a lamb. We were ecstatic. We never had a commercial month like it.
I still wonder occasionally what he did with them, and what his heirs did/will do with them on his death.
I do have my Ladybird books arranged purely by colour. Does that make me a twat?
Yrs, worried of Reading.
6. Does the library there still give out badges saying "I thought Reading was a town in Berkshire until I discovered libraries"?
Depends what colours they are and what order they're in. If they're in spectral order (red >> blue), less of a prat than if trying to follow some weird decorative scheme.
7.1 - Sadly no - would love one of those!
7.2 - er yes, red to blue. With the red and white Ladybird Leaders to the left of red. I used to always put them in the series, but tbh I'm the only one who reads them (my children being totally fucking unappreciative) so a year or two ago I thought I would just go crazy and have them looking pretty.
I can see the aesthetic of the old-fashioned, leatherbound books bought by the foot, but I don't at all get the white-wrapped books with the titles all in the same font.
So the guy got sent about three hundred volumes, new, most of which were, quite literally, of no interest to anybody on earth.
Was his name "John Emerson"?
Now that I live with someone whose parents did not have any books displayed anywhere in the house, she finds it hard not to see bookshelves with actual books on them, more than one row of books, as really messy-looking. She's always saying that the books on this shelf should be organized from tall on the left to short on the right, and then the shelf below it should be the reverse. Standardized spines would probably reduce her stress level.
She owns a lot of books but seems to have been keeping all but 20 them in boxes for the last decade.
She's always saying that the books on this shelf should be organized from tall on the left to short on the right
There's Dewey Decimal, there's Library of Congress, and then there's the less-used Coldstream Guards method...
3: When I get rich I'm going to have a library stocked with hundreds of unopened penknives.
Matt Yglesias isn't buying my story that skyrocketing Wall Street earnings--and the skyrocketing incomes of the super-rich in general--are basically coming out of the pockets of the working and middle classes
From here. The answer, Kevin, is that Matt Yglesias is to politics as American beer is to beer: like beer but with the beer taken out.
Kdrum was always further left and snarkier than Isaylegs, but they're diverging with time.
14
I generally like Yglesias but it is pretty amazing that a smart guy from a rich family who writes professionally about tax policy didn't know that unrealized capital gains aren't taxed.
Reading that Yglesias/Drum exchange has made me quit reading Yglesias. What, there's no plausible mechanism because you spent 30 seconds thinking about it, and you couldn't think of one? And yet Kevin spends five minutes Googling and can already make a plausible case?
I would say that Drum was definitely to Yglesias' right circa 2002. He seems like the prototypical centrist technocratic liberal, so the fact that he's sounding more and more populist is a sign of how bad things are getting.
(And James is right that his not knowing that unrealized capital gains aren't taxed is just bizarre.)
15: That really is amazing. Even poor dumb peep knew that.
14: I think that's largely a grownup/kid distinction. Not that Yglesias is really a kid anymore, but the kind of Econ 101 arguments (like this one) that he falls for don't get past someone with more experience. There's a point at which continuing to fall for that kind of thing marks out which side you're on, but I wouldn't say Yglesias is past it.
15: Wow. That is pretty impressive. Not that I can talk myself this week, having been talking about health care for years without realizing that health insurance for the self-employed was deductible.
I was youthful only fifteen years ago
Youngster, please.
18.1 I don't think that's it -- Yglesias just has that impulse towards contrarianism -- I've long thought that he could easily become Micky Kaus even if he isn't careful.
The classic pocket-sized mini-hardback Ladybird book (four-and-a-half by seven inches/11.5 cm by 18 cm) was first produced in 1940 for a series of animal stories. . . . Early books had a standard 56-page format, chosen because a complete book could be printed on one large sheet of paper, which was then folded and cut to size without any waste. It was an economical way of producing books, enabling the books to be retailed at a low price which, for almost thirty years, remained at two shillings and sixpence (12.5p).
Cool.
I'm the only one who reads them (my children being totally fucking unappreciative)
Children are always already fucking unappreciative of the important things.
I would say that Drum was definitely to Yglesias' right circa 2002. He seems like the prototypical centrist technocratic liberal, so the fact that he's sounding more and more populist is a sign of how bad things are getting.
I don't think their relative positions have changed much, it's more about different issues being salient. Drum (and I say this as a stodgy middle-aged woman), is a stodgy middle-aged guy. Perfectly reasonable on social issues generally, but not really going to be in the vanguard, sensible on environmental stuff but viscerally sympathetic to people who like their car-dependent lifestyles -- if you put him and Yggles in a room, Yggles is going to look leftier on social markers.
OTOH, Drum has a couple decades of non-wealthy work experience, and if you're politically oriented, bright, and on the left side of the spectrum at all, just a reasonable sense of what's going on around you is going to push you in a pretty populist direction on economic issues. I don't know that Yggles is personally all that well off in a disposable-income/consumption kind of way, but his social world, from Dalton through now, seems to have been pretty much in a protected bubble.
My friend ordered something like "Boring Accounts Of The Dust Bowl" for her grandmother. It arrived the day before Grandma's birthday. My friend opened it up...and discovered it had been converted to a safe. Ie interior had been cut out by hand, pages glued together to form walls, etc.
She gave it to her grandmother, since you could still read the first 50 pages, and called Amazon to complain.
They finally agreed to send her another one, which she had them send directly to Grandma. Grandma recieved it, opened it, and....another safe!
It currently can't be ordered off Amazon anymore.
American beer is to beer: like beer but with the beer taken out
Sorry, you have to blame the Belgians now.
Children are always already fucking unappreciative of the important things.
I'm so proud that Mara's favorite book was my favorite book at about her age, too. Now that she lets us read a whole book to her, she had me read it twice last night! (Lee was surprised she chose repetition over newness, which means she must not have been paying attention for the last two months.)
"I don't think you should have law journals unless one of you is actually a lawyer," Mr. Weinstock said.
But given that none of it's going to get read, not least since it's proposed that artisans be instructed to replace the functional bindings with bindings that lack lettering of any sort, how could it possibly matter? We're not talking books here: we're talking about ways of making your rooms eight inches smaller in the plan dimensions. By way of compressed wood pulp product.
This does annoy me, since we here are in a position of being able to afford books but not shelves.
We're not talking books here: we're talking about ways of making your rooms eight inches smaller in the plan dimensions. By way of compressed wood pulp product.
What's the R-value of books?
ISTR reading that books are a surprisingly good neutron absorber, so much so that you'd be well advised to pile them over your trench-in-the-basement fallout refuge as part of the overhead cover.
I want to offer a competing service whereby the pretentious nonreader hires me to do his shelves some weekend and comes home to find every wall lined top-to-bottom in Penguin Classics with hideous orange spines.
I like the topic of fetishizing books more than the topic of rich philistines. Personally, I never used to buy many books except nonfiction ones about history, science, sports, languages. Now I live in a place with more room, and I've gotten interested in poetry for what I believe is the 3rd time. I think fetishizing the poetry book should be acceptable because, you know, it's all an ineffable aesthetic experience.
I don't even feel this way about art books, for some reason. Perfectly happy to get a warped and stained paperback book with hideous graphic design but 50 interesting prints in it.
I worked at al thrift store book loft for a while right after I finished undergrad. One day some nicely dressed people came in and bought all the leather and fake leather bound books without so much as cracking them open. A couple of days later I was visiting a friend who was working at Reed and saw the same people filming an Oldsmobile commercial in which the car ran a slalom of piles of nice books with plaster busts on top of them. The commercial revolved around the notion that Einstein was inspired to discover relativity when his relatives pulled up outside his office in an Oldsmobile. They shitcanned the books when they were done, which pissed me off almost as much as the idiotic punning premise of the commercial. I still want to strangle someone over this.
What's the R-value of books?
Probably so-so, and not so good for airtightness, and on the wrong side of the vapour barrier to boot. I'm all for good neutron absorption, obviously.
In Auto-da-Fe, the sinologist turns all his books around so that the bindings face the wall, doesn't he? And this is taken to be a significant step towards madness.
I had a weird experience in a museum, once -- I was walking through an installation, part of which had columns made up of stacks of secondhand books bolted together, and halfway down a stack was some out-of-print book that I'd been keeping my eyes open for in secondhand bookstores for a couple of years (back before abebooks). Very frustrating, being that close to a book I actually wanted to read, and hadn't been able to find a copy to buy.
Can't remember what the book was -- I was still in my teens, so probably some midcentury SF or mystery.
I think fetishizing the poetry book should be acceptable because, you know, it's all an ineffable aesthetic experience.
I just got a kindle for Christmas, so I've been experimenting with what is nice to read on there. Thoughtful pagination is definitely needed for e-reading poetry. I got some Trakl and Rilke collections off of Project Gutenberg, and if you just page through the book, most poems get cut up onto different pages.
It's weird how Kindles won't tell you what page you're on, too - just what percent you've read.
28: Advanced British interior design - using the different Penguins to create an exciting colour scheme. As well as the orange, there's the Modern Classics list, which have been silver since the 1990s and were black with a full cover photo before that. Pelicans/Penguin Handbooks were sky blue and then got a makeover to look like the Modern Classics in the 60s. There was also a list that had a dark green and white cover (the only one I have is a novel but I don't know why it wasn't an orange-white Penguin).
I'm excited by the emerging trend of "objectifying objects." If you can't objectify objects, what can you objectify?
Future trends to watch: Subjectifying subjects, commodifying commodities, decaffeinating decaf.
(Lee was surprised she chose repetition over newness, which means she must not have been paying attention for the last two months.)
Kids love familiarity at that time of night, IMEX.
Jackie Treehorn treats women like women, man.
Mathematicians might be able to decorate an entire wall in Springer yellow books?
I like my chaotic mess of mostly paperbacks in many colors.
In terms of math books I think if Heebie's book is anything to go by, you want to frame them like record covers for decoration.
BTW, searching Amazon for Heebie's name...what is this?!? January 11?!?
Germanists can have yellow Reclam books (orange if you read middle or old German), the Suhrkamp Taschenbücher with navy covers and bright titiles, and the edition suhrkamp ones in all different colors.
Lee was surprised she chose repetition
Hasn't spent much time around three-year-olds, has she?
Classicists can have red Loebs (Latin), green Loebs (Greek), pale blue OCTs (Oxford Classical Texts), pale straw Budés (facing pages Greek and French), salmon Budés (facing pages Latin and French), and sort of persimmon Teubners (Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana -- German critical editions).
If you read French, you've got to settle for that slight off-white colour with red trim and heavy bodoni type Gallimard uses. Bit dull, but very French indeed.
It's weird how Kindles won't tell you what page you're on
Really? How irksome.
Pages are for old people (and Republican congressmen).
18: Not that Yglesias is really a kid anymore, but the kind of Econ 101 arguments (like this one) that he falls for don't get past someone with more experience. There's a point at which continuing to fall for that kind of thing marks out which side you're on, but I wouldn't say Yglesias is past it.
Yggles' ignorance isn't that surprising if we posit that, like another scion of the UMC I know, his father did his taxes for the first 35 years of his life.
42: Word. I need to be more patient and remember that.
(And I agree with Annelid Gustator, too, though only the last two nights have had specific bedtime stories rather than just book time throughout the day.)
It's weird how Kindles won't tell you what page you're on, too - just what percent you've read.
Aside from the trouble in properly attributing a passage (as discussed on Crooked Timber a week or two ago), what's the difference? I suppose in any book longer than 100 pages the numbers must change more slowly than on paper, but isn't just another way of saying the same thing?
Now that I'm writing this, I realize that finding a sentence you liked on "page 43%" of the Kindle War and Peace ("It was the best of times . . .") would be more difficult than on print page 589 or whatever.
Hasn't spent much time around three-year-olds, has she?
Seriously. Walk into a room of parents of toddlers and 93% of them will be able to recite Goodnight Moon and at least one Sandra Boynton book* by heart. My 3-year-old niece's bedtime reading has ended with the same two books for probably a year now.
*Barnyard Dance might be my favorite.
On preview of 48, my experience is lots of repetition in daytime readings, too, though not as consistently.
Future trends to watch: Subjectifying subjects, commodifying commodities, decaffeinating decaf.
I'm getting ready for my short flight to catch the Unfogged Galleon. Again I request a threadbump.
The answer from Wikipedia: orange and white for general fiction, green and white for crime fiction, cerise and white for travel and adventure, dark blue and white for biographies, yellow and white for miscellaneous, red and white for drama; and the rarer purple and white for essays and belles lettres and grey and white for world affairs.
Plus sky blue/white for handbooks and works of reference, black for Classics, silver for Modern Classics post 1990.
Now that I'm writing this, I realize that finding a sentence you liked on "page 43%" of the Kindle War and Peace ("It was the best of times . . .") would be more difficult than on print page 589 or whatever.
For something like that in the public domain, you can highlight and save that passage for yourself, and then look it up in Google Books later. I did this a lot for my dissertation, where I had quoted things from one or two pages I had photocoped from who knows what, or when I wanted to quote from a more standard edition.
what is this?!? January 11?!?
It's true! And exciting!
The second children's book got canned, recently. They had paid us in full, and mocked it up, and it was ready to go. Then the big publisher dissolved the small publisher who was about to print it. All books due to come out after June got the shaft.
(I'm being obnoxiously cryptic here, if you don't know my real name. If you want backstory, email me at heebie dot geebie at gmail.)
I love your mom's cover illustration. [Redact as needed.] I can't wait to see the inside.
Amazon tells me I should let the publisher know I'd like to see it on Kindle, which, no. Seems to me this is where the B&N color reader would have a definite advantage.
HG, I will order it for my niece. That animal is her favorite.
Sucks about the 2nd book. Can you take it to another publisher? I guess you'd have to pay them back first.
I'll ask my local independent bookstore -- you know the one -- to order it for me and see if they'll stock it.
58: Actually, we can shop it around without having to pay them back. And we picked up an agent along the way, so we don't even have to do the legwork this time. So we're in a much better spot than we were before either book got picked up.
57: Thanks!
For my own credibility, I need to say that the illustrations are fantastic, but I don't find the actual story particularly so.
I'll bet you could pitch it to the mainstream and independent newspapers here for a "local author does good" story. I can see it now: She's a math professor! At a sorta conservative college! And she has her face pierced! And she's a soccer player! And a mom! And she goes tubing on the river! And she likes weird music! And she writes children's books! And has a secret identity! She's keepin' it weird!
The darn thing writes itself.
3 made me happy. Hey Wendish is spoken in Central Texas (unless everyone died and it isn't anymore)! So don't move there, or someone might be all "I'd love to discuss the contents of your kindle"--which, come to think of it, I hope is the latest version of showing one's etchings.
Racist.
While the old German-derived labels "Wend" and "Wendish," which once denoted "Slav(ic)" generally . . . they are today mostly unusual in place of "Sorb" and "Sorbian" with reference to Sorbian communities in Germany, because many Sorbs consider such words to be offensive.
63 is absolutely correct and necessary.
And it makes me sound colorful and interesting!
63: She had a cat that was possessed by the devil!
67: And much better than the usual way to sound colorful and interesting which is to get hit with a big stick.
68: Even better: she had a cat that was featured in some veterinary conference video, or something.
I'd avoid the "weird kitty, perfect ass" combo.
to get hit with a big stick.
The world is a colorful and interesting place.
I love the Amazon search results for heebie. Two awesomely illustrated covers, one title suitable for 2-year-olds and the other I don't even understand.
71: Is "kitty" really the best word you could've chosen in that sentence? Even after I credit you with choosing subtlety, I'm disappointed.
Although it would be even better if they both shared the same subtitle.
Darn you all, now I'm trying to remember Heebie's identity. Normally I make an effort to not keep track of who people are in real life, but I feel like I remember just enough that I could probably find HG.
And she likes weird music!
Is this true. I'll accept that Heebie likes good music, but I thought it was mostly mainstream.
||
I just bought my first suit yesterday.
I like it, and am excited, but it wasn't cheap.
|>
Is "pussy" not the obvious choice?
I refuse to believe that it didn't occur to you.
I propose that we refer to the weird cat (PBUH) as Fur Loko.
78: Why Osgood, that would be unseemly.
Forgive me, I beg you. What was I thinking?
I feel like I remember just enough that I could probably find HG.
I feel like there's probably enough right there in 63.
I love the Amazon search results for heebie. Two awesomely illustrated covers, one title suitable for 2-year-olds and the other I don't even understand.
Based on the title, and the description, and the cover illustration, I'm pretty sure the second one is about interior design. Which isn't at all what I thought HG's dissertation was about, but the description seems pretty clear.
Although, I have to say: $69 for 68 pages? Are you being serious with me? Over $1 per page??
Now that I'm writing this, I realize that finding a sentence you liked on "page 43%" of the Kindle War and Peace ("It was the best of times . . .") would be more difficult than on print page 589 or whatever.
But you can just search for the text on the Kindle. The footnoting issue is a real one (for academics anyway), but being able to search is a real boon.
Hand-written with calligraphy pens, urple. It would be a bargain at twice that cost.
I'll accept that Heebie likes good music, but I thought it was mostly mainstream.
Well, I find Die Antwoord weird, though not nosflow weird.
85: As you can see from the listed prices for new and used copies, that is just an upper bound on the number of dollars on a page.
Isn't mainstream music weird around these parts? Ke$ha for the double reverse $nobbery?
I think that's just regular reverse snobbery.
Don't put my reverse snobbery in a box.
1: Cut a hole in a box.
2: Put your reverse snobbery in that box.
3: Make her open the box.
And that's the way you do it...
Double reverse snobbery would be...liking Dream Theater? Andrea Bocelli?
I like to think that my recent fondness for Boney M is some kind of deep-cover triple-reverse snobbery, rather than possible brain damage.
95: Better stop masturbating, though.
95: Boney M is objectively cool. Do not worry about your brain.
96: luckily I can still masturbate to the people who actually performed and sang the music.
I recently found out the term Tebowners, for those who like Tim Tebow.
My Hungarian friend claims that dancing to "Rasputin" was an act of committed political defiance during the 1980s, since it was vaguely anti-Russian. I have never seen this claim independently verified.
I think "Daddy Cool" is a genuinely good song. "Belfast," not so much.
since most folks seem to have left the MLA thread [thanks oudemia and Halford!] I'll plead the indulgence of the hivemind and ask this question here as well: I need temporary health insurance--anybody know a good shopping website? had good luck with anyone? I lack preexisting conditions, though just having to do this is giving me an outbreak of anxiety symptoms.....(grew up in Canada, never get sick, weirdly phobic about medical issues in general)
Growing up Canadian isn't a preëxisting condition?
(I have no helpful recommendations, sorry.)
34
It's weird how Kindles won't tell you what page you're on, too - just what percent you've read.
It won't? You're right, that is weird, my off-brand e-reader does. (Sony e-reader, linked to Borders, if it matters.) The page numbers it shows are not directly related to the number of times I've hit the "next page" button, but at a comfortable font size, they match about one and a half or two screens' worth of text on most books. The point is, there are page numbers, and I'm pretty sure they correspond to the page numbers of the paper edition. Maybe it's an option you have to turn on?
I think it would be weird if the kindle *did* tell you what page you're on. You can change the font, size, and spacing of the text, so it's not as if one screen's worth of text is a fixed thing. And having the page numbers reference a paper edition seems weird to me too: aside from the question of which paper edition you are going to pick to reference, it would be setting up a hierarchy in which the Kindle text is derivative of the print edition.
I think it's weird to read a book that has page numbers in a format that doesn't tell you what page numbers you're on. But if it's an e-only edition, it doesn't make much difference to me.
I'm generally more concerned with edition information. Sometimes with Gutenberg editions, you can't tell what version you've got. When I read The Gilded Age, the only Gutenberg version I could find had certain names changed from the original printing, which happened during Twain's lifetime, but which was not the version I wanted. It would have been nice to know that up front; I ended up reading a print edition.
On the other hand, I've read both a Henry James novel and a Howells novel using multiple formats - whatever I happened to have access to at a given time. Some versions were paginated, some not. But they were the same edition.
But on yet another hand, I've never used an e-reader*, just browsers or pdf readers.
*Well, I tried out the tk3 reader software on my computer, but I didn't like it and it's apparently been superseded anyway.
I think it's weird to read a book that has page numbers in a format that doesn't tell you what page numbers you're on.
I can understand this for work that has specifically to do with editions. Or if you're really invested in the book-ness of the text, i.e., in its having this format that divides the text up into these particular blocks on pages. (Or in the manuscripts of someone like Kafka, whose writing sometiimes starts freaking out (in content) as he reaches the end of a page - the Roter Stern Facsimile edition is great for looking at this.)
But for everyday reading, I can't bring myself to care about these arbitrary entities called 'page numbers' at all.
I mostly don't care, except when I want to get a feel for how long the book is, like at the beginning. Which is easy information to get ahold of, so mostly I do like the Kindle app. But I did find the page number thing strange.
It's weird how Kindles won't tell you what page you're on, too - just what percent you've read.
I think this is good, not weird. Page numbers are a legacy of dead-tree publishing. Kindle is doing us a service to get rid of them... they have no meaning in the context of eBooks, and pretending they do will just cause more confusion in the long run. Better to force the issue now, when eBooks are still a new thing, than have them hang around for decades, imposing their meaninglessness on us all.
Plus, it will force the APA into adjusting it stupid, page number in parentheses-based bibliographic standards, and we can go back to using numbered footnotes as God intended.
I'm a slow reader - well, relative to lots of people I know in the humanities or humanistically inclined - and I find page numbers helpful for pacing/focus.* So if they exist, it helps me gauge my reading, even if I'm scrolling on a webpage. But if they don't exist, it's not a huge deal.
I've never used something with a percent indicator. That sounds a lot more helpful than trying to guess based on the width and placement of the scroll bar. I'm still waiting to see how the e-reader market develops before I get something just for that.
*I realize that changes in font size, spacing, page size, etc. make this somewhat arbitrary. But without some kind of progress indicator that could be easily understood, while reading, in terms of pages/time I'd never have gotten as much reading done in grad school. Yes, it's sort of sad to quantify reading this way.
Oh, and for footnoting, I like the way the historycooperative versions of print articles number the paragraphs, but this could easily get unwieldy.
have them hang around for decades, imposing their meaninglessness on us all.
I know you were talking about something completely different, but I'm taking this personally.
109: Page numbers are a legacy of dead-tree publishing. Kindle is doing us a service to get rid of them...
Total industrial collapse cannot come soon enough.
Perhaps a page could come to mean something like a measure in written music. It doesn't have a set length, but it's still meaningful. Because otherwise we're going to have to use wordcount to describe how long a book is, and that's like shopping in lira.
Total industrial collapse cannot come soon enough.
Can it wait until after everyone buys my book?
HER NAME WAS LOLA!
SHE WAS A SHOWGIRL!
114 gets it right. The whole Kindle thing terrifies me. They can withdraw parts of your book, and alter it, as if they were telling you "Since the last time you logged in, the price of DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP has changed from $7.99 to $8.49"?
YELLOW FEATHERS IN HER HAIR
AND A DRESS CUT DOWN TO THERE!
They can withdraw parts of your book, and alter it, as if they were telling you "Since the last time you logged in, the price of DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP has changed from $7.99 to $8.49"?
I get that the technology makes this power easier, but publishers have always been able to do this if they wanted - why are the e-versions scarier?
I get that the technology makes this power easier, but publishers have always been able to do this if they wanted
No, I'm pretty sure that Vintage, say, is not presently able to recall books they've published out of my possession, remove portions, and then send the altered book back to me, extracting a fee in the process.
120: but publishers have always been able to do this if they wanted
Not after the book was published.
Fahrenheit 451 is already here!
I checked out The Pickup Artist by Terry Bisson from the library today. All the other patrons were apparently homeless men. There was only one librarian available to talk to at the information desk. Check-out was by machine only. There was a kiosk with rental books -- crappy bestselling potboilers. The selection of books on the actual stacks was terrible. Everything worthwhile about this civilization is being destroyed by the profit motive and the bigotry of the 27% crazification folx. There will be no place for people like me in a few years.
They can withdraw parts of your book, and alter it, as if they were telling you "Since the last time you logged in, the price of DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP has changed from $7.99 to $8.49"?
Has amazon actually done this?
Also, the lone librarian went to high school with my father. In Wisconsin. When textbooks only cost $5.
The selection of books on the actual stacks was terrible.
This has always already been the case for anywhere I lived in the U.S. for any library but those associated with universities.
I'd feel anxious without page numbers. I guess I must have a bit of a tortured relationship with the things I read, though. No matter how much I like a book, there's a relief in finishing it and a tendency to check how many pages I have left when I'm in the middle of it.
There will be no place for people like me in a few years.
Well, there's the internet.
also, what fake accent wrote in 111.1 A slow reader, I. In fourth grade they had me in the Not That Bright reading group for a while and then I tested suspiciously well on something or other and they figured out I just wasn't finishing anything.
I've often been curious if it has anything to do with the fact that I hear the words aloud in my head as I read. Fast readers: do you?
109
Page numbers are a legacy of dead-tree publishing. Kindle is doing us a service to get rid of them... they have no meaning in the context of eBooks, and pretending they do will just cause more confusion in the long run.
I'd disagree. It is useful to have subdivisions in books, even if only for that "cite a quote" thing like in 49. Page numbers have always been so ubiquitous until now that there's no need to go out of your way to include them, but the downside of them is, who can remember every little page number that something happened on? Before e-books came along, people used chapters, and chapters with descriptive titles or whatever can be helpful, except for in those books without chapters (Terry Pratchett, for example, apparently doesn't like them).
So if you want, fine, don't include page numbers. But replace them with an every-hundred-words or every-500-works marker or something, then, please.
The Kindle does use "locations" in lieu of page numbers. I haven't looked into how they're defined, but in the first book I'm reading, at least, they seem to come about every 2-3 lines or so. That is, I think it's 8 per screen, which probably has about 20 lines of text.
More irritating to me right now is that it won't tell me who translated this edition of The Count of Monte Cristo. Isn't that kind of standard information to include in a translated text?
I'm not sure why people are getting so hung up on citation. If you're citing from an e-book, why not just cite the e-book itself? Because anyone else with access to the e-book can just search the text to find it.
"But what about the people who only have dead-tree copies?" Why don't people ask this about regular citation? What if the author is citing from an edition that is different from mine? Being able to use someone's citation always depends on access to the same edition/format that the citer is using.
Isn't that kind of standard information to include in a translated text?
In translations to English, not always. The translator is given way more credit in Germany and Spain (maybe other countries too, but those are the only ones I know about in specific) than in the U.S.
If you're citing from an e-book, why not just cite the e-book itself?
Lots of citations are not to quotations, though. Sometimes obvious keywords can find what's being cited, but that's not always true.
I've often been curious if it has anything to do with the fact that I hear the words aloud in my head as I read. Fast readers: do you?
No.
(At least not unless I slow way down and do it deliberately.)
I've found that publishers are better about identifying translators for print editions than for audio editions, but I don't have experience with ebook editions. If it's a book that could be in the public domain, and the translation could be in the public domain too because it was done a long time ago, then the translator might not be known, or the publisher might be hiding the fact that they've given you something you probably didn't have to pay for.
134: Huh. I'll take your word that it's not unusual, but I think this is the first time I've seen a translation to English that doesn't at least mention the name. And on a classic, too, that has doubtless been done many times--I'm not looking to give credit as much as to differentiate among alternatives.
129/136: Yeah, me neither. I have heard other slower-ish readers describe that sensation, though.
Right. Hearing words is for poetry or going through a statute carefully -- if I'm reading prose, there's no internal 'sound'.
If it's a book that could be in the public domain, and the translation could be in the public domain too
Ah, that's probably it. I'd still like to know who it was, but that's probably why there's no credit given.
I hear some words aloud even if I'm reading quickly, but not all of them.
I generally hear words when I read, though occasionally I can press myself to read faster. I more or less always finished assigned readings for classes, but I hated having to read silently in class in a limited time, and had trouble with standardized tests because I had to rush. When I started getting assigned essays or could do essays on tests, I did a whole lot better immediately.
I don't usually hear words aloud, but reading about the phenomenon sure makes me start.
I hear some words aloud even if I'm reading quickly, but not all of them.
Actually, this is true of me, too. Usually I silently pronounce at least the characters' names, I find. It's part of what made the heavy Russians take so freaking long.
Isn't there a word - like "intonate" or "echoate" or something-o-ate - for hearing a word out loud in your head?
Usually I silently pronounce at least the characters' names, I find.
I wish I did this. Unless I consciously remember to pay attention to character names, I have a nasty tendency to not really read them at all -- I think I'm kind of seeing them as ideograms. I don't have trouble keeping track of who's who while I'm reading, but after I've finished the book all the characters tend to be 'that guy' or 'the one who' because I never heard the name to remember it, just saw it.
I thought "subvocalizing" was more like whispering than reading to yourself. M-w.com seems to agree: "the act or process of inaudibly articulating speech with the speech organs."
So I think as long as your lips don't move (which mine rarely do anymore, when reading to myself), that's not it...
148: This is why all authors should make sure no two of their characters have names that start with the same letter and are the same approximate length.
You can subvocalize without moving your lips, and indeed without moving any air.
Are you criticizing my baby names?
Are we talking about davening now?
151: Without moving your tongue, glottis, etc, though? I can't tell if you're picking a nit over what are the speech organs, or saying that the kind of hearing-a-voice-in-your-head thing we're talking about should count.
150: That is, in fact, a problem.
Unless I consciously remember to pay attention to character names, I have a nasty tendency to not really read them at all -- I think I'm kind of seeing them as ideograms.
This is just one of the many reasons to be annoyed with fantasy writers who use a ton of diacritical marks in proper names.
156: Which can also be a problem with Unfogged commenters. I get confused about whether emdash is me.
I don't usually hear words aloud, but reading about the phenomenon sure makes me start.
SURE DOES!
Everything worthwhile about this civilization is being destroyed by the profit motive and the bigotry of the 27% crazification folx.
Not to mention the hogs. My local news channel just aired a piece on the menace of hogs in the South.
I'm not pwned because I'm assuming HG is referring to ursine super users.
I tend to read books even more slowly at the start and frequently refer back to earlier pages to check things. So I'm usually ok with characters' names as I get further into the books. Even the Russian ones.
Speaking of books, holy fucking shit. (And obviously this isn't counting articles he just reads.) Does Cosma even sleep?
166: He has described himself as lazy.
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I attended an HR meeting this afternoon on compensation the content of which was fundamentally nothing more than the "this one goes to 11" scene from Spinal Tap.
|>
Ow, my freakin' subears!
Silence, slave!
I absolutely hear prose when I read it, and my partner, who reads considerably faster than I do (I'm not exactly slow), does not. We attributed this to him teaching himself to read before his parents had had a chance to read aloud to him much, whereas I was read to a great deal. But maybe it's something else. The saddest thing is when I read French-- which I pronounce badly-- I get infuriated by the voice-in-my-head's execrable French accent. I wish I were making this up. It's really frustrating.
This has always already been the case for anywhere I lived in the U.S. for any library but those associated with universities.
I picked up, and read, Ben Marcus' _Age of Wire & String_ in 1996 at a branch (public) library in my hometown. Maybe not a universal favorite, but it was one of many public-library books that helped expand my sense of the English language as a teenager/early adult. I know I don't have anything rational to say about the possible decline of public libraries.
But apropos of, uh, the NYT "Garden" section (in the OP): no more recess? How widespread is this? I'm sure that I've seen school playgrounds full of children in very recent memory...
There was no recess when I was in school, as far as I can remember.
I think there were two recesses in my elementary school, or maybe just a morning one. I loved recess.
As if to prove a point, I am at the Metropolitan, shabbily dressed, distinctly non-fancy.
131. More irritating to me right now is that it won't tell me who translated this edition of The Count of Monte Cristo. Isn't that kind of standard information to include in a translated text?
The common public domain English translation of the Count of Monte Cristo (1846) was done anonymously.
Dammit, I keep coming into threads late these days.
I'm completely perplexed by the idea that page numbers and references can or should be dispensed with. Sure, for pleasure reading, who cares? But otherwise? 109 was joke, I thought.
How on earth are you supposed to provide citations? Per a couple of suggestions upthread, we can go to numbered sections or paragraphs, and some texts are structured this way; it works well. But citations aren't only for dismissible footnote or endnote references; some people actually use them. If everybody's sitting in a room discussing some text, and a point is being made about a given passage, every would like to be able to turn to that passage, no?
Is a kindle 'edition' an entirely different edition? I thought it was just a digital version of a book that could also be printed, which would mean that its pagination is the same as that printed or printable copy.
If everybody's sitting in a room discussing some text, and a point is being made about a given passage, every would like to be able to turn to that passage, no?
Again, not something that dead-tree books solve either, unless everyone in the room has the same edition.
I am not arguing that citation is unnecessary. Just that the concept of "pages" is meaningless when talking about e-books.
176.1: Hm. This may be a difference between or among disciplines: in philosophy, say, there just aren't going to be that many editions that people will be having. Perhaps in more literary fields that's less the case.
176.2: Whenever it becomes the case that *everybody* is reading a digital version, sure, okay. I guess. (But how do you render citations?) But there's going to be a fairly long transition period, it seems to me, when some people might be reading a digital version and others will be reading a paper version. These people will need to be able to communicate cross-format.
Numbered sections or paragraphs works fine for me, but that amounts to introducing an entirely new numbering/reference system to replace the already-existing system of pagination. Which is okay. It might mean interesting things for textual formatting or construction; I'm trying to envision how that would work for literature that has, say, a lot of dialogue. Would the author just decide where the next number should be? I guess so.
How would that work for already existing texts? Is someone going to assign paragraph/section numbers where they didn't exist before? That's fine, I guess, but what about people who have an old dead-tree printed version?
Whenever it becomes the case that *everybody* is reading a digital version, sure, okay. I guess.
I think you're not quite getting what I'm saying? It's not that pages are meaningless because you can just do a search for the text (though you can), it's that they don't exist for a text in that format.
I agree that some standard form of citation will have to come about for e-books, if they become the norm, anyway. For now, anyone doing work that requires citation is either using dead-tree copies of the texts to begin with or is making note of passages and then finding their citable location later. But I also absolutely agree with 109, that [pages] have no meaning in the context of eBooks, and pretending they do will just cause more confusion in the long run. Why should a text in one media need to reference its existence in other media? There's nothing more primary about the text in dead-tree format; indeed, I would guess that most writers today compose in electronic form.
Yes! I never read characters' names as sounds, and then when I come to pronouncing them, just get them all wrong.
I think you're not quite getting what I'm saying?
I thought I probably wasn't, since I was so perplexed (confused). Right, I get that for a text that was never particularly designed to be printed, page numbers are meaningless: if the text is designed to be digital, while it could in theory be printed-on-demand, page numbers are irrelevant. The e-format is primary.
Right now, the vast majority of books, even if composed electronically, are designed to be printed (they're put out by publishing houses that produce dead-tree versions, a lot of money and effort is put into design, font, cover art, binding and size, and so on). Some day publishing may not be structured that way, but I think that day may be a ways off.
That's a sidebar, though: some kind of transitional numbering system needs to be devised against the eventual day, if it arrives, on which there are no more newly produced print books. In the meantime, any e-book that doesn't provide page references to the print version of which it is an e-version seems quite silly to me.
I would guess that most writers today compose in electronic form.
It'll be interesting to see if more word processors - aside from google docs and stuff I probably don't know about - take page numbers out of the default display. I find when writing - but I'm not a writer - that I only care about actual page numbers (as opposed to word count, or number of screens to scroll) if I'm actually going to print something.
On the question of coordinating paper editions when reading in a group, pretty much every course I've ever had in high school or college spent a bit of time talking about which edition we'd consider the "common" one for discussion purposes and people with other editions (if acceptable) had to allow for that. I don't think that the problem has ever been considered solved, unasked, or unheard of in the print world, but some of your comments imply that.
I had a particularly frustrating discussion of de Tocqueville as a TA because a series of miscommunications resulted in no less than three versions - one abridged, at least two different translations - showing up in the classroom. Apparently, the bookstore did not put on the shelves the edition the professor ordered (and received as a desk copy).
I'm sorry x. trapnel included the link in 166, because I like Cosma, and now I know that he has to die.
I don't think that the problem has ever been considered solved, unasked, or unheard of in the print world, but some of your comments imply that.
I didn't mean to imply that. I did, however, mean to point out that the worry over not having a common page number to reference is not somehow unique to texts in electronic formats.
And re. word processing: Microsoft Word doesn't have page numbers as a default, does it?
Microsoft Word doesn't have page numbers as a default, does it?
I just checked on Word 2007, and it defaults to reporting a word count in the lower-left-hand corner, until you go to a print preview, when it indicates pages. I feel like that's a change from Word 2003, but I don't have the old program to confirm that.
The ideal, I'd think, would be for electronic editions of books to have available all of the different paginations for different printed editions. Or the ability to impose custom paginations.
Barring that, one reason to have the e-book use the pagination of at least one of the printed editions is for the reason cited by parsimon in 177: the ability to have cross-format communication is essential. Also, for reasons of pacing.
(The problem of different paginations in different printed editions can be solved w/o too much work (I've actually done this): on the pages of one edition write the corresponding page numbers of the other edition, every chapter or 20 pages or so.)
I've never used the Kindle or any other e-book reader, so is it true that they don't break the book into pages at all? If so, that's enough by itself to turn me off completely to e-books. I think if I had to read a continuous e-manuscript with no subdivisions (below the level of chapters) I'd get vertigo.
Most of the time when I read I hear the words. I read nonfiction almost exclusively, but when I read fiction I use the same strategy, so I'm a very slow fiction reader. (A fun example: every time I came across a word I didn't know in McCarthy's Blood Meridian, I looked it up in the dicitonary.)
Alex, 36,
There was also a list that had a dark green and white cover (the only one I have is a novel but I don't know why it wasn't an orange-white Penguin).
Shirley you don't mean to say you had never seen a Penguin green detective book before?
--Outraged in Amsterdam, staring at a wall full of Margery Allingham green penguins.
I've never used the Kindle or any other e-book reader, so is it true that they don't break the book into pages at all? If so, that's enough by itself to turn me off completely to e-books.
They (Kindles) do, but they're variable. It depends on the font size you've selected and so on. But it's not like, say, this comment thread, where you're just scrolling continuously. It presents a page at a time and you press a button to flick through to the next page. It's just that one person's page is going to have more or fewer words than another person's page, unless everyone's using the default settings.