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.
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.
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.
One of my most treasured books is a copy of Goethe's _Faust_ (in translation) with notes from a nun.
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.
> 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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Are you actually a bot? I'm struggling to imagine a literate human who does not know this.
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.
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.
And sometimes you find little gems, too!
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.
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?
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 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.
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...