Book Beauty

The debate goes on, e-books versus actual books. Here is what I predict: before too long, fiction will be read mostly on e-readers, as well as some non-fiction categories such as sport and literary studies. Most non-fiction, including third-level science and engineering textbooks, where the graphics including diagrams and tables are of high importance, will continue to sell. However even textbooks will have to change. Far too much time and money are spent on the constant updating of this type of book, and the waste of paper is enormous when you consider that some editions require quite moderate changes to update them, and yet pointlessly a whole new edition is produced. Anyone who goes into a student bookshop after one of these edition changeovers will see personally the sheer waste, as shelves totter under enormous and now defunct volumes which the students have little hope of selling.

I would imagine that sense will eventually take over in this field, and people will start looking for their textbooks to be published in some looseleaf binding format, which would allow the easy insertion and extraction of pages as needed, so that they only need to buy the new material and they are up to date. Sometimes there are lecturers also who look for sections of older editions, to add to the confusion With the looseleaf format, the old pages can always be retained for such eventualities. Also how much easier to carry into college the few pages required for the day, than mountains of books which require the provision of lockers and run the constant risk of being stolen. Publishers might not be too happy about such a change, since they would lose the income from selling totally new editions every year or so, but the waste of paper and resources is so huge in this connection that eventually publishing practices for these books must alter, because of environmental pressure groups but particularly and hopefully with sane governance in the political area. If we have been taught one lesson in the last few years, it is about how we have wasted so much.

There are other books which will never be suitable for e-readers, not if one is to get full value from them in terms of artwork and illustrations, certainly, but also because some books are in themselves things of beauty which no e-book can ever be.

I came across a poignant little item at the recycling centre not so long ago. It was a children's book by Enid Blyton called, I think, the Island of Adventure and dated in the nineteen seventies. It had lost its cover at some stage, and someone had carefully cut out another one from a Kellogg's Cornflakes box, and had painstakingly stitched it on. Then inside the new cover, a child's name was written in large, staggering letters with blue crayon. I have often wondered about it, was it a loving parent or an older brother or sister who made the new cover? Who loved this fairly tattered book so much as to want a homemade cover for it? Could it even have been someone's only book? I brought it home because I just couldn't leave it to its fate, there in the trundling and shunting of the recycling centre with all the other perhaps once loved but now abandoned books. I passed it on to an extended family of ten children who swallow books like some youngsters do fizzy drinks, and I'm sure they took good care of it

What brought that book to mind again today was a craft suggestion in a lovely old book dated 1969, "Hundreds of Things A Girl Can Make", by Jennifer Lang, subtitled "A Hobby Book For Girls Of All Ages" and published by W. Foulsham & Co., Ltd. This book has page after page of craft suggestions.

On page 22 the author shows how to "smarten up your book-shelves" by using wallpaper remnants to cover your books:

If you value a book, you will rejoice in it even more if the paper is beautiful, and it is well bound using materials which are nice to look at and to touch. One day I came across a beautiful, totally undamaged and unmarked copy of Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' in a secondhand bookshop. The leaves are very fine, even flimsy in appearance, yet quite strong, and they are edged with goldleaf. It really is a very handsome volume, published by CRW Publishing Ltd., London. You can see all their Collector's Library classics on their website: http://www.collectors-library.com/
They are very reasonable in price, costing far less than coffee and sandwiches for two these days in any café. After I bought this book, I got several more for myself, the last being Thoreau's "Walden". These books are smaller than the average book, have sturdy hard covers, gold edged pages and ribbon bookmarks. They fit easily into a handbag or pocket and are great company when you have to queue anywhere or when travelling.

Almost every reader will have come across Observer books, published by Frederick Warne & Co. of London. They deal with all sorts of subjects, nature, wildlife, wild flowers, gardening, porcelain, you name it. I prefer the older ones, which were published from the nineteen thirties right up to the nineteen seventies, to the more modern editions, which are slightly taller and have a different appearance. The older ones have hard covers, with very decorative paper covers if these have survived. They are roughly the same size as the CRW Classics, so also very portable. First editions of these books, particularly of the earlier ones, as well as some hard-to-find editions, are worth quite a bit of money these days, so if you see any in car boot sales or secondhand shops, they are probably well worth the usually moderate asking price. I love especially the ones with hand-drawn or painted illustrations which turn them into little works of art. Collector's Library classics and old Observer books are definitely keepers.