[HN Gopher] Discarded delights: The joy of ex-library books (2021)
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Discarded delights: The joy of ex-library books (2021)
Author : MrVandemar
Score : 82 points
Date : 2024-11-20 09:58 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.abebooks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.abebooks.com)
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| 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.
| qup wrote:
| Today's his birthday!
| contingencies wrote:
| That's one of my treasures, too. I paid full price for a
| hardcover. Many of our books come from second hand dealers,
| often nature/history/tooling/photography foci. I'm a sucker for
| thematic histories, large format photography books, and well
| researched non fiction in general. If you like the marks on
| books, try postcards! I have ~20,000 of them. Not really sure
| why, but they're very interesting to scroll through. A card is
| like a little clue in to a time and place you would never
| otherwise think of ... logistics networks, handwriting,
| language, printing technology, inks, subjects of interest,
| urban development, architecture, fashion: sometimes with
| messages to boot!
| oniony wrote:
| 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?
| silentd wrote:
| My late father would put a little star on the last page of the
| book. He eventually discovered another patron was marking books
| in a similar fashion and that they had the same taste in books.
| Whenever he found the other mark he would check out that book.
| GJim wrote:
| Your post has omitted the punchline.
| kristianp wrote:
| > Whenever he found the other mark he would check out that
| book.
|
| I think that was sufficient.
| andai wrote:
| Do people forget which books they've read? If there's something
| I haven't finished, the sense of incompletion stays with me
| forever.
| sofayam wrote:
| 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.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| 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.
| sofayam wrote:
| 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.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Even still, most folks would prefer a pristine first
| edition than one that's been heavily used.
| GJim wrote:
| Speak for yourself!
| emptiestplace wrote:
| Are you actually a bot? I'm struggling to imagine a literate
| human who does not know this.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| My name clearly states I am NOT a cyborg.
| defrost wrote:
| 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.
|
| ~ https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/28/a-controversi
| a...
|
| 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.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Arguably the "lived in" copies are only notable if they've
| been owned and scribbled in by someone who is themselves
| notable. There's no serious demand for books that have been
| scribbled in by nobodies like myself.
| cge wrote:
| While that's true, and I do prefer books that actually have
| interesting histories, rather than being purely pristine
| and box-ticking, I have to admit that many collectors seem
| not to be, and _are_ purely interested in box-ticking first
| edition first printing, pristine copies of books, with no
| marks, or just an author signature. Outside of the most
| exceptional and well-known of cases, this seems to extend
| to cases where other editions seem more interesting, rarer,
| or more notable.
|
| Of course, this has the advantage of keeping prices down
| for those of us looking for those other editions and
| conditions, but it can at times be rather perplexing. I was
| once in an auction where it was evident that the auctioneer
| was also surprised by a case of this: in an auction with a
| first edition by an American trade press, and a first UK
| edition from a year later by a particularly notable private
| press, with a smaller print run, typeset and printed by
| hand by notable historical figures and friends of the
| author, and an estimate of around four times the first
| trade edition... the UK edition sold within estimate, and
| while the first edition sold for significantly more than
| the UK edition, vastly over its estimate.
|
| In another case, I had a bit of trouble finding sellers
| online who even noted the edition of a particular 19th
| century book in its description if it was not a first
| edition, despite the second edition being at the center of
| a significant historical legal drama, being nominally
| banned and ordered destroyed, and making a mess of British
| blasphemy law in a case where no one, including both the
| government and the prosecution, wanted the publisher to be
| found guilty.
|
| My guess is that many book collectors will set a particular
| goal, for example, collecting first editions or author-
| signed copies of a particular genre, set of authors, etc,
| and will follow that goal, rather than acquiring individual
| books for individual reasons.
|
| More generally, collecting communities often seem to fall
| into purely seeking rarity, placing the highest demand on
| the items with the least supply regardless of _why_ the
| supply is small. Thus at an extreme in book collecting, for
| example, you have collectors who see entirely uncut pages
| as being preferable, despite it making the book unreadable.
| I have a friend who is fond of antique pens who expressed
| disappointment that in seeking the _rarest_ pens, the
| community often ended up placing the highest value on the
| _worst_ : the pens with bad designs that didn't work well,
| the variants and colors that were particularly ugly, all
| the models that sold very poorly and were quickly
| discontinued, and are thus rarer.
| sevensor wrote:
| True, but collecting is generally a terrible investment from
| a pecuniary perspective, unless you're the mercenary type of
| collector who sells to people making terrible investments.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Sure, albeit I've definitely got some stuff that's
| appreciated quite considerably in price. Not that I intend
| to sell it.
| sevensor wrote:
| Yeah, speaking as someone who inherited a stamp
| collection, the one thing to avoid is thinking you're in
| it for the resale value when you really just want an
| excuse to buy the object of your desire.
| dazzawazza wrote:
| 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.
| vundercind wrote:
| 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.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I tend to disagree, or at least argue that UI/UX is
| strongly subjective. I have sought out digital copies of
| books that I have in paper form just because I strongly
| prefer reading on an ereader for text. Obviously, something
| with graphics is likely to be better in paper.
|
| You can't lose your place easily. Lighting isn't an issue
| if you buy a backlit model. Reading lying on your back or
| side is much easier. Traveling is easier with an e-reader.
| Access to wikipedia and the dictionary on the same device.
|
| There are emotional reasons that I like paper books, but if
| I'm just trying to read, give me an ebook.
| nescioquid wrote:
| To add to your comments on travel, reading position,
| lighting, some books are just too large or heavy to lug
| around or even hold for long periods. There are a number
| of door-stopper books that I otherwise just wouldn't have
| read because of this.
|
| If the medium makes the difference between me reading a
| text rather than not reading that text, I tend to think
| that makes it functionally "better".
| WillAdams wrote:
| 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 Sorina Higgins)
| that I actually purchased the e-book version so as to be able
| to read it comfortably.
| sourcepluck wrote:
| *umbrage (I like when people tell me, so hoping that isn't
| taken the wrong way).
|
| Otherwise, very much in agreement!
| criddell wrote:
| I'm guessing you don't (yet) need large type to read
| comfortably. When that time comes, you may gain an
| appreciation for the accessibility features of a good
| ereader.
| tenpies wrote:
| 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.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| > 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!
| devilbunny wrote:
| I'm from a books-are-sacred family, though I don't
| particularly subscribe to that myself. But I've never
| understood the idea of annotating books in the margins; I
| don't reread them _that_ often, nor was I a literature
| student.
|
| Your grandmother's idea sounds wonderful, though.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > And when I'm gone, will anyone find any interest in my
| iBook library?
|
| Probably not, but nor will anyone else find interest in your
| physical library. One's collections are invaluable to
| oneself, but usually uninteresting to anyone else.
|
| I donated hundreds of books when I cleaned out my parents'
| house. Most probably ended up in a dump or recycled.
| WillAdams wrote:
| One of my most treasured books is a copy of Goethe's _Faust_
| (in translation) with notes from a nun.
| gadders wrote:
| Growing up as a kid with not much money, I think quite a few of
| the books on my shelves were ex library books.
| noufalibrahim wrote:
| 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.
| coldpie wrote:
| I recently read a sci-fi book from the library. A previous
| borrower had jotted notes/corrections/criticisms of the
| author's science in the margins, in the tiniest, neatest
| handwriting I've ever seen. None of the "problems" they pointed
| out detracted from the story, but I guess they really wanted to
| show off their personal theories of FTL travel to whoever
| borrowed the book next. It was hilarious, and I'll remember the
| book forever because of that.
| vixen99 wrote:
| 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.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| 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...
| uniqueuid wrote:
| 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.
| pglevy wrote:
| 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.
| vundercind wrote:
| I try to only mark if I think it'll be useful to me, or to
| someone in the future. I'll lightly mark the location of
| favorite passages in the margins (that's useful to me, at
| least, and minimally intrusive), record some information about
| some obscure reference to a location by an antiquated name that
| I was only able to track down in some decades-old humanities
| paper, mark up the TOC with information I wish it had, that
| kind of thing.
|
| I don't mind most marks from previous readers. Usually I'd
| rather have them than not, as they're at least interesting in
| one way or another.
|
| The category of used book with annotations that I don't ever
| like to buy is one where a previous owner highlighted or
| underlined seemingly half the book. There's a kind of reader
| out there who must highlight or underline their books the same
| way I compulsively select text as I read on a screen, and it
| wrecks the book.
| clucas wrote:
| You might enjoy this poem :)
|
| https://allpoetry.com/Marginalia
| vmilner wrote:
| 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.
| cbfrench wrote:
| I primarily read theology, and lots of early-to-mid-20th century
| Anglican theology. So, many of the books I read are out of print
| --and thus only available used. I've found that reading in a
| niche area tends to put some interesting copies in my lap. I have
| quite a few copies around that previously belonged to "famous"
| (at least within my little world) theologians. Many of these
| other copies are often ex-library, often from seminary or
| monastic libraries. It's always interesting to see what libraries
| are getting rid of and to think about the monks or nuns who sat
| around reading them. (Or not, as the case may be--they were
| withdrawn, after all.)
|
| My favorite is a copy of Martin Thornton's _The Function of
| Theology_ , which had been deaccessioned from the library of the
| Seminary of the Southwest at some point. I happened to flip to
| the back to glance at the loan card. It had been borrowed
| precisely one time--October 23, 1987--but it had been borrowed
| that one time by a priest who became a friend of mine in 2021
| during a course at a different institution. The small world of
| Anglican theology! I texted him a picture of the book, and he
| still remembered checking it out.
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| I have a few ex-library books. Ex-library to 'ex libris', if you
| will! I bought them at used book stores and can't fight the
| sneaking suspicion that I am in possession of stolen property!
|
| I love heavily marked up used books. They make me feel a kinship
| with another person. Me and "Dan" from 1956 have physically held
| the same copy of Terman's Electronic and Radio Engineering!
| MPSimmons wrote:
| Can I just drop a word of love and appreciation for Abe Books? I
| don't buy physical books a lot, but when I do, Abe is definitely
| the first place I look. The books drop ship from the actual
| seller, and it's remarkable that I've never had a problematic
| delivery, after a dozen or so.
|
| My favorite book I've gotten from them was A Psalm for the Wild-
| Built, which was previously a library book, funny enough.
| andrepd wrote:
| Sad that it's part of the Amazon behemoth.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| behold bookfinder.com
| 7402 wrote:
| Favorite ex-library book: "The Unix Environment" by A. N. Walker.
| Ex library: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NY. Cost from
| Alibris: $1.
| kristianp wrote:
| Never heard of Alibris, but have bought a book from Abebooks:
| "Object-Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach", by
| Objective-C creator Brad Cox.
|
| Any other good used book sites?
| Lammy wrote:
| > Sadly, ex-library books have a poor reputation because an old
| library book can have many miles on the clock
|
| Depends on the clientele. I love finding ex-Bohemian-Club-library
| books, for example, because they are absurdly well cared for. My
| most recent one of these was a copy of "San Francisco's Ocean
| Trade Ps n FR -- A Story of the Deep Water Service of San
| Francisco, 1848 to 1911." (1911) because I was very familiar with
| the coming of the railroads but not so familiar with anything
| earlier than that:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/San_Fran...
|
| Loved the bit about one of the early steamships used to carry
| freight up and down the Sacramento River getting outclassed by an
| ox team -- moo moo moo https://i.imgur.com/GVCVY0r.jpeg
| hcs wrote:
| I have a fun copy of Mechanized Information Storage, Retrieval
| And Dissemination (1968) formerly from The Free Library of
| Philadelphia, covered in "identification required" labels for
| some reason. There's also a Cinema Props stamp inside the cover,
| so it may have been set dressing in between the library and the
| used book store where I got it.
| https://www.librarything.com/work/17927078/book/215905873
| babymetal wrote:
| I opened a bookshop after a long run in tech to try to slow down,
| and one of the pleasant surprises was the joy in accepting used
| book donations. I re-donate most of them, but have found some
| wonderful bookmarks and inscriptions in many. The words matter
| most, of course, but the tangible evidence of people decades or
| centuries ago is something that speaks to me profoundly. One
| inscription in a tiny book of prayers mentioned a friend passing
| it on after it had been placed under her deceased infant sister's
| chin, which was both morbid and moving. Autographs of spooks like
| J. Edgar Hoover conjure up other feelings. One other comment: the
| very old books will probably be around for a few centuries more
| after the newer ones have turned to dust.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> One other comment: the very old books will probably be
| around for a few centuries more after the newer ones have
| turned to dust._
|
| Future historians will curse the 19th and 20th centuries for
| switching to acidic paper. Thankfully more and more books are
| printed on acid free paper via ISO 9706.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| what are you using for ecommerce? i need feedback on my app for
| booksellers if you're interested in trying it out:
| https://www.bookhead.net/. i'm also working on a squarespace
| plugin to sync a store's inventory from basil onto their
| website.
| OisinMoran wrote:
| Two very important books for me were both bought in the same
| library clearance sale when I was around 6/7!
|
| 1. A biology text book which is how I learned about sex! 2.
| Children's Britannica World of Science & Mystery "FUTURE CITIES"
| which inspired my love for the future and technology, and still
| has pride of place on my bookshelf. I even wrote a lil thread on
| Twitter about it [0]
|
| [0] https://x.com/TheOisinMoran/status/1389697743480926210
| mcswell wrote:
| Danger!
|
| I made the mistake of following the link to AbeBook's list of
| books for sale. As a result, I spent $60.
|
| You have been warned.
| dmd wrote:
| Just a few weeks ago I got an absolutely delightful email:
|
| > Ni! This might seem a little out of the blue and it is but a
| few years ago at a library book sale I got the book "Pi in the
| Sky". It has your personal library stamp on it, so I guess YOU
| got it at a library sale and then re-donated it? I had never read
| anything about math before that was at all interesting and it got
| me reading lots of other "popular" math books and I got really
| interested in number theory. I am now a freshman at CMU and
| planning to be a math major!
| Animats wrote:
| My favorite ex-library book was "Engineering with Nuclear
| Explosives", discarded from the Stanford engineering library.[1]
|
| [1]
| https://archive.org/details/engineeringwithn00plowrich/mode/...
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