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Chopping up books when they're physically too big

attainablefelicity.mattkirkland.com

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Re: Chopping up books when they're physically too big

#161

Post by mrweasel »

omoikane wrote: post #28

I wonder why the publishers insist on selling thick books like that. The books I read tend to come in multiple volumes, and it's not like I would finish it all at once so I just need to carry at most one or two volumes.

There's definitively something weird marketing bullshit going on. I have a few books in an old print and a new print. The new print have larger letter and insane margins and line separation. The larger letters are great, if your eyes aren't the best anymore, I just don't get why half the page is margins.

You can have a book printed in the 1970s and it will be half the thickness, and shorter height. It has the exact same content as a modern book. At some point we went from the average number of pages being somewhere around 200-250 to over 400. You don't actually get more words, they just take up more pages. Paper type might also make a difference, I have 60 year old books with ~250 page, they are half the thickness of a modern murder mystery with around 400 pages, and the old book is hardback, the new one is paperback.

I think it's vanity, people would rather be seen reading a brick of a book, regardless of the actual content. Even if the old hardbacks are easier to handle and carry in your backpack.

Re: Chopping up books when they're physically too big

#163

Post by nitin_flanker »

cgearhart wrote: post #146

20ish years ago I complained to my college roommate that my math book was too big. He asked if I was gonna sell it back, and I said I couldn’t—they had a new edition out, so mine was worthless. Cut it, he said. It was something I had never considered. Not for a moment. Books were sacred to me. Cut one? Blasphemy. But he was right. And so I cut it. And it fixed all of my complaints. What I learned is that some folks h…

"What I learned is that some folks have a different mindset; they see the world as something to be shaped around themselves, rather than seeing themselves as something that should be shaped to fit the world. That’s been a useful lesson sometimes."

It indeed is. Thanks for putting it in words. I think I will try to adopt this mindset about certain things in life.

Re: Chopping up books when they're physically too big

#164

Post by HSO »

cgearhart wrote: post #146

20ish years ago I complained to my college roommate that my math book was too big. He asked if I was gonna sell it back, and I said I couldn’t—they had a new edition out, so mine was worthless. Cut it, he said. It was something I had never considered. Not for a moment. Books were sacred to me. Cut one? Blasphemy. But he was right. And so I cut it. And it fixed all of my complaints. What I learned is that some folks h…

cue https://youtu.be/kYfNvmF0Bqw?t=12 :)

Re: Chopping up books when they're physically too big

#165

Post by amiga386 »

simlevesque wrote: post #95
Isamu wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so that’s why they released one of their most successful blockbusters, it was all an elaborate plot to bury the well known and long debunked story of the frozen Walt Disney.

The claim is that it's why the movie has that name, not why they made the movie.

Of course, that's why they used the generic word "frozen" with a lot of meanings, as opposed to the specific word "cryogenic" that people would actually search for.

Re: Chopping up books when they're physically too big

#166

Post by Tanoc »

Always assume that something you have, someone will want it after you've had your use of it. They do not want a recreation or approximation with all of it's flaws and compromises, something that provides an altered experience or a skewed view. They want the original. If you treat something as disposable that is a disregard for anyone but yourself. Someone may want your old jacket, your old car, your old book. This consideration for those who come after you is the way things survived, how family heirlooms and sacred relics came to be. It's the idea behind the phrase "Plant a sapling you may never sit in the shade of."

That's what machine generation tries to devalue and bury. Infinite recreations, infinite approximations, with no original to compare to. The perfect tool of someone who wishes to create a reality of their own bias rather than one that is a result of all who came before them.

Re: Chopping up books when they're physically too big

#167

Post by blightful »

Well this is fun. Yesterday I actually searched for information like this. I decided I wanted to turn the typical 2 volume set of paperback book of the new sun into 4 volumes. I got the first book, shadow and claw and I cut it in half and have been working out how I will rebind it. I like the covers from the european release so I found the art and have been working on making them the right size and adding a spine title. I plan to print that, attach to cardstock, laminate and bind it in with tape and see how it works out. Maybe this article will give me ideas. These volumes are not huge or anything but I thought it would be a fun project and maybe I will do more for other things. Maybe chop up the unabridged count of monte cristo. That thing is ridiculous.

Re: Chopping up books when they're physically too big

#168

Post by WillAdams »

yoz-y wrote: post #159
WillAdams wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one can damage a hardcover by not opening it properly the first time: https://www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/comments/7sry7v/open_a_ha... (which was a lesson in 2nd grade, when we got our first-ever hardcover textbooks)

Wow. I’m almost 40 and never knew this!

Yeah, really, Barnes & Noble marketing is missing a beat by not printing that as a bookmark to include with new book sales after asking the question at the register, "Has the person you are buying this hardcover for ever opened a new book correctly?"

Oblig. XKCD:

https://xkcd.com/1053/

(which I kind of wish was comic #1,000 so it was easy to remember/link)

Re: Chopping up books when they're physically too big

#170

Post by gumby »

blightful wrote: post #167

Well this is fun. Yesterday I actually searched for information like this. I decided I wanted to turn the typical 2 volume set of paperback book of the new sun into 4 volumes. I got the first book, shadow and claw and I cut it in half and have been working out how I will rebind it. I like the covers from the european release so I found the art and have been working on making them the right size and adding a spine tit…

Yes, I remember seeing those double editions come out and thinking they were too large! I bought the volumes as they came out so luckily didn’t have to deal with that problem.

Some, like dickens, just write too long (though he had an excuse, being paid by the word, and in many cases being paid as he worked). Pynchon and Stephenson too. But it feels like Wolfe kept his books short, or at least shorter than they probably started out!

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