Neon’s A Doll A Day… Again (2020)

[neon_jellyfish]

Oh gods, she's far too adorable!! /squees all over:

re: Orlock - honestly I've seen it spelt both ways, but that form seems to reflect the pronunciation in English.

Also, I have a question - I noticed that English speakers spell Orlok as Orlock with 'c'. Why is that? Is that how he's spelled in English subtitles for Nosferatu?

  Ermm... no, with the "c" is actually a mis-spelling. Out of habit for those of us who are accustomed to American English spelling.
Pretty little pink and purple (well, lavender, maybe) princess! Welcome to the latest addition to your dolly crew!

Thank you both! And thank you for solving the Orlock mystery for me!

I love the idea of a doll being the guardian of good memories from a happy time in your life.  And how cool to have these old books in good shape; they can truly be treasures.
Interesting read about "book culture".  With the thoughts about inventing more durable & lasting ways to preserve our words, I thought about how now we're leaning in the opposite direction again, with so many things being digital that will vanish into the ether with the electronic apocalypse... or just once the technology changes... or your computer crashes
I think next week's "Nova" on PBS is going to be about the history of writing.  Dunno if you can see that program there, but you might be interested.

Your doodle is so cute.  I really want to see this little guy in an ongoing comic strip too!  I am sure if you can come up with all the complexities of Oddwickshire, you could create some adventures for him.
Congrats on your new lil girl escaping customs!

Digital book culture is a very fascinating thing to watch, we didn't really have anything like that in the past. But I wouldn't necessarily say we're leaning away from physical books, it's more that the bookversum is getting broader. There are books that are digital only, but they probably wouldn't come out in physical form in the past, they wouldn't be published at all. As for physical books, we're making more of them than ever before, and the e-book boom didn't really slow down the publication of classic books. What's more threatening to preservation of books and their contents is declining quality of the craft.

That's not a book-specific problem, all fields of production suffer from this. The methods and materials for high quality products are there, some better than ever, but the mass market dictates low prices, and corners are being cut everywhere you look. From quality of paper to sewing to covers, everything is being done as cheaply as possible, even some so-called collector editions. And the whole idea of paperbacks is to be cheap and accessible, not necessarily lasting.

The worst thing about today's paperbacks is that they're printed too close to edges, so when they fall apart, you can't rebind them without burrying the text in the binding. There's a method for repairing torn bifolia, and it can, technically, be used for paperbacks, but it was never invented to be used on every single sheet of paper the book has, it makes for a too bulky spine while the foredge is still pretty thin, and that's not good, because then it's easy for dust and mold to get in the sewing and the cover doesn't fit properly and - uh, sorry.

I like having digital and cheaply bound books as an option, because they allow for publishing things that wouldn't otherwise make the cut. As long as we also produce high-quality bindings of important books, too. The overall cheapening is worrying, but I also noticed some very nice high quality books coming out lately, I think that the interest in good books not only content-wise, but also craft-wise, is slowly rising.

Another great thing about digital books is increased accessibility of books, especially some that would be hard to get your hands on nowadays. I love Project Guttenberg, for example. So many older and more obscure works that aren't in print and libraries only have a few copies, or none at all (Czech libraries don't have a LOT of things). When people can read old classics for free like that, they might be more willing to try it out and maybe discover something valuable in the process.

Also, a lot of old books are falling apart, and digitalisation of those helps their conservation - we can study the text without putting any strain on the binding, and we can make reproductions using the digital files. While nothing digital seems to be able to outlast physical books (our oldest still legible ones are cca 2000 years old, CD/DVD/BDs start going bad after a few years), it can help in their conservation, which is awesome.

And thank you!

And sorry for another rant!

Your pink girl is amazing!

Thank you!


Day 261

This precious book isn't visually stunning, but it's an amazing book nonetheless. It's a late 60s textbook for vocational bookbinding schools (that's an Eastern Europe thing, and I know Germany has these, but I don't know about other countries. Pretty sure the US don't have them. Here, you go to elementary school when you're 6, you finish when you're 15, and one of secondary education options you have after that is vocational school, where vast majority classes consist of skills you'll need for that specific vocation, and there are only a few general classes like languages and math. Bookbinding as a craft is traditionally taught in these, the college majors are more focused on the art side of things). It's a hardcover textbook with 430 pages. Awesome. I never had textbooks like that, mine were all thin paperbacks, one for each year or semester. This one was meant to be used from the start to the end of your studies.

It's a wonderful book with very detailed and clear instructions. It covers both hand-binding and industrial machine-binding (back then, even machine-binding involved a lot of work done by hand).



EDIT: Ooooh, page 100!