Helpful Book Resources

I believe that in order to properly discuss books, it would help to have a common language. The following site has a nice, alphabetical glossary of common terms used by book collectors and librophiles everywhere. (I love Latin-Greek hybrids.) It remains a work in process, but it will help you tell the difference between folio (a book about 15 inches high) and a sixtyfourmo (a book about 3 inches high, commonly abbreviated as 64mo).

Another gem that I found was a glossary of binding terms. It covers covers pretty exhaustively. (Am I punny or what?)

Finally, no list would be complete without some helpful book care tips. Most are common sense, but it does have some interesting information.

God says: Make it bilingual

Two men may die because a translation of the Quran appeared in a major Kabul mosque. It was a small book, printed with money gathered for the purpose, that the two men said would be useful for those who did not know Arabic. For me, the most interesting part:

Many clerics rejected the book because it did not include the original Arabic verses alongside the translation. It's a particularly sensitive detail for Muslims, who regard the Arabic Quran as words given directly by God. A translation is not considered a Quran itself, and a mistranslation could warp God's word.

The clerics said Zalmai, a stocky 54-year-old spokesman for the attorney general, was trying to anoint himself as a prophet. They said his book was trying to replace the Quran, not offer a simple translation. Translated editions of the Quran abound in Kabul markets, but they include Arabic verses.

It's interesting that Christianity hasn't had a strong connection to the original language of the Bible, and, in some cases, it has had a strong attachment to The Vulgate, a 5th century translation into the then-vernacular Latin.

Reza Aslan wrote an interesting article for Slate a few months back, with a good overview of the format of the Quran, and some of the unique problems involved in its translation.

Various news and links for the reader

News
» Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is in $6.7 billion of debt, and it looks like it won't be able to pay it back. HMH has less revenue now that school districts are cutting down on textbook purchases, and credit rating agencies believe that they will default on the loans. Hachette may step up and buy it.

» Borders, in an effort to try to stay afloat, has named a hedge fund executive as its chairman.

» The Guardian chronicles a set of super-bright antiquarian book thieves.

» Searches for "e book" double over the past year.

Links
» Among the vast universe of hyper-expensive Amazon items (ex. a, b, c) lies Chemical Shifts and Coupling Constants for Silicon-29 (Landolt-Bornstein: Numerical Data and Functional Relationships in Science and Technology). Chemical Shifts is a 463 page hardcover which sells for $8,539.00. Luckily, you'll get free super-saver shipping. (via Marginal Revolution)

» The White House website now has some of its content listed as creative commons.

» The Book Cover Archive has added its 1000th book cover. It has also begun filing its covers by the font used on the cover. Check out the pages for Futura and Trade Gothic.

» Should we organize our books at home by original publication date?

Tyndale's New Testament

The Bible speaks to the purpose of this blog in a way that I think few other books do. We all have, in our heads, a pretty standard image of how a Bible should look: thin pages, a nice stately hard-cover (maybe cloth) with an embossed, gold-leafed "HOLY BIBLE" emblazoned across the front. This image, I think, affects the common perception of how we feel the Bible should be read; with an air of quiet dignity. The recent boom of study Bibles targeted towards every conceivable demographic is an unfortunate deviation from this trend. A quick browsing of Amazon's Bible Store should make my point clear. The very least that could be said about traditional Bibles is that they presented a work of immense stature with no frills, instead letting the text dominate. Readability was not a consideration; the Word of God was powerful regardless of font size or page thickness. Most newer study and devotional Bibles come loaded with maps, footnotes, and concordances, which in itself is a good thing; we here at Arbor are always in support of well-placed, helpful editorial content, especially with a work as difficult as The Bible. But in nearly every case, the material is overwhelming, often trite, with a cover that invariably features some combination of sunlight, green meadows, and water, unless it happens to be embarrassing and potentially sacrilegious.

Fortunately, noble publishers, like our friends at Yale University Press, have given us a pristine paperback version of William Tyndale's 1534 translation of the New Testament. His Old Testament translation is also available, but incomplete; Tyndale had only translated up to Chronicles when he was burned at the stake. Tyndale was committed to putting forth a translation of the entire Bible in English from the original Greek and Hebrew (previous English versions had been translated from the Latin Vulgate). A leader in the Protestant reformation, his reasons for translating the Bible into English are summed up nicely by John Foxe:

Master Tyndall happened to be in the company of a learned man, and in communing and disputing with him drove him to that issue, that the learned man said: 'We were better be without God's law than the Pope's.' Master Tyndall, hearing that, answered him: 'I defy the Pope and all his laws'; and said: 'If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.'

David Daniell, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of London, is largely responsible for the publication of this wonderful edition. He has also written a biography on Tyndale, published by Yale Nota Bene. Daniell seems to be the leader in a push to bring Tyndale back to prominence, arguing that he is responsible for most of the phrasing found in the King James translation, which still remains as the standard of English Bible translations. In the introduction to the biography, Daniell states that Tyndale's work with The Bible has had a more profound effect on English vernacular than the work of Shakespeare. Phrases such as "giving up the ghost," and "the salt of the earth," are products of Tyndale's English interpretation of the original language. Daniell says that nine-tenths of the wording in King James comes from Tyndale.

If Daniell is not overstating Tyndale's importance, Yale should be applauded for publishing a book of this quality. It treats the Bible with a dignity acceptable for believers (including this one), while providing necessary materials for study, in both an academic and religious context.

When first encountering the book, the reader will notice that it is abnormally wide. However, it is not a cumbersome volume at all, and fits nicely in any bookshelf. In fact, through continued use, I in some ways prefer the the slightly wider presentation (for the record, Amazon calls the width at 5.9 inches, about an inch off the 5 inch standard). I imagine this decision was made to accommodate Tyndale's margin notes, which differentiate specific passages through a brief title (e.g., 'transfiguration,' 'Jesus walked on the sea'). Tyndale also references other Bible passages dealing with the subject matter at hand. This is especially useful in the Gospels, where fulfilled prophecies are supplemented with the relevant OT passages where the prophecy was written.

And this is the remarkable thing about this volume: Except for the modernized spelling (a necessary edit), Yale has published the text exactly as it appeared in the 1611 'Ploughboy Edition' (so named because of the earlier quote). This leaves some wonderful peculiarities from the original text, my personal favorite being the final page, which contains brief scriptural interpretations under the heading "These things have I added to fill up the leaf withal."

The copy, in the same font as the cover, reads well, and the text is not broken into verses, but presented in paragraphs, split into the usual chapters. A heading in the top corner indicates the verse at the beginning and end of the page. The decision to leave verse numbers out makes referencing slightly difficult, but invites the reader to look at the Bible as a narrative, something I encourage. The centered text on the front cover is a pattern that holds throughout for all headings. It's a minor thing, and I suppose consistency is desirable, but I think there's something to be said for variation. However, the centering looks better when the text is bordered by large margins.

I am not as picky about damage to my books as my other two colleagues; I truly believe a book has not been read until it has picked up a coffee stain or two. That said, my copy of Tyndale's New Testament has undergone many trials in the short time I've had it, and held up remarkably. Of the paperbacks I own, I would rank this near the top in terms of durability. The sturdy cover and overall density of the book have kept the inside pages pristine in the wake of two different liquid spills on the outside cover. The pages are also thick enough to stand up to rigorous note-taking (an advantage of not printing the Old and New Testaments together). I did develop a crack in the binding early on, which is troublesome. Yet this is really the only issue I have. It definitely ranks at the top of my recent purchases.

It should also be mentioned that YUP has one of the better publisher logos out there:

466pp. ~ 5.9 x 7.9 ~ $22.50 ~ Amazon ~ Publisher

Harvard Book Store bought by techie

The Boston Globe reports (or, reported, I'm late on this) that the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge has changed hands, and is now owned by Jeff Mayersohn, who previously worked in tech. The Harvard Book Store, which isn't officially affiliated with the College across the street, is a really nice store. I must admit, however, that I go directly to the basement of the store, where all of the used books are kept. It isn't huge, but they tend to have a few books worth checking out. Generally, there is a handful of Loebs and Oxford Classical Texts which are satisfyingly marked down. That is also where I got my rather silly-looking Duckworth edition of Marinone's All the Greek Verbs and a cheap copy of H.G. Wells' Island of Dr. Moreau. The Globe says:

Mayersohn's former career as an Internet pioneer is somewhat ironic, considering that the advent of online retailing - such as Amazon.com - has contributed to the downfall of the independent bookstore.

I've always imagined that smaller bookstores would go all-used, leaving the new books to Amazon, and freeing up shelf-space for the books of Kindlers and the like. It seems to me that used books is really where bricks and mortar matter.

The Divine Comedy: Bollingen Series

For The Divine Comedy, both John and I read the Bollingen Series Edition, published by Princeton University, from the gates of hell to the divine light of heaven. The Comedy stands out among program books in terms of variety. There are probably six or seven accepted translations, nearly all of them published with a facing-page Italian to go with the English translation. This prose translation is done by Charles S. Singleton, a famous Dante scholar. His translation is described, weirdly, on the back cover of Inferno as being "much the most satisfactory one I know." I had already bought the book when I noticed this ringing endorsement, leaving me mostly baffled with my choice.

What originally drew me to the book was the professional cover design, and the fact that Singleton's extensive commentary was sequestered in a separate volume, leaving me with a text unencumbered by the bulk that such a thorough commentary would bring (I ended up checking out the commentaries from the school library). This commentary, however, would probably be the main reason to invest in the Bollingen series. For my purposes, it was too much - I did not have the time to read 600+ pages of commentary for each book. But for anyone doing a close study, this edition seems the way to go. My comment that the book appears "scholarly" is more than just an artifice. At one point, the texts and commentaries were available together, but these editions are now out of print.

That said, there was some sloppy cover design that kept me from being confident that I had selected the right book. The three books all share the same conceptual design of a gray field with white serif text and white border. The books are differentiated primarily by the color of the bar (which extends, broken by the white border, to the spine and back cover). As Roger's post indicated, differentiating the books through color seems a precarious undertaking, although I think both Inferno and Paradiso were colored in a way that conveyed the mood of the book I was reading - the guiding principle of all good cover art. For Purgatorio, I wasn't so certain, but I don't know what color I would suggest in the place of the purple they chose.

The major issue in the cover design, though, does not fully reveal itself until you place these books on a bookshelf (or lay them out side by side, as pictured above). The two glaring issues are clear:
1) The tone of gray darkens as you move through the books.
2) The colored bars are not evenly aligned.

Both of these mistakes are inexplicable. I could possibly understand the uneven alignment of the bars if they ascended from Inferno to Paradiso, in some way symbolizing the ascent Dante himself makes. But they don't. Purgatorio stands conspicuously above the rest. The darkening gray makes even less sense. These are unfortunate consistencies in what I think is, conceptually, an excellent cover design. I'm not familiar with any other books in the Bollingen Series, but I think Princeton, like all publishers with such high academic standing, puts out good-looking academic works. It's an unfortunate blight.

The font that appears on the front is the same one for the text throughout, and I had some trouble with it. It's a little flat, and the thickness makes reading difficult on the eyes. Also, there were parts of the text with faded printings - another sign of sloppiness in the overall publication. I did think the text was well arranged, giving copious note-taking space, and the English followed the Italian so closely that cross-referencing across the page was a breeze.

The decision I made is not one I regret, as the other editions all had equal faults. It's just disappointing that some better design oversight might have made this an edition to savor.

Inf. 392pp. ~ 5.1 x 7.9 ~ $19.95 (c. $40.00) ~ Amazon ~ Publisher
Purg. 392pp. ~ 5 x 7.8 ~ $24.95 (c. $45.00) ~ Amazon ~ Publisher
Par. 389 pp. ~ 5.4 x 8.2 ~ $24.95 (c. $45.00) ~ Amazon ~ Publisher

Oxford's Divine Comedy

I stuck out from my compatriots and bought the Sinclair translation of Dante Alighieri published by Oxford University Press. The three softcover volumes feature facing pages of the original Italian text and Sinclair's prose translation, with endnotes and a critical essay at the end of each canto (or chapter for the uninitiated). I found the editions to be of solid construction, and very compact for their size (about 450 pages each). The pages were totally a bit thicker that Bible leaf, but were still totally opaque and very smooth, making it pleasing to the touch and no problem for taking notes. The fonts were pleasing in general. The covers were thick laminated paper and allowed the book to lie flat easily and easy to flex for note taking.

While structurally sound, the outer cover designs left a bit to be desired. The front covers all featured Dore illustrations from each of the respective levels, which contrasted sharply with the rather gaudy colors of the binding. The Inferno turned out traffic cone orange, Purgatorio was a brownish yellow, and Paradiso can best be described as plum. OUP's decision to use primarily white text on a black and white image was also not the wisest choice.

In general, I enjoyed both translation and presentation, but be careful to make sure the spines line up, my Paradiso volume is jus a bit offset, which ruins some of the shelf appeal.

450pp. ~ 5.4 x 7.9 ~ $19.99 per volume ~ Amazon ~ Publisher