What do you think about the people who buy those fancy hardbacks of classics?

Is there a service I can use to create my own hardback? I'd really like a nice one to read from for the dark materials series once my child gets a little older.

I agree, some leatherbounds they sell today look like trash, like the B&N ones. I enjoy the leatherbounds of Easton Press quite a bit, they are usually not as over the top as B&N. Damn expensive though, I only get it if there is one that is unusually low priced

>Why shouldn't a book be as physically beautiful as its contents?
Because it's a book. Are you retarded?

>why not waste money on useless superficial stuff

If "superficial stuff" brings the owner genuine happiness is it really superficial?

Yes

Fair enough

Quite the opposite. I have my own library (hardwood panels, builtins, etc) that happens to be open to my foyer, and have been considering getting a great books series for both decor and to have them on hand for my children. Maybe an antique harvard classics, although those barnes and nobles look quite nice too.

This

They're called bookbinders. Find your local one.

I bought an Easton Press edition of Treasure Island, mainly for sentimental value. What others I have I've found at thrift stores.

They have booktube accounts.

>considering getting a great books series for both decor
As I said. Care more about being a reader than reading.

"Because it's a book" isn't an argument.

This is fantastic, thank you! Admittedly, I feel dumb now for having asked.

Nothing wrong with a nicely bound book that's one of your favorites. When they sell shit like Harry Potter or world of Warcraft strategy guide in faux vintage binding it's manchild tier

i personally like more old, pulpy, beat up books and any hardbacks have to be minimally designed or old. It's taste really.

With that said i did recently just buy a hardcover of the Communist Manifesto just so i can do the 'holding the kuran and pointing up' meme with it. I am proud of myself.

Usually they're serial-killers. Usually.

My library was once selling a bunch of books for cheap, and I bought an Easton Press edition of Vanity Fair for $5 USD. I hadn’t heard of Easton Press, so I looked them up. Fucking expensive, I don’t own any other Easton Press books then the Vanity Fair one, they’re too much.

Except those books are not "nicely bound" they're trash bindings that look it

>tfw no handbound leather tomes

i hate hardcovers so much.

Why?

Same. They are expensive and it makes me upset.

>Want to buy godlike Gredos books.
>Afraid people will think I'm a pretentious manchildren even though I'd never post on shelve threads and people irl don't judge like Veeky Forums does.
Veeky Forums has ruined me, now I'm always wary of being labeled as an autist.

>He can't into aesthetics.

A lot of these newer ones are just cheap Chinese crap.

Do it. The translations are excellent -as are the footnotes-. Do not let the autists here put you off.

My Illiad is crumbling to shit on the first read, binding was terrible, which is pretty weird since the older versions I read at uni were pretty high quality. Is this a specific problem or something? Should I never again buy their shit?

A fool and his money are soon parted.

Weird. Their stuff is fairly well made. I've never had a problem like that with their stuff, so I'd guess it's a one off issue.

There's a comedian who has a bit about Trump (I know, relax. I think it was before the election.). He says Trump is a poor person's idea of a rich person. "If I were rich I would live in a big tower with my name on it in gold." I think these editions are the book equivalent of that - a nonreader's idea of what a reader is. Their platonic ideal of a reader is probably an elderly man sitting in a large chair in front of a fire, smoking a pipe and drinking cognac. So they try to imitate that, but it just seems cheap and tacky.

i love them! i buy them all when i see them

I hope it's a defect, I have books that were bound in the nineteenth century holding together just fine.

That Anna Karenina actually looks kinda comfy

This is very true. I used to work at a Barnes & Noble and I would see people buy these books all the time. Probably one of the most popular ones were what you'd expect, like HP Lovecraft, something by Tesla, Dr. Who, and Star Wars novels bound like this. Barely anyone bought the actually interesting ones, like the Bible with Gustave Dore illustrations.

I guarantee the majority of these never get read.

I'd unironically be interested in Bible with Gustav Dore illustrations.

I'd also be interested but on a strictly ironical basis.

It's valid, I guess. Some of them don't look too bad. I just imagine it'd be terrible to read.

How shitty are the Barnes & Noble hardcovers? I've been thinking about buying their bible but I'm not sure if I should drop the cash on something that will fall apart on multiple rereadings.

I've only bought one (it's an out of print Oscar Wilde one) and it was ok. It's more fragile than I expected but still readable and long as I didn't thrash it around.

For what it's worth, a lot of the stores have ones where they've taken the shrink wrap off and you can flip through it to see how they feel before you buy it. I've taken the shrink wrap off myself to let people check them out.

I've bought a couple leatherbounds at estate sales, most of which have slightly warped/bowed covers. Is there a way to restore them?

truth be told they're not that hard to find if you look around used bookstores of thrift stores. my copies of war & peace, crime & punishment, and shakespeare's works are old-school, 50's hardback editions.

if I could my entire bookshelf would be nothing but classy hardbacks, but I have major book OCD and it REALLY pisses me off to see classy hardcovers put next to my amazon self-published paperback reference books.

Holly hell man. States side those are just ten to twenty which is about how much a paper back of the same collections would go for anyway. Personally I like them, though I haven't bought one I didn't already read digitally. Im worried it might mess up the spine when bending those more larger ones. I just wish they made a complete Tarzan collection and not just the first few books.

>being a hardback or paperback man

The absolute state of bookfags

those have reasonably tasteful designs unlike the gaudy messes in OP

That's like saying that if I buy a beautiful couch that I care more about being a sitter than sitting. The content is the same, it's only a question of the value someone places on the aesthetic and sensual experience of an object. For some people, that value is low. For others, it's high.

Im just mad they don't have an Asimov collection in that style yet at Barnes and Noble.

i have that same copy of the divine comity, its cool it has more them one artists drawings in it witch i like

>not buying the old pulpy retro editions
h*ck you

Not really because reading doesn't have the same value as sitting on a couch. You can brag about reading because it makes you look smart. You can't brag about sitting on a couch

You can if it's made of iguana skin

It makes sense to get one or two if there your favorite books and you want a nice ornament on your shelf to display to show it the respect you think the work deserves, but getting a whole shelf is pretty meme tier and gay

...

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>fancy
That's a poor person's idea of a rich person's luxury; these books are a caricature of more sophisticated hardcovers.
These plebs are idiots for buying a single book for the price of ten, although I can't say that I'm surprised.

Beautiful

fine if they’ve read them (and understand them)

Easton Press on the used market are around $ 35.00.

>buying paperback
>ever
Might as well just download pdf version.

it's tacky shit for tasteless plebs

Like all american production.

Who the hell thinks these are good-looking? On the contrary, they look like vomit inducing overdesigns especially when they are grouped together

>what do you hink about the people
Perfectly sums up Veeky Forums lol
Even books aren't about books, good god youre pathetic

Even cheaper in my experience, I bought a very clean leather bound copy of Faust and a Folio society Jude the Obscure the last time I went to my 2nd hand bookshop, I got a, few other paperbacks and traded in a few and I only spent €15 in total.

You can get some very cheap Folio editions on abebooks, sometimes cheaper than a new paperback of the same book.
Folio gave out lots of gifts when they were a subscription only service, so there are a lot of unread books that people didn't want on the 2nd hand market

For me it's all about the price. Hardcovers are most of the time cheaper than paperbacks, at least in
Germany.

They don't read books

i think they probably have a lot of disposable income and that they probably spend a lot of time thinking about what sorts of useless bullshit they want to spend their money on

i have a lot of nice hardbacks, but these recent ones in OPs pic are just overdesigned imho.
pretty gaudy, and looks like you bought them all from just one publisher like some sort of autist

Why aren't more books released with soft leather bindings? It seems to be pretty much exclusively Bible editions despite it being pretty much the best compromise of form and function.

...

Wished for the complete works of Shakespeare for my last birthday, and my parents got me that edition. Even though I knew about those editions being a bit meme tier already, my mom had gone out of her way to find one she thought looked really nice, so it added some sentimental value. I was really happy about getting it, and have later read several of the plays, and now I am fond of that edition. So to conclude, I think they are fine, as long as you like them and read them for your own sake. Filling up your bookshelf with only those editions is retarded though, way too expensive

>Veeky Forums likes disgusting BN hardcovers now
wtf happened to this board

Really depends, hardbacks are great for huge books with lots of information/images, a lot of classics are pretty short and aren't that suitable. I also think people get fooled by the price, they think the higher cost means they use better materials but that's not always the case. I think the biggest downside is how quickly it adds up and how heavy they are. Any time you need to move it will become a nightmare if you have lots of hardbacks. Nowadays I only buy them if it's 100% necessary and I know it's made of good material.

>Hardcovers are most of the time cheaper than paperbacks, at least in Germany.

How

You can't read them or they fall apart. I have two from years ago. The Lovecraft one I've never read. Huck Finn I read and it fell apart after one read.

Not necessarily. It's more that the quality is wildly inconsistent. I have a some that are fine after a reading and some that are falling apart. Generally it's the volumes that aren't too thick that hold up. The binding isn't reinforced for the larger volumes.

I'm about to order a bunch of paperbacks and I'm wondering how I can deal with the resentment I feel towards hardcoverfags. How do I gain the moral or elitist highground to justify my paperback purchases to myself?

Paperback aficionado here.

>How do I gain the moral or elitist highground to justify my paperback purchases to myself?
Two of my favourite techniques:

1. Carry your paperback around in your bag so you can do some reading while not at home. You're not weighed down and yet you can still appreciate the caress of physical literature. If you're feeling smug at this point, it's because you have attained the highground (both moral and elitist).

2. Read your paperback holding it up with one hand, you're not feeling tired but somewhere else in the world a hardback owner's wrist is aching. They're probably crying. Right now. Because they know *we* have the highground.

you realize that either way you're buying art, right? and art isn't necessary?

>>why not waste money on useless superficial stuff
You mean Books right?

>Germans
every single time

based /int/ warned me and i didn't listen. i should have listened

There's different reasons to buy art though, right? Is the point of these books just to catch the eyes of people who walk through your door in the hope that they might respect you a little more? I find it hard to believe it's anything else.

Bumping for this

You guys have nice pocket editions though. I have three by three different publishers and they are pretty good.

i own 4 of them

Please stop posting these tacky books. They don't look good.

FUCK why is burgerland so shit?

honestly a new "artsy" edition of a classic would have to be of extremely good quality and aesthetics for me to buy it; something like a handcrafted artistic book would be nice

otherwise a 50+ or even 100+ years old edition is way more interesting

I doubt that shit is cheaper than reclam

This is a faulty book not representative of them in general. They are actually properly smith sewn if a bit guady looking

too expensive, no market for them

shut da fuck up

Theyre $20. The cover designs are usually tacky, but they are Smith sewn and printed on acid free paper (ableit in China). In most of the world thats a couple of dollars more than a Penguin classic glued together on non-acid free paper costs. I wown the Dracula and collected Lovecraft and theyre excellent for the price.