What's your opinion on deckle edge, Veeky Forums?

I'd prefer all my books without deckled edges but it's not a huge deal if some have them

edgy ayy eff le mayo

My copy of Mere Christianity came with it, and I thought it was pretty nice. But I imagine it would get a bit annoying if every book had those edges. It really just depends on what kind of book it is; you wouldn't want serious literature to have it, I imagine a behemoth like Dostoevsky would be really bad

(typed this with my eyes closed to see how well i could do. sorry for any typos)

I agree. my copy of walden & civil disobedience has it and its pretty comfy, it looks a bit crude and it reminds me of leafs and trees, something more simple, and not so sterilized and cold

don't know if that makes any sense

i fucking hate it. almost want to buy one of those guillotine paper cutters they use in schools on every book using deckle edge, like some pooka, impishly cackling as he runs rampant through barnes and nobles across the states, clipping fingernails for a price, and chopping dongs for free, fashioning a necklace with tattooed dongs, each the appearance of a stretched, fuzzy, and smelly book spine, singing the song of roland and somersaulting through the endless spree of the human carnival, a seamless parade of protuberances from hem to hair, ready to be ensorceled by my sharp tools, debasing the criminals who would wish to oppose my grand quest, my journey, my fate.

emerging from nascent scent-fog issuant frehence volcumined with bookshreddings, tassl'd and free, i tumble over, drunken on dish soap and stuft with free wind, the roasties' roasted beans extraordinaire, faces rimmed glasses black, white hors'd poltroons scattering at my merest infuried glance, i wield a lance, a thunderbolt, a quasar. and stun the life from all deckled edges, all ash, all distraught, exeunt.

neologisms, frehence, from within hencetofore
volcumine, wrapped with clothing all but the genitalia.

I hate them, first because they greatly reduce the efficiency of actually paging through a book, and second because as produced in modern printings, they carry an annoying hipster, artsy chic.

I've had people on this board advise me: "dude just page using the tops and bottoms of the pages lmao". These idiots have clearly never done this, or if they have, then their sense of motor control is so fucked up that their opinions can be disregarded, so either way I'm still right.

The odd paper cut is well worth the added efficiency of paging through a book with smooth page edges.

I have never thought about the mechanics of page turning before this thread. I can't tell if I'm ignorant or everyone else here is autistic. Either way, I don't mind them but I'd prefer non-deckled edges for simplicity and so the edges don't rub away quickly.

plen

My copies of the Iliad and Odyssey have deckled edges and it seemed like such a benign detail that it wasn't even worth paying attention to

Just read your fucking books lads its all the same stuff anyways

I just bought a used copy of that edition of the Oddysey and the fucker before me dog-eared every other page in half, took awful notes, drew pictures at the chapter headings, and warped the spine into a semi-circle. I'd be pissed if it wasn't only two dollars.

You plebs. The French author Julien Gracq pointedly refused to have his books published or reprinted in shit mass-market paperback format, so his publisher just continued to print in them in the same way as books used to be printed before WW2: uncut. They were the last books to be so printed, outside small presses specialty editions.

The idea of having to work for something seems to beyond most of you.

lol yeah I bought Rivage and had to cut all the pages myself...was kind of fun and I guess it makes you think about how books are made. But I bought Un balcon and it was pre-cut.

bump

In that case, the French author Julien Gracq was wrong for holding the opinion that he did - as wrong as you are to hold him up as an authority on good taste.

>pseudy-pleb detected
back to your twatter-length summaries, then.

...

Moreover, the earlier post's latter retort fails completely, and for multiple reasons.

It goes like this. The retort "The idea of having to work for something seems to beyond most of you." tacitly acknowledges that yes, it is indeed more difficult to flip through, page through, deckled edges, so it helpfully concedes the inferior functionality point - agreed, it's easier to flip through "standard" modern pages. Otherwise, why write the retort in this way?

The content of this retort then further tacitly compares the act --- of flipping through a book with deckled edges, taking the extra second or three to get the exact page that you want --- with situations where you work at something and get a desired outcome for your time spent. Saving up money to buy something you want, working towards a good goal, etc. But something's wrong with this comparison.

What's wrong with this comparison is that it confuses effort, in general, with efficiency, or the lack thereof. Say you have some stupid, tedious, inefficient, boring task. Now, if it has to be done and there's no other way to do it, fine. That's part of you working towards your goal.

But now let's add an extra condition: /you know exactly how to make that task go more quickly/. But you refuse, for whatever reason. Is this "effort" spent on the tedium still praiseworthy? Can it validly be compared with the above "noble projects"? No. And this exactly because the retort has acknowledged its own inefficiency. The retort is self-defeating.

Deckled edges suck, and I'm please that an above-average rate of other anons seem to be rejecting them in this thread.

Well, well, well. Quite the STEMster, aren't we? >Time=Money
You must be an American.

>inability to appreciate a well-made book
>inability to appreciate tradition
>inability to appreciate pride in one's work (refusing to contemplate cheaply-printed books)
>inability to admit of the possibility of reading through a book in any way other than by "flipping through" it like a spastic child with ADHD
Why even bother reading books then, pleb? Just do like Trump and hire people to do it for you instead and give you the oh-so-efficient "executive summary".

Also, the mere fact that you cite statistical, quantitative superiority as some kind of validation just goes to prove that you are indeed a mental Semite, if not a Jew outright.

I don't like it. Makes the edges more vulnerable to tearing. It's the sort of crap they did in the pulp era save money except they don't pass the savings to the customer.

This

The only advantage is the fingerprint oils don't stain easily across an untrimmed edge like on a trimmed edge because it's so uneven. But that's only an issue for collectors who sell for condition, not readers.

I have all the time in the world for a highly irregular Book of Kells, or a palimpsest, as philologiclal objects which should be met on their own terms. Even moderately (1-300 year old) library objects are to be cherished.

But that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about are commonly-held, commonly-used, actually books nowadays that large groups of people actually use. And where this is concerned, deckled edges suck and are indefensible.

You again undercut yourself because you mistake my absolute insistence on being able to /rapidly/ page to something as a form of impatience, as if I don't read books. You have to assume this about me in order to try your backup ad-hom argument where your earlier argument was also demolished. Do you know how I demolished your earlier argument? Because I read books, and I can rapidly thumb through them to get the spicy rhetorical bits that I need.

You totally mistake the /first read-through/ (slow, careful, one page at a time, maybe a day a week, or even months) for the /re-reading/. My flipping? That's /re-reading/ the material, idiot. For retention, to come back to the passages I was interested in. THIS is where it is so important not to have your stupid fucking deckled edges. Because I am actually using a book for its primary purpose - /to be read/ - and not as an art-object you stupid fuck. But that didn't occur to you.