Many of the books that Royal Skousen showed us, and a lot of the books I have seen in class, are extremely artistic in nature. Whether it’s the illumination, rubricating, illustration or intricate book covers, there have always been artistic elements present. It was interesting to me to start to think of publishing itself as an art. When he started telling us his personal preferences in paper, binding, and other publishing techniques, it opened my eyes to things that I have noticed, but never gave much attention to. I decided to analyze the book that I most recently finished reading, Inheritance by Christopher Paolini.
Mouse Trap Effect: This bothers me beyond belief when I’m trying to read a novel. Now that it has been given a name, I know exactly what I’m complaining about. Inheritance does not suffer from this affliction. The binding is sufficiently loose to allow the pages to fall open.
The hard-back book gives it a substantial and “taken care of” look. It is covered in a pleasant green contrasted with a black spine and gold lettering. It does have an obviously “fantasy” type font, but the overall impression is professional and put together.
The pages are nearly white, which does lead to some glare. The margins are sufficiently wide to allow my thumb to stay on the page while reading. The page numbers are located in the middle of each page on the side margin, which is actually quite an improvement to many books in my opinion. Your eyes are naturally drawn to the number as you’re reading, and you end up being more aware of your place in the book and the page number when you set it down.
As a part of the artistic nature of books, I started thinking about the business side of things. Would publishers hire artists to design covers, illustrate pages, illuminate and rubricate? Or did the publisher do it all in house? I would tend to believe that an artist was hired as part of the division of labor. But I will do some research on this area and see what I can find.
And finally, I was impressed with his comments on browsing. I might have immediately dismissed the importance of browsing if I hadn’t done the annotated bibliography project. I used to be in the practice of browsing the library and other such places. However, it had been a very long time. The bibliography forced me to do some browsing, and I immediately recognized some of the very same benefits that he mentioned in his presentation. The ability to quickly gain a sense of the book’s material, without relying on the brief online summary was refreshing.
I get the point about wanting books that aren't, well, obnoxious, but I really don't think that there are a whole lot of people who care about these things in their books like he does... I'm not trying to diminish your post or anything, just I think that some of the things he said were just a little overzealous... I see how illumination could make a book more beautiful, absolutely, but whether the pages are half a shade more or less white or off-white? ... I don't really think it makes a whole lot of a difference, to be honest.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, I don't agree with his extremism when he says stuff like "if it's a white, glaring paper, I won't read it." However, it was an interesting experience to evaluate something that I do very often in a new light. While certainly not life changing, it was perception changing.
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