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Discarded delights: The joy of ex-library books (2021)
- black_13 2y ago[dead]
- ThePhysicist 2y agoMy university regularly put discarded books in a cart in front of the library with a money box, so you could just take a book and put one or two euros in the box. Among other things I got a copy of Benoit Mandelbrots "The fractal geometry of nature" which I still treasure to this day.
- qup 2y agoToday's his birthday!
- contingencies 2y agoThat's one of my treasures, too. I paid full price for a hardcover. Many of our books come from second hand dealers, often nature/history/tooling/photography foci. I'm a sucker for thematic histories, large format photography books, and well researched non fiction in general. If you like the marks on books, try postcards! I have ~20,000 of them. Not really sure why, but they're very interesting to scroll through. A card is like a little clue in to a time and place you would never otherwise think of ... logistics networks, handwriting, language, printing technology, inks, subjects of interest, urban development, architecture, fashion: sometimes with messages to boot!
- oniony 2y agoMy late mother was an avid reader of library books. She used to mark the books she had read by filling in the loops of the letters on the copyright page. Apparently she noticed the hidden codes that other readers used to similarly mark books they had read: a circle around page 10, a line on page 20, &c. I wonder if the author has come across such marks?
- silentd 2y agoMy late father would put a little star on the last page of the book. He eventually discovered another patron was marking books in a similar fashion and that they had the same taste in books. Whenever he found the other mark he would check out that book.
- andai 2y agoDo people forget which books they've read? If there's something I haven't finished, the sense of incompletion stays with me forever.
- sofayam 2y agoIf you are going to collect books as physical objects, rather than their much more convenient digital versions, then it strikes me you should actually find the signs of previous interactions with that object (library stamps, marks from other readers etc) make them more interesting than pristine copies that no one has read.
- iamacyborg 2y agoThat runs very much counter to how collectors actually collect books currently. The more pristine the book, the better, aside from particularly rare or valuable inscriptions.
- sofayam 2y agoSure. But while I can understand this approach for rare objects which are the result of great craftsmanship (I would rather not have a crack in my faberge egg) a book is generally a mass produced article with little individual character until someone has left their mark on it.
- iamacyborg 2y agoEven still, most folks would prefer a pristine first edition than one that’s been heavily used.
- GJim 2y agoSpeak for yourself!
- emptiestplace 2y agoAre you actually a bot? I'm struggling to imagine a literate human who does not know this.
- iamacyborg 2y agoMy name clearly states I am NOT a cyborg.
- gadders 2y agoGrowing up as a kid with not much money, I think quite a few of the books on my shelves were ex library books.
- noufalibrahim 2y agoI used to hang out at used bookstores regularly. Mostly to find cheap but good quality books for my kids when they were younger. I once managed to get a used copy of Paul Graham's On Lisp which was discarded from the technical library of a company somewhere. The main point of interest is that physical items age and retain artifacts of their lives. I found a childrens book that was discarded from an American library where a girl had scrawled in pencil that she was proud that she finished it. I've seen one which was awarded to a man for being top of his class in college in the early 1900s. The bookshop I used to visit once had a book sold to him which contained a letter from Rabindrnath Tagore in the original in between the leaves of the book. It's a fascinating feeling and quite primal.
- coldpie 2y agoI recently read a sci-fi book from the library. A previous borrower had jotted notes/corrections/criticisms of the author's science in the margins, in the tiniest, neatest handwriting I've ever seen. None of the "problems" they pointed out detracted from the story, but I guess they really wanted to show off their personal theories of FTL travel to whoever borrowed the book next. It was hilarious, and I'll remember the book forever because of that.
- noufalibrahim 2y agoThat's really cool. In some sense, it's like a precursor to internet fora.
- vixen99 2y agoMy beautifully bound 1898 score of Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words' picked up for a song (sorry!) in a junk shop, has the inscription "To Ethyl with love from Mother and Dad Aug. 16th 1911". A treasured item in my library with additional resonance.
- Pannoniae 2y agoMy copy is just full of scribbles and circles around the "p"s by my teacher :D Yes, I was hammering the piano with so much force at that time...
- uniqueuid 2y agoAnd sometimes you find little gems, too! I have a copy of "New Rules for the New Economy" by Kevin Kelly, signed as part of the Global Business Network that he and Steward Brand founded a long time ago. Having read Fred Turner's immensely great book "From Counterculture to Cyberculture", that is a valuable little piece of history to me.
- pglevy 2y agoOne of my favorites that I return to regularly and am continually fascinated by is an ex-library book, Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century. It's an "enthno-archealogical" study of about 30 families in early 2000s California. I love the ambiance of libraries and used book stores so I tend to buy books with a little wear and tear and appreciate their uniqueness. At the same time I'm loathe to make my own marks in books. I hadn't thought about that contradiction before.
- vundercind 2y agoI try to only mark if I think it'll be useful to me, or to someone in the future. I'll lightly mark the location of favorite passages in the margins (that's useful to me, at least, and minimally intrusive), record some information about some obscure reference to a location by an antiquated name that I was only able to track down in some decades-old humanities paper, mark up the TOC with information I wish it had, that kind of thing. I don't mind most marks from previous readers. Usually I'd rather have them than not, as they're at least interesting in one way or another. The category of used book with annotations that I don't ever like to buy is one where a previous owner highlighted or underlined seemingly half the book. There's a kind of reader out there who must highlight or underline their books the same way I compulsively select text as I read on a screen, and it wrecks the book.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- vmilner 2y agoI always liked the hardback editions of children’s books in UK libraries in the 70s and 80s , and have sought them out secondhand since. Favourites were the US Danny Dunn science story series - almost all of which were amazingly available in the UK, Dr Who hardback editions of the famous Target novelisations - pre-vcr the only way to access old stories (even in the Uk these were very rarely repeated). Hugh Walters 1960s/1970s sf books (passage to Pluto, journey to Jupiter, expedition Venus etc.) Also the Agaton Sax comedy detective stories, and the largely unknown Uncle the elephant books by JP Martin.
- cbfrench 2y agoI primarily read theology, and lots of early-to-mid-20th century Anglican theology. So, many of the books I read are out of print—and thus only available used. I’ve found that reading in a niche area tends to put some interesting copies in my lap. I have quite a few copies around that previously belonged to “famous” (at least within my little world) theologians. Many of these other copies are often ex-library, often from seminary or monastic libraries. It’s always interesting to see what libraries are getting rid of and to think about the monks or nuns who sat around reading them. (Or not, as the case may be—they were withdrawn, after all.) My favorite is a copy of Martin Thornton’s The Function of Theology, which had been deaccessioned from the library of the Seminary of the Southwest at some point. I happened to flip to the back to glance at the loan card. It had been borrowed precisely one time—October 23, 1987—but it had been borrowed that one time by a priest who became a friend of mine in 2021 during a course at a different institution. The small world of Anglican theology! I texted him a picture of the book, and he still remembered checking it out.
- sriram_malhar 2y agoI have a few ex-library books. Ex-library to 'ex libris', if you will! I bought them at used book stores and can't fight the sneaking suspicion that I am in possession of stolen property! I love heavily marked up used books. They make me feel a kinship with another person. Me and "Dan" from 1956 have physically held the same copy of Terman's Electronic and Radio Engineering!
- alunmeme2003 2y ago[dead]
- MPSimmons 2y agoCan I just drop a word of love and appreciation for Abe Books? I don't buy physical books a lot, but when I do, Abe is definitely the first place I look. The books drop ship from the actual seller, and it's remarkable that I've never had a problematic delivery, after a dozen or so. My favorite book I've gotten from them was A Psalm for the Wild-Built, which was previously a library book, funny enough.
- andrepd 2y agoSad that it's part of the Amazon behemoth.
- greenie_beans 2y agobehold bookfinder.com
- 7402 2y agoFavorite ex-library book: "The Unix Environment" by A. N. Walker. Ex library: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NY. Cost from Alibris: $1.
- kristianp 2y agoNever heard of Alibris, any other good used book sites? I have bought a book from Abebooks: "Object-Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach", by Objective-C creator Brad Cox. There is a charity bookshop in my city that exclusively sells ex-library books from the city's libraries. It's very tempting to buy the books there due to them usually being in very good condition.
- Lammy 2y ago> Sadly, ex-library books have a poor reputation because an old library book can have many miles on the clock Depends on the clientele. I love finding ex-Bohemian-Club-library books, for example, because they are absurdly well cared for. My most recent one of these was a copy of “San Francisco's Ocean Trade Pᴀsᴛ ᴀɴᴅ Fᴜᴛᴜʀᴇ — A Story of the Deep Water Service of San Francisco, 1848 to 1911.” (1911) because I was very familiar with the coming of the railroads but not so familiar with anything earlier than that: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/San_Francisco%27s_ocean_trade%2C_past_and_future%3B_a_story_of_the_deep_water_service_of_San_Francisco%2C_1848_to_1911._Effect_the_Panama_canal_will_have_upon_it_%28IA_sanfranciscosoce00wrig%29.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/San_Fran... Loved the bit about one of the early steamships used to carry freight up and down the Sacramento River getting outclassed by an ox team — moo moo moo https://i.imgur.com/GVCVY0r.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/GVCVY0r.jpeg
- hcs 2y agoI have a fun copy of Mechanized Information Storage, Retrieval And Dissemination (1968) formerly from The Free Library of Philadelphia, covered in "identification required" labels for some reason. There's also a Cinema Props stamp inside the cover, so it may have been set dressing in between the library and the used book store where I got it. https://www.librarything.com/work/17927078/book/215905873 https://www.librarything.com/work/17927078/book/215905873
- babymetal 2y agoI opened a bookshop after a long run in tech to try to slow down, and one of the pleasant surprises was the joy in accepting used book donations. I re-donate most of them, but have found some wonderful bookmarks and inscriptions in many. The words matter most, of course, but the tangible evidence of people decades or centuries ago is something that speaks to me profoundly. One inscription in a tiny book of prayers mentioned a friend passing it on after it had been placed under her deceased infant sister's chin, which was both morbid and moving. Autographs of spooks like J. Edgar Hoover conjure up other feelings. One other comment: the very old books will probably be around for a few centuries more after the newer ones have turned to dust.
- throwup238 2y ago> One other comment: the very old books will probably be around for a few centuries more after the newer ones have turned to dust. Future historians will curse the 19th and 20th centuries for switching to acidic paper. Thankfully more and more books are printed on acid free paper via ISO 9706.
- dlisboa 2y agoFrom my experience this seems to be an American thing. I have US-printed books that I bought brand new about 15 years ago that look 100 years old today. On the other hand the Brazil- or France-printed books are still good as new. The paper color they use in Brazil is also very different (white as opposed to yellowish brown). This isn't every US book though, seems to be mostly the fiction kind. The tech books I have are US-printed and are holding up perfectly. But yeah the acidic paper thing is real and a big problem. The book I’m currently reading has these rust-like vertical streaks covering every single page. I don’t know how to recover or preserve them.
- jfil 2y agoTo preserve acidic paper books, you might have luck with archival-grade boxes made of "buffered" material. The buffer is an alkaline material that's supposed to neutralize the acid in the paper.
- OisinMoran 2y agoTwo very important books for me were both bought in the same library clearance sale when I was around 6/7! 1. A biology text book which is how I learned about sex! 2. Children's Britannica World of Science & Mystery "FUTURE CITIES" which inspired my love for the future and technology, and still has pride of place on my bookshelf. I even wrote a lil thread on Twitter about it [0] [0] https://x.com/TheOisinMoran/status/1389697743480926210 https://x.com/TheOisinMoran/status/1389697743480926210
- mcswell 2y agoDanger! I made the mistake of following the link to AbeBook's list of books for sale. As a result, I spent $60. You have been warned.
- dmd 2y agoJust a few weeks ago I got an absolutely delightful email: > Ні! This might seem a little out of the blue and it is but a few years ago at a library book sale I got the book "Pi in the Sky". It has your personal library stamp on it, so I guess YOU got it at a library sale and then re-donated it? I had never read anything about math before that was at all interesting and it got me reading lots of other "popular" math books and I got really interested in number theory. I am now a freshman at CMU and planning to be a math major!
- Animats 2y agoMy favorite ex-library book was "Engineering with Nuclear Explosives", discarded from the Stanford engineering library.[1] [1] https://archive.org/details/engineeringwithn00plowrich/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/engineeringwithn00plowrich/mode/...
- albert_e 2y agoAbout finding fascinating hand scribbled notes from books of the past ... I discovered this in a scanned collection of old books maintained by our government ministry of culture ... there are comments on some pages (see pages 8, 11, 17 for example) including the cover. in some places the scribbler who seems be an authority on the subject himself expresses some rebuttals/commentary on the text's shortcomings Book Title: Vocabulary of Gentoo and English link: https://indianculture.gov.in/rarebooks/vaokaaabaularaii-apha-gaeemtaoo-laaamgavaeeja-amda-imgalaiisa https://indianculture.gov.in/rarebooks/vaokaaabaularaii-apha... PS: this was the first time I stumbled across, and discovered that "Gentoo" was another name used by the British for the "Telugu" language of Southern India. I am a native speaker of Telugu and I never knew this fact.