I have very mixed feelings about this too. The results are stunning, but some of those books being destoyed... I think the old editions of the dictionaries got to me the most, and the ones that just looked more as if they'd had big holes gouged into them. But still, some amazing beautiful images.
I have a very old English-French dictionary that belonged to my grandmother, and which I used when studying French at school. I often got told I was using old-fashioned or quaint turns of French phrases in my essays. I'd hate it if that book got mangled, just because it's old like some of those.
I thought the books with holes gouged out of them were the better pictures but I sympathise with your sentiment and could never let an old book of mine be damaged like that. I have a few new books that could be improved by this treatment, I am afraid.
It's interesting. On one hand, at least the book is still being used, rather than being junked or burned, so people are still getting pleasure out of it. On the other hand; these are sometimes old books. However - what exactly IS an old book? Does it have any intrinsic value? Is 'a book' good enough for veneration?
We do have a horror of this, but it's much what I call the attraction of the artifact, and it's quite hard to separate out your feelings for your own books from those for all books. We've got thousands of books in our house, and I have very few feelings for the majority of them, and those that I do isn't because they're 'books', it's because of something else - a specific present for example, which is above and beyond the thing being a 'book'.
On the whole - if they're books that would otherwise have been chucked, I think it's a great idea and I'm all for it. However, if it's the only copy of something, or has a historical value as an artifact, then I'd be rather more concerned.
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I have a very old English-French dictionary that belonged to my grandmother, and which I used when studying French at school. I often got told I was using old-fashioned or quaint turns of French phrases in my essays. I'd hate it if that book got mangled, just because it's old like some of those.
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We do have a horror of this, but it's much what I call the attraction of the artifact, and it's quite hard to separate out your feelings for your own books from those for all books. We've got thousands of books in our house, and I have very few feelings for the majority of them, and those that I do isn't because they're 'books', it's because of something else - a specific present for example, which is above and beyond the thing being a 'book'.
On the whole - if they're books that would otherwise have been chucked, I think it's a great idea and I'm all for it. However, if it's the only copy of something, or has a historical value as an artifact, then I'd be rather more concerned.