

Book Spines - greatgoof
http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/122/

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mynegation
For all of you design junkies here, Lebedev's ru/kovodstvo (or com/mandership
for English language version and .com domain) is a very interesting read. Too
bad "business lynch" is not available in English. This is where aspiring
designers send their works to Lebedev and he or his employees do a review
(mostly disparaging and with lots of profanities).

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splat
The practice of printing titles top-to-bottom vs. bottom-to-top seems to be
more than a Western Europe vs. Eastern Europe thing, though, because French
books (and I think German as well) are printed bottom-to-top just like Russian
books.

~~~
woodpanel
Germany: Bottom-To-Top.

I've only seen Top-To-Bottom-Spines on US-Books so far. Also agree with the
point, that if a book is lying face-up there's no need for readable spine-
text. If it's face-down, there is.

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barrkel
On a stack of books, though, it does make a difference. Books below the top
book do not have a readable cover.

All English-language books I've ever seen beside foreign-language books (so
that I could notice the distinction) read from top to bottom. It's not just
the US.

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jessriedel
This seems to be one of the many cases where _a priori_ neither technique is
much more preferable than the other, but where it's much more desirable that
_something_ be chosen as a standard than that there is disagreement.

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ErrantX
I have a few friends who still use the old practice in their libraries of
rebinding books to have the same cover style & lettering.

Never understood it. I find something quite profound/exciting in a big
bookshelf full of different sorts of books :)

~~~
lsc
_I have a few friends who still use the old practice in their libraries of
rebinding books to have the same cover style & lettering._

wow, that sounds expensive. On the other hand, as far as ostentatious displays
of wealth go, that sounds like one of the more classy ones.

~~~
ErrantX
Nah, it can be stupidly expensive to go to a binder. But pasteboard and some
fabric plus stencil letters is fairly cheap. You can rebind a book for about
$10 or less.

(admittedly not perfectly, but enough to look good and last).

It started because a group of us at uni found out we really really love books,
it was a bit of an addiction actually, so we started our "libraries" for a bit
of fun.

Originally we were meant to have read every book for it to count :) but that
quickly became impractical. I have about 6,000 books (most in boxes, sadly,
till I find a bigger place) but that is small compared to some of the group :)

Not always a recommended hobby; it is impossible to walk past a second hand
bookshop now, and they are surprisingly common :)

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lsc
I also really like books. Some time I will write a bit about my experiences as
a (online) bookseller. A lot of the attraction was having all these books. At
my peak, I had more than you do. When I dumped the business I cut back to a
reasonable number (and they aren't in inventory anymore, so I can't tell you
how many I have.)

Personally, though, I'd rather spend time reading the books than rebinding
them so they look nicer.

but yeah, I can understand the want to collect books, even books that you
likely won't have time to read. But, I mean, if it's not something you are
likely to read, it's more of a collectible or decoration than a book,
especially if you are going to put a lot of labor into making them look good,
which is why I say it sounds like a display of wealth.

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kemayo
Maybe I'm missing the point, but I don't see any legibility-on-shelf
difference between top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top. Either way you need to
tilt your head a bit...

Does anyone actually see a difference in readability here?

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bradleyland
It's all about the order of the lines. Let's assume the following is printed
on two lines:

> 1: Fear and Loathing > 2: In Las Vegas

If rotated to the right (considered top-to-bottom), line #2 is to the reader's
left when viewed on a book shelf. This is opposite the traditional left-to-
right reading direction we use in west.

Whether or not this impacts you individually isn't as significant as the
difference in reading direction outlined above.

I tend to side with the "local" belief that "when the book is lying face-up,
its spine is of little value, because you can read all you want on the cover."

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wyuenho

      I tend to side with the "local" belief that "when the book   is lying face-up, its spine is of little value, because you   can read all you want on the cover."
    

I side with the belief that book bindings and cover directions should be in
line with the language that book is written in.

In East Asia, tradition dictates that books are opened from left to right,
using your right hand, with the spine on the right. As to the direction of the
book title on the spine, there's no disagreement, because how it is written on
the spine is how it is written on the pages - top to bottom and right to left.

Too bad Chinese books these days are starting to read like a western book. I
wonder if it had anything to do with GOST 7.84–2002. It's either that or M$
Word has screwed everyone else's writing and printing tradition.

~~~
greatgoof
From <http://www.sarm.am/en/standarts/view/2550> regarding countries where
GOST 7.84-2002 is accepted : Ukraina Turkmenistan Russian Federation
Uzbekistan Tadjikistan Moldova Kazakhstan Georgia Belorussia Armenia
Kirgizstan Azebaijan

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kgo
Interesting, but if a wrong-endian book is in a bookshelf or a pile, can't you
just correct the problem by inserting it upside-down? The only case where I'd
notice a difference is the top book in a stack.

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balding_n_tired
Certainly you can, but I find that bookstores generally don't, and I don't at
home--force of habit.

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greatgoof
I didn't see much difference in readability either. But its fascinating, the
variety in viewpoints regarding something that most of us would not even give
a second thought about.

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icco
Anyone else bothered by the opening quote? Why are people learning about
hygiene in a university? I thought we were taught that in the third grade...

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mynegation
I am not because I am Russian :) Seriously though, this joke is an example of
a classical sub-genre of Russian jokes where Russians prove their superiority
in various areas of life (including, ironically, heavy drinking) over
westerners (usually Americans, but sometimes French and Germans).

Any unrealistic assumptions are irrelevant, punchline is all that matters :)

~~~
NickPollard
I've heard the joke before in various forms, most commonly using two
prestigious British public schools (Harrow and Eton). I wonder what the
original form was?

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gallerytungsten
Very amusing site!

I liked in particular the tiny paragraph numbers running down the left column.

