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).
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.
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.
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.
Yes, and Pushkin was a francophone - most of Russian noblemen were. As were most writers of the 19th century: if you flip through War and Peace, it is easy to notice that much of the book is written plainly in French.
Hence literary Russian is very heavy with borrowings from French, which became so ingrained into the fabric of the language that native speakers don't even notice.
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.
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 :)
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.
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?
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."
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.
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
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.
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.
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 :)
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?
