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Title: The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski ISBN: 0-375-70639-9 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 September, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.65 (20 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Discursive history of book shelving
Comment: Although this volume contains much fascinating information about the evolution of the book, Petroski is most interested in how book storage systems have developed. It turns out that books have been stored in more ways--and in more peculiar ways--than an uninitiated reader might imagine. (Would you believe that most books were once shelved "backwards" with their fore-edge out and their title-less spine faced in?) Among Petroski's best chapters are the one that treats problems that arose when books had to be chained to their shelves and the one describing the development of modern library shelving so strong that it could support the library rather than the other way around. Petroski includes many fine illustrations that that well support his theses and educated guesses.
Committed bibliophiles may easily tolerate the discursive, not to say meandering, course of The Book on the Bookshelf. I reached the limit of my patience a couple of times and put the book back on the bookshelf for a while before finally completing it. That having been said, Petroski's ramble is just too self-indulgent and just plain too long, sort of an Atlantic Monthly essay that got away from the author. I absolve future readers from all guilt if they decide to skip pages and even whole sections of this clever work.
Rating: 4
Summary: A book for obsessive bibliophiles
Comment: The Book on the Bookshelf is Henry Petroski's sly look at how books are stored, and have been stored for centuries. It's sly, in part, because to tell you this he has to tell you the history of the book itself, and this of course leads him off in different directions. You learn much about not only books, and bookshelves, but scrolls, printing, various sorting systems, printing and spelling conventions over the years, and various other minutiae. If you're interested in this sort of thing, like I was, it's very interesting. I was fascinated to read, for instance, that the British publishing industry changed about a decade ago, and began printing their titles on the spines of books oriented the same way we do it. Previously they had printed the titles upside down (from our point of view) and the two books I'm referring to are old enough to display this. I'd noted it, but never knew why they were like that. Now I do. I'd recommend this book to anyone who's interested in books, publishing, and the history of those things. I will warn you that the author does tend to get into his subject, digress a bit, and run away with his topic now and again, but I generally found this characteristic charming rather than annoying.
Rating: 2
Summary: Windy and boring
Comment: I'm as fascinated by history and technology as the next person, but this book seems to be an overstretched monogram, marked by redundancy and needless recitation. Properly edited, the story of the bookshelf would take far fewer pages. There is no reason to cite nine examples to prove that rows of lecterns with books chained to them were common c1600, for example. I'm willing to try other titles by this author--he is curious about interesting things and writes readably--but the subject matter here doesn't fill a book, in my opinion.
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Title: The Pencil : A History of Design and Circumstance by Henry Petroski ISBN: 0679734155 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 10 November, 1992 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design by Henry Petroski ISBN: 1400040507 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 16 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are by Henry Petroski ISBN: 0679740392 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Invention by Design; How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing by Henry Petroski ISBN: 0674463684 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Remaking the World : Adventures in Engineering by Henry Petroski ISBN: 0375700242 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 December, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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