How many books do you own?

[Latimer]

Re Gatsby: this could be. Perhaps this is an episode from The Great Gatsby, which I haven't read in a very long time. If I remember correctly, the person who told me the Korda story read it in Korda's Merle Oberon biography, Queenie, which I've never read. In any case,
I've repeated the story to a few Hollywood screenwriter clients who actually read books and are suspicious of studio heads, and I've gotten some mileage out of it. I should check Gatsby. I could get mileage out of that story as well. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[belamyi]

http://musee.louvre.fr/oal/marquise_pompadour/img/test_loupe_1200.jpg


Yeah, I know: Voltaire's Henriade is totally "kenparkish"

 

[belamyi]

Re Gatsby: this could be. Perhaps this is an episode from The Great Gatsby, which I haven't read in a very long time. If I remember correctly, the person who told me the Korda story read it in Korda's Merle Oberon biography, Queenie, which I've never read. In any case,
I've repeated the story to a few Hollywood screenwriter clients who actually read books and are suspicious of studio heads, and I've gotten some mileage out of it. I should check Gatsby. I could get mileage out of that story as well. Thanks for the suggestion.

If I had a whole town&country-library to dress, I would fill it with the works of my personal canon, the academical commentaries of them, fancy or fetish editions like these two https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Bo...ppiani&sortby=1&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title2 , and then a good choice of encyclopaedias, scientific and technical textbooks and dictionnaries... in all the devil's tongues.

 

[Latimer]

^
Fascinating discussion of this very beautiful pastel, including the selection of books. Thanks for the introduction. I know Quentin de la Tour, but had never seen this work previously. The Los Angeles County Museum has a self-portrait of him, that I remember admiring as a boy. Very handsome.

http://musee.louvre.fr/oal/marquise_pompadour/marquise_pompadour_acc_en.html#seq_5

As a girl she was nicknamed Reinette.

 

[belamyi]

^ And I had never noticed the Frankenstein quality of that painting's surface: that line crossing it at the precise height of the head, and then the "halo" and ripping around it.

 

[Kulindahr]

True, books are available by the meter--or as I would put it, by the yard--and in a variety styles, these are just a few of the sources:

https://decorbooks.co.uk/

https://www.booksbythefoot.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9M6F0-T41wIVlDaBCh0EXwoiEAAYASAAEgKOC_D_BwE

I enjoy visiting houses and taking in what books the residents own, and attempting to understand their lives and interests based on what they collect and display. I am also happy to be in rooms where I know the books are simply for display, but which are part of a visually coherent whole.

Ah, memories....

I once went to a restaurant where the seating area was in wings that stretched out from the center. One wing was full of books, and that's where we got seated. After ordering, I started browsing titles, and tried to take one down only to discover that each one was held lightly in place by a drop of glue (explained as just enough to keep them on the shelves in an earthquake). When the waiter arrived with our meals, he was shocked to see me reading one of their books; he said he wasn't sure anyone had ever taken one off the shelves before.

I don't remember what the book was -- I remember the elegant cover and binding more! -- but it caught me strongly enough that I went back for dinner there a number of times to keep reading it.

 

[Kulindahr]

They used to use encyclopedias for this purpose here. Very interesting if you are held in such a house and are bored.

I was visiting a house once where I discovered that one huge wall held an encyclopedia of nothing but engineering. The books had come with the house and the owner had never cracked one open, but after my discovery and the interest from my two friends with me -- engineering students -- he made the room available to students interested in the resource. Quite the nice fellow to do that, and it ended up later with him becoming friends with an engineering professor who came one day with a student.

 

[Kulindahr]

Started young and quickly lost count.

As with men.

You own men?

Or do you just have binders full of them?

 

[belamyi]

The books had come with the house and the owner had never cracked one open

Something like that once happened to me at the Humanities library of the UAB: a volume of Saint Jerome's letters (Budé) was still untrimmed...

 

[Kulindahr]

Thinking of being surprised by a library, I saw one in northern California that belonged to a Dominican: every volume was an original source, no translations, and included Euclid, Aristophanes, Pliny....

 

[Kulindahr]

Something like that once happened to me at the Humanities library of the UAB: a volume of Saint Jerome's letters (Budé) was still untrimmed...

Once upon a time I would have loved access to such, but sadly I've let my Latin shrivel to uselessness.

 

[herry1]

Around 200.

 

[belamyi]

I was visiting a house once where I discovered that one huge wall held an encyclopedia of nothing but engineering. The books had come with the house and the owner had never cracked one open, but after my discovery and the interest from my two friends with me -- engineering students -- he made the room available to students interested in the resource. Quite the nice fellow to do that, and it ended up later with him becoming friends with an engineering professor who came one day with a student.

That may well be the future of the Western educational system: Cassiodorus library...

 

[belamyi]

Once upon a time I would have loved access to such, but sadly I've let my Latin shrivel to uselessness.

You are not missing much in Saint Jerome's Latin: Sanato vulneri et in cicatricem superductae cuti, si medicina colorem reddere voluerit, dum pulchritudinem corporis quaerit, plagam doloris instaurat. Ita et ego serus consolator, qui importune per biennium tacui, vereor ne nunc importunius loquar, et attrectans vulnus pectoris tui, quod tempore et ratione curatum est, commemoratione exulcerem. Quae enim aures tam durae, quae de silice excisa praecordia, et Hyreanarum tygrium lacte nutrita, possunt sine lacrymis Paulinae tuae audire nomen? Quis parturientem rosam et papyllatum corymbum, antequam in calathum fundatur orbis, et tota rubentium foliorum pandatur ambitio [al. ambitione], immature demessum aequis oculis marcescere videat? Fractum est pretiosissimum margaritum. Virens smaragdi gemma contrita est. Quid boni habeat sanitas, languor ostendit. Plus sensimus quod habuimus, postquam habere desivimus.

 

[thewiz]

Last year I got rid of three bookcases worth of books. And today I just bought four more! (Books, not bookcases!)

 

[Kulindahr]

You are not missing much in Saint Jerome's Latin: Sanato vulneri et in cicatricem superductae cuti, si medicina colorem reddere voluerit, dum pulchritudinem corporis quaerit, plagam doloris instaurat. Ita et ego serus consolator, qui importune per biennium tacui, vereor ne nunc importunius loquar, et attrectans vulnus pectoris tui, quod tempore et ratione curatum est, commemoratione exulcerem. Quae enim aures tam durae, quae de silice excisa praecordia, et Hyreanarum tygrium lacte nutrita, possunt sine lacrymis Paulinae tuae audire nomen? Quis parturientem rosam et papyllatum corymbum, antequam in calathum fundatur orbis, et tota rubentium foliorum pandatur ambitio [al. ambitione], immature demessum aequis oculis marcescere videat? Fractum est pretiosissimum margaritum. Virens smaragdi gemma contrita est. Quid boni habeat sanitas, languor ostendit. Plus sensimus quod habuimus, postquam habere desivimus.

I suppose.

The most fun I ever had with Latin was reading Augustine; the second most was Jerome's Vulgate, but that had a lot more to do with his philosophy of translation than with the text itself (one example that stuck with me: if he couldn't find just one Latin word to render a Greek word, he had no compunction at all about using two or three).

 

[Kulindahr]

Last year I got rid of three bookcases worth of books. And today I just bought four more! (Books, not bookcases!)

Wow. Last year I got rid of maybe four feet of shelf space worth of books, the same the previous year and on track to match it this year.

Some I'm replacing with e-book versions, but I am constantly frustrated at the ridiculous pricing for e-books. I've read the screeds from publishers defending charging the same (or more!) for an e-book as for a printed one, and they just don't match up to the fact that for e-books they need no warehousing, no paper, no ink, no shipping costs... the analysis that convinced me most concluded that e-books should be priced at between a quarter and a third of what the printed versions would be -- and that only if publishers would make sure the e-versions were as well edited and proofread.

 

[belamyi]

^ Only four feet? I got rid of more than three times that since last summer... and I started months before that. But it's true that many of the volumes were big butch dictionnaries, reference and technical textbooks.

Couldn't you just do with free pdf/epub/whatever versions available online, that you could read on any electronic device?

 

[Latimer]

I once went to a restaurant where...

...I sat next to shelves of books and one of them caught my eye: Letters of the Empress Frederick, edited by The Right Honorable Sir Frederick Ponsonby, G.C.B., G.C.V.O, published in 1930. (Victoria was the first born and favorite child of Queen Victoria. She was married to the notably liberal German Emperor Frederick III, who reigned for only 99 days, succeeded by their more famous son, William II, who was contemptuous of them both. Had Frederick not died young--of throat cancer--WWI would never have taken place. Ponsonby was secretary to both Victoria and her son, Edward VII.) I opened up the volume, and began to read the introduction in which Ponsonby recounts how he was with the Empress before her death, and how she asked him to take her letters back with him to England. His account of how he smuggled the letters out of Friedrichshof, the castle where she had been exiled by her son, is the stuff of cloak and dagger novels. I didn't have the time to finish the introductory tale while in the restaurant, so I asked the manager if I could have the book to take home, telling him I'd return it later. He laughed, told me no one had ever noticed it before, and that no one would ever miss it, and said he hoped I continued to enjoy the book. Which I did.

Appropriately, this was in 2014.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Ponsonby,_1st_Baron_Sysonby

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria,_Princess_Royal

 

[Latimer]

The most fun I ever had with Latin was reading Augustine; the second most was Jerome's Vulgate, but that had a lot more to do with his philosophy of translation than with the text itself (one example that stuck with me: if he couldn't find just one Latin word to render a Greek word, he had no compunction at all about using two or three).

Some weeks ago I attended a panel discussion by art historians at the Getty Museum on the museum's current show of Bellini landscapes. One of the pictures shown and commented on was that of Saint Jerome. During the Q & A afterwards, the panelists were asked about the significance of Jerome. All they could come up with was that he was a hermit and lived in the desert. Appalling and disheartening that that was all they had to say, which was no more than a description of what was depicted in the painting.

I am grateful for my Catholic education.

http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/bellini/index.html