This is my love letter to all bibliophiles and book collectors.
This is Pontus Presents: a channel dedicated to capture the beauty of the physical book. I'm exploring a variety of publishers including: The Folio Society, Taschen, The Everyman's Library and other small independent publishers.
Thank you for keeping the tradition of the true reading experience alive.
Best regards,
Pontus, bibliophile.
Пікірлер
I just bought this book today, I'm so excited for it to come! It'll be the fanciest book in my collection, and I can't wait to get it and re-read it!
Can someone tell me why these books are good to buy?
Love the music in this video and beautiful books! I left a comment on your Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind video. If you have the time, could you check it out?
Great video! I wanted to ask if your copy has < > in the English translations? I think mines is bootleg because the spine on both volumes only say VIZ at the bottom and looks different than stock photos and unboxing videos on YT. Every other person's copy has the Viz square logo. The copyright page is different also for me. The Viz Media logo on the copyright page is on the bottom-right and it's just words without the square around it. Could you help me out by checking page 197 of volume 1? That's one of the pages that have < > in the translations. I don't know if Viz changed the design. The one I have is the eleventh printing.
This may seem a bit odd, but I notice you reviewed the Folio Society Bhavada Gita about 6 years ago. If you still have it, would you be interested in selling it ?
Bro can you review penguin select classics? Those are cheap but i doubt the quality
wow , what a beautiful tome. Must add to my want list. Thanks for making use aware.
A while ago I tried sending you an e-mail about this sort of project/effort. I am not sure you received it. In any case, this is what the world needs.
THANK YOU FOR THE REVIEW AND IAM A NEW SUB!
CANT NWEVER GO WRONG WITH Taschen !!
Finally a fresh bookshelf with none of the tik tok popular books! Your books show your interests so unfiltered, I loved it.
Thanks for this video showing a beautiful overview of the graphic novels! So with the 3rd one coming out soon, do you think it will also get a deluxe collector's edition? I wanna get the first 2 but then for the 3rd one I only see pre-ordered for the regular copy.
I think translating Dao as "The Perennial Way" is not a good translation as it imposes a limitation as to what Dao could mean. Also, in Classical Chinese, Dao is neither singular nor plural, so the "Perennial Way" in my view could be misleading. Overall, this is a decent scholarly translation, but it helps to read it alongside other scholarly translations.
Very nice and analytical video!! Is the paperback still on sale? I can only find the hardcover
Is the hobbit and the art of the hobbit same ?
I want this so bad but people are trying to charge ridiculously stupid prices for it
what a beautiful book, so beautifully shown to us in this video. couldn't ask for a better way of showing the binding and quality of publication of this FS book. thanks so much for making the video.
The deluxe edition is not durable.
Just bought Dominion and Pandemonium from Folio yesterday.
Lovely video. I've wanted to read this book for a long time
beautiful, just arrived through my door
I just love this book. I read it 50 years ago and it made such an impact on my life. Your background music in this video was spot on. Good job presenting this great book. Thanks for making the video.
Michael Sugrue's intro lol!
Thank you so much for this. I was worried about the font size
I revisited this video after I made a secondary market purchase for Japanese Tales. I find myself buying old volumes. Their new stuff is so strange, Marvel and DC make amazing collected editions, so I can’t understand the comics they’re doing. I understand the need to do modern books to survive, but I miss the more careful selection of old titles.
Terrible volume you need a better spe😅aker
Book reviews would be really interesting as well as insights and stories from the books you’ve showcased or others you have read or are reading.
Your channel got me into Folio Society and I've since ordered several books from them. I even got their limited edition of Shakespeare, which I really love. It is such high quality. I'm also really enjoying the Neverending Story published by them and recently ordered the Divine Comedy.
Sad that its only in english i hope it comes out in german in the Future
A dilemma with buying books I haven't read before is knowing whether to go for a deluxe edition (if they're available) or not, when I don't know if I'll even like the book, and I have a policy of only buying/owning hard copies of books where I actually like the content, regardless of how pretty the binding is. Because I'm a reader, not a collector. I've heard good things about Book of the New Sun, but of course I won't know if I'll like it till I actually read it, so I'm torn about whether to buy the Folio Society edition or not.
This is the set I grew up with!
This was traumatic to watch as a booklover.😅
Do you have a favorite version of musashi?
I like Robert Jordan but his books are a little "over written" . IMO.
1:36 it's glued and not sewn?
maybe need a better way to flip through the books...appreciate it though as gave great insight into this wonderful book..thanks..
👍👍👍
Great showcase
I’m currently reading the Restored Edition. This is my first time reading Plath!
greetings from Indonesia!
My thoughts 😊 1. Most of the book publishing world is divided between the Big 4 - Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, MacMillan, and Hachette. Along with many smaller publishing houses. a. Hardbacks. For relatively affordable and good quality hardbacks with a large library of classics, my favorites are Everyman's Library and Modern Library, both of which, for better or worse, are owned by Penguin Random House. Of course, the Folio Society produces the very finest and most expensive hardback or cloth classics. b. Paperbacks. For the same in paperback, my favorite is the Penguin Classics Deluxe, but it currently has a small library. Around 100 to 150 titles at this point. I think it's the best in terms of aesthetics and quality for a paperback though. However, for even more affordable paperbacks, I'd pick the Penguin Classics series and the Oxford World's Classics series. I think both are generally better than other popular paperback series when it comes to the classics (e.g. Signet, Bantam). Oxford World's Classics is owned by Oxford University Press, one of the world's largest university publishing houses. 2. Regarding Penguin Classics vs. Oxford World's Classics (OWC). Here are several factors to consider in choosing between Penguin and OWC: a. Translation. If the book wasn't originally written in English, or at least in an English that's understandable to contemporary English readers (unlike, say, Beowulf or The Canterbury Tales), and if one can't read another language, then a good English translation is a necessity and indeed it can be utterly crucial in comprehension and enjoyment of a book, for some translations are better than others. Broadly speaking, a translation can err toward one of two extremes or sides. Either toward the side of being more formally faithful to the original text, which is often good for capturing the literality of the source language such as its word for word metaphors, but often at the cost of wooden or stilted or simply strange or puzzling or incomprehensible language. Or toward the other side of being more functionally faithful to the original text, which is often good for capturing the original meaning and subtleties and nuances in an idiomatic and even stylish fashion, but often at the cost of losing structural or syntactical significance. For example, consider the English phrase "to have a frog in your throat". This phrase makes perfect sense to a native English speaker. And it would be accurate to the English in a literalistic way to translate "frog" as "frog" in another language like French ("grenouille"). However, if it is translated as "frog" in French, it would not entirely make sense to a French only speaker. In French, one would instead say "chat" which is the French word for "cat" in your throat for the same meaning as frog in your throat in English. A translation would lose the literal English word "frog" by substituting it with "chat" or "cat" in French, but the translation would gain in meaning by making the phrase comprehensible to the French speaker. Of course, one can reverse languages too. In other words, if the English only speaker is puzzled why one has a cat in their throat, then the French only speaker would be just as puzzled as to why one has a frog in their throat! It cuts both ways. And it's almost always if not always a tug of war between which extreme or side a translation wishes to err toward - formal faithfulness or functional faithfulness. That is, accurate to the grammar and grammatical structures and so forth (form), but less idiomatic and comprehensible, and perhaps less clear and natural sounding and stylish as well; or idiomatic and comprehensible and readable and often even artistically stylish (function), but less accurate to the grammar and grammatical structures and so forth. It's almost always if not always impossible to capture both perfectly, for there's typically always something lost in translation; the translator is a traitor, as the Italians say ("traduttore, traditore"). Perhaps somewhere out there such a perfect translation for a work exists, but I'm unaware of it if so. Getting back to Penguin vs. OWC translations. I think the choice here is more or less equivocal. Sometimes Penguin has better translations (e.g. The Count of Monte Cristo translated by Robin Buss is better than David Coward's translation in OWC), while other times OWC has better translations (e.g. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea translated by William Butcher is better than Penguin's translation by David Coward). We have to evaluate a translation on a case by case basis since it depends on the specific book in question. b. Introductions. Both Penguin and OWC can have good or bad or average introductions. In general, an introduction can be done one of two ways. First, a more or less boilerplate kind of introduction or an introduction that follows a certain template that any literary scholar of the work can write (e.g. an introduction to a Sherlock Holmes book might start with a brief biography of the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, how he began to write, what made him famous as a writer, involve a history of Sherlock Holmes as a character in the context of detective or crime fiction, trace its influences as well as what it influenced in later novels, perhaps talk a bit about Sherlock pastiches, and so on, and end with a popular quote like "The game's afoot!"). These introductions are literally introductions which help introduce and situate a reader unfamiliar with the book to the book. It gives one a broad background to understand the book, but it's not deeply analytical. The second way to write an introduction is almost the opposite. An introduction that's a trailblazer. An introduction that breaks new ground and gives new insight into the book. If done well, the introduction itself can even become a work of literature that's widely known and widely cited. In this respect, the introduction doesn't provide much of a broad overview of the book, maybe just enough to move on, but it dives deep into literary criticism and analysis. c. Notes. Typically it's either footnotes or endnotes. Both Penguin and OWC have done both footnotes and endnotes, I believe, but Penguin usually tends to favor footnotes, while OWC usually tends to favor endnotes. I prefer footnotes, but others may differ. Both Penguin and OWC can have good, bad, or average notes in terms of content. It just depends on the specific book in question. Also, it's worth noting (no pun intended) that different scholars sometimes write different notes for the same book, depending on US or UK versions of the same book, for example. Sometimes this is also true for other factors like cover art. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe there are copyright, royalties, and/or other legal and financial concerns that publishers need to consider across continents. d. Supplementary material. I think this is where the differences between the two publishers really stand out. OWC usually seems to provide far more supplementary material than Penguin. Penguin might do so better than OWC in some of their books, but OWC is more consistent than Penguin in doing so for most of their books. I'm thinking of material like appendices and bibliographies and so forth. This is where OWC tends to shine brighter than Penguin. That said, sometimes I only want a minimalist edition. A bare bones book. Just give me the text and a few helpful notes and let me come to my conclusions via my own interpretations. In this case, the Penguin would be preferred. In fact, sometimes it may even be overwhelming to have additional material. Anyway, in the end, it depends on one's purposes in reading a book. What one wishes to get out of the book. e. Book quality. Factors like cover quality, paper quality, binding quality. I think the quality of each of these for most Penguin and OWC paperbacks is going to be more or less equivalent or comparable to one another. Both Penguin and OWC editions are meant to be affordable paperbacks that can be read a few times at most, then discarded. It's not like the cover of either Penguin or OWC is matte paper made of dense card, neither has French flaps let alone dust jackets, I'm not sure if the paper is even acid free in either, and (like most paperbacks) the binding will be glue-bound in both Penguin and OWC. That said, if I had to choose, it seems to me based purely on anecdotal evidence from my own experiences and friends and others that OWC is slightly better in terms of overall quality than Penguin. OWC paper feels better to touch than Penguin paper. As far as I know, both are glue-bound, yet the OWC binding seems to hold up better than the Penguin binding when opened. Probably the OWC would better bear more wear and tear such as repeated readings than the Penguin. But again, the difference here doesn't seem huge to me. Hopefully others who are far more knowledgeable and informed about book quality issues than I am can and will give scientifically objective details and specifics. To me, it seems close, with the edge to OWC if push came to shove, but it's probably negligible overall. (Continued...)
Love your content!
It seems like a lot more introductory material than should be necessary?
Yes, but not much of Epicurus' writings survived - if the introduction wasn't so long, it would be a very short book - which would have been fine I think, but I guess Penguin didn't want that
Thank you
You’re welcome! Hope the video was helpful 😄
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You should check out “The Upanishads” 4-Volume Set by Swami Nikhilananda. They’re beautiful!
Letter press aside, how does the quality compares with standard editions of Folio Society?
I have all current books in the series and they are fantastic. I hope we will see more. They are excellent quality, and affordable.
I think the best editions of The Hobbit are: the Folio Society Hobbit, the Alan Lee illustrated Hobbit (in this video), the Jemima Catlin illustrated Hobbit, and the original fascimile edition from the 1930s Hobbit. The Folio Society is by far the best in terms of quality but of course it's also the highest in terms of price, but my next favorite is this one in the video, the Alan Lee illustrated Hobbit. 😊