Our personal favorite is the "Foreign Language Antique Leather" collection. It's cheaper than the "top shelf" leather books because it's "the same beautiful antique leather books as above with books mostly in French, Spanish, and German."
Perfect for the stingy polyglot?
Get ready to repeat the following: "No, I don't speak French, those were my great-great grandmothers. Or something."
Some of the collections do seem kinda neat, however. We love books.
Books By The Foot [BuzzFeed]
]]>Oh, I do miss Strand...I'm in TX now & there's a used bookstore chain called "1/2Price Books" and they sell BBY ('books by the yard').
They're sold mostly for decoration: architects, photographers, corporate housing, hotels - that kinda thing. Lotsa old encyclopedia sets (or 'encyclopaedia' for you Britannica folks.)
BTW if you're ever down in TX, I can highly recommend 1/2Price Books. The selection is large, eclectic, changes constantly and the staff is always great.
]]>Jay Gatsbys, in other words. Without the charm or mystery.
Just... Sad.
]]>Reading books is great, but there are a lot of things that get used for their aesthetics. I really doubt all those people who wear sports jerseys play baseball or football or basketball, etc. Some of them do, I'm sure.
Not everybody who wears tennis shoes plays tennis, either.
]]>These books are aesthetically pleasing, but from what little I know "smartness" does not hop down from a bookshelf to greet you just because you bought a pretty book.
]]>I have a matched set of beat up clive cussler novels- does that make me pretentious or stupid (or both?)
@Rajio: Are you kidding? If they sold them by the meter, they'd cost like 3.28 times more!
]]>So...whos buying a tote bag!? I know I am.
]]>I always buy leather bound books of classics but am too afraid to damage them so i buy a cheap second hand paper back to actually read and land to my friends. Plus the musty smell of old paperbacks is kinda nice.
]]>My bookcases are filled with ancient volumes picked up from the Goodwill for 50 cents. Brattle Bookstore in Boston would sometimes ship useless books over there before people caught on. When times are tight I sometimes pull out a volume or set and sell them on Ebay.
]]>The sad thing is you can go to a yard sale or cheap books sections and buy this many books, hand selected by books you like, that costs a lot less. Unless you are picky about the titles you show...
]]>Another set of buyers for these books are real estate people who are staging places for sale. They want the bookshelve to look like a library they see on TV, not like a real world bookshelf with a mix of paperbacks and magazines and ratty well-read books.
]]>If you do this at the Strand you just might get some books that used to be in what is now my kid's room. The Strand buys used books, and when cleaning out the room two years ago to get ready for the new baby I collected six boxes of books that I sold to the Strand for $400.
Just last week I was in a bar on the Upper West Side that had lots of bookshelves and I said to myself that all the books looked liked they came from the Strand's by-the-foot service. Nobody was reading them, they were just for decoration.
]]>i'd think of an assembled library as a challenge to myself to actually read them and be exposed to material i might not find on my own. not a ron burgundy device.
]]>This practice seems excessively narcissistic to me...and unwise. Think about it: you're adding kindling to your house without any functional benefit. You know, I think I'm going to start keeping jars of petrol on my selves...for the decorative enhancement.
]]>I guess they made his pad look "distinguished" but knowing where they came from I always thought it made him look like a douche.
]]>This might be perfect!
]]>@BayStateDarren: I read 10,000+ pages a year and if someone asked me "What'd you think of the characterization?" I'd probably still respond with "Uhh.." But then I was always prone to getting in fights with my lit teachers for not tearing apart a good book looking for extra symbolism. Sometime a tree is just a tree.
But while I'll buy the bag of books for a dollar at the last day of the library book sale. I can't see buying books by the foot if I don't get to pick the books.
What I got from all of this is that now I need a Strand en español tote bag.
]]>One of the simple pleasures of visiting friends is casually seeing which books they have stacked about. Tells me much more of who they are than hours of psychotherapy. And vice-versa, I'm sure. And often a nice springboard to the start of interesting conversations. Stealing someone else's taste negates that.
Well, that and which meds are in their medicine cabinet. But I digress.
]]>@Rectilinear Propagation: Used to be, when books were published, the pages would be printed on a large sheet which would then be folded into quarters or eighths and bound with the folds still intact. A little paper knife was an essential accessory for cutting the pages of a new book apart. Hence, someone with a library full of uncut books can't possibly have read any of them.
]]>I'd never thought about it before, but apparently books didn't always come with those additional folds trimmed off.
I guess most publishers print just two pages per sheet now, and if they don't they certainly must have mechanical trimmers to get the uniform edges on every page. I know that I do occasionally get a new book with two pages incompletely sliced apart.
]]>Goodwill outlets sell books very cheap. That's correct Goodwill has outlet stores for all the crap that doesn't sell at the regular stores.
As an example here is book pricing for Goodwill in Indianapolis, IN- other areas/cities pricing may vary:
Books and media:
Hardback Books - 50 cents each
Paperback Books - 25 cents each
Coloring Books, Magazines, Comics, Wall Calendars - 25 cents each
Records - 50 cents each
8-Tracks, Videotapes, CDs - $1 each
DVDs - $2 each
(clothing/other stuff is sold by the pound since this is how they salvage sale bales of clothing, etc)
Just remember to wear gloves, bring drinking water, and plan enough time to plow through large pallet sized tubs of books by throwing books from one to another tub.
My spouse and I managed to profit nicely by picking the right books, cleaning the price tags off them, and flipping the books to a large used bookstore for credit. Easily turn $10 in books into $25 to $40 if you work it right...
]]>unless this is for movie sets, it just goes against the entire point of collecting - which is the hunt. dumb, dumb, dumb... but a brilliant business idea!
]]>Truly a case of casting pearls before swine. Go to Project Gutenberg and read the books for free.
The only people who would be impressed by someone having such books would expect a person to have read them. Anyone dumb enough to buy into this couldn't spell poseur, let alone pronounce it.
"I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany. "
Just sad. JUST SAD!
]]>@ColdNorth: Why would you cut up a book you were reading?
]]>The workbooks that came with the readers were very colorful and fun to use, and you'd tear out the sheets to turn them in. Nowadays, it seems that kids just get black and white photocopies of worksheets.
I wonder if anybody else remembers the series: Bears, Balloons, Boats, Sunshine, Rainbows, Weavers, Moonbeams, etc... I guess you can tell these books were probably made in the 70's.
]]>Also, timsgm1418: Sometimes it's just aesthetics. When you have a nice bookcase in the living room, it looks nicer if it's full and not just a mismatched collection of paperbacks. Or, for those of us who make frequent use of our library cards and paperback swaps, it's a nice alternative to a bunch of empty shelves.
]]>"Oh! I see you read XYZ book! I love that book! What'd you think of the characterization?"
"Umm...errr..."
]]>"I just love books... they're so decorative!"
--Gloria Upson
I have a whole room of these books. Remember it's not what you know it's what people think you know.
]]>Yes, books are for reading, but I can also see how some people would want some nice looking, color-coordinated books as a decoration.
Frankly, my bookshelf is a hideous mix of color, shape and size. I wish the books I actually read looked nice.
]]>Leather Looking B
$60.00 per foot
Oversized and medium-sized hardcover books in decorative faux-leather bindings. Some books are gently used and represent a variety of subjects, including encyclopedias and law books.
]]>I guarantee you that they've sold more stylish totebags for 20-something girls to carry on the subway than actual books.
If you must see the totebags, which aren't half bad, they're here: [www.strandbooks.com]
]]>I think they assemble a collection of books for you and simply charge by the foot.
]]>this just seems silly...If I'm not going to read it, I don't buy it, I certainly wouldn't buy "classics" just to look smarter. I have no problem with people seeing that I've read The Stand, This Perfect Day, Cheaper By the Dozen, and Tom Sawyer. I like a variety of books, and my bookshelves show that.
]]>I always thought it was kind of neat that one could tell if a person was a book phony by that simple test. Alas, perfect bound books put an end to that test...
Until now!
I can't wait to go into someone's house and find one of these little beauties on the bookshelf.
It seems like $400 per linear foot is considerably more expensive than actually purchasing an equivalent amount of real, hard-cover books. I guess this is another example of the wonderful phrase, "More money than brains."
God bless America.
]]>I read an article about this service; it sounds like an awesome place to work. I believe a lot of their business is for movie sets and stuff.
]]>Im not shocked this business exist. I had a friend who used to steal the fake old-looking books from the displays in stores (like Dockers or that sort of thing).
Personally, I hit the super-cheap book outlets and buy the fake leather bound classics a couple at a time for a buck or two. Ive got a really nice bookshelf and Ive actually read most of them
]]>