Hard covers and lack thereof

[Michel Ryckx]

French paperbacks usually have an extra firm & protective cover -take a 
Grasset edition, or the NRF books, which is much more rare (in my 
opinion) in UK or US paperbacks.  These books are usually printed also 
with an extra page indent so there is no need to fold them open 180 
degrees.  I've never seen a hardcover published by such a fantastic 
house like Editions de Minuit.  The one exception is the house Plon.

French cookbooks, no surprise (you keep these in the kitchen at hand, 
because these books suffer), are always hardcover editions. Non fiction 
books usually have a hardcover version - my copies of Braudel are all 
hardcover.

Have a very beautiful Marguerite Yourcenar hardcover edition of Mémoires 
d'Hadrien, published for some special occasion or so.
But a Pléiade book is like the bible: you are not supposed to read it, 
only to possess it and show it to your friends.

And last year's Goncourt, Trois jours chez ma mere, by Francois 
Weyergans, is really good - but that was not the subject.

Michel.



Paul Mackin schreef:
>
> On Sep 8, 2006, at 12:34 PM, pynchonoid wrote:
>
>> In case you haven't noticed, everything gets smaller
>> as we get older ;)
>
> However when you get REALLY old (or even slightly old) they can 
> sometimes reverse the process. My fixed right  eye is a friggin' miracle.
>
>>
>> I'll send you a magnifying glass if it will help you
>> with the Proust.
>
> Thanks but when I get the left eye done I'll be invincible.
>
>> It's a beautiful set of books and
>> represents some amazing scholarship. I hae the Proust
>> biography, by Jean-Yves Tadie, editor of the Pleiade
>> edition, in a nice big trade paperback with a font of
>> generous proportions.
>
>
>
> P.
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --- Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Sep 7, 2006, at 6:46 PM, pynchonoid wrote:
>>>
>>>> The French can make nice books, but I wonder if
>>> the
>>>> market for hard-bound books is restricted to a
>>>> smaller, book fancier/collector market segment. A
>>>> Parisian friend's father had books bound in
>>> leather
>>>> for his  library.  I've got Proust, Rabelais, and
>>> some
>>>> other authors in the Bibliotechque de la Pleiade
>>>> edition, expensive but well-made books always are,
>>> in
>>>> my experience.
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes the French make nice books, nice looking anyway,
>>> but why did they
>>> have to squeeze the Pleiade Proust (including the
>>> novel and all the
>>> collateral materials) into four midget-sized volumes
>>> in tiny print on
>>> onion-skin-thin paper. Much too hard to read even if
>>> your French is
>>> good. Mine is  exceedingly minimal but I couldn't
>>> resist owning the
>>> definitive edition.
>>>>
>>
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>
>
>



	

	
		
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