five questions from yhlee

[rushthatspeaks]

1. What is your favorite type of bookbinding?

I don't have a specific favorite, because different bindings are useful with such different materials and in such different contexts. I do, however, have a least favorite binding, which is the glued-together paperback. I realize they're meant to be cheap and disposable, but I grew up reading the ones my dad bought in his youth in the late nineteen-sixties and early seventies, and sometimes they just... casually drop one page from somewhere in the middle, while the rest of the block remains intact. Or split down the middle. Or the spine and both covers peel off and the page block clings together out of sheer inertia. And if all of that is avoided, well, the makers weren't paying much attention to the pH of the paper, let alone that of the glue, so the whole thing starts developing the color and crumbling tendencies of your average late-autumn leaf pile.

I still have six jillion of these because my father systematically went through and replaced his with better editions, and I took all the old ones. Every so often I want to sit down with one of them and some PVA, but it feels like a completely lost cause, you know? If I had a book press I could de-acidify, and then it might start to be worth it... I think glued-together paperbacks made today have at least a better pH balance overall, though I still suspect most of the ones I own haven't fallen apart merely because they haven't sat long enough.

I do appreciate it when commercial publishers do color-coordination on a book's headband and tailband; that tends to indicate that they've considered the small details in a way that means the whole thing will probably hold together well.


2. Who's your favorite visual artist?

Botticelli. No contest. The Madonna of the Magnificat is not just my favorite painting, but a strong contender for my favorite object in the world. Unfortunately, no duplication I have ever seen has captured anything at all of how good the painting is. There are a lot of good paintings out there that are irreproducible, but usually a facsimile gives you some idea of why the painting is good, whereas I have seen one-to-one micrometer-perfect repros of the Magnificat and it does not come through. The only explanation I have is that Botticelli painted angels from life, and they don't consent to show up in the reproductions.

I'm also very fond of the art of Judson Huss.


3. Do you have a ritual that you do before bedtime?

Nope, unless you count between forty minutes and three hours of repeating to myself that I should really shut the computer and go to bed as a ritual.


4. What's a food you crave right now?

The answer to this is always chocolate, unless it is red meat. Red meat means my iron levels are slipping. Chocolate seems to even out my hormones, and it's one of the few things that does, so I do eat a fair bit of it, but I have to be careful as it is possible to overdose.


5. What's your favorite flower?

Roses. I have strong feelings about roses: as dark a red as possible, and as strongly scented as possible. I'm all right with the classic shape, but the antique varieties with fifty jillion petals are also lovely. And I am agnostic on the question of climbing.

I like pink roses, white, and peach okay, but not yellow.

Sadly, rose and other heavy florals do horrific things on my skin. Some rose notes go to powder, some to metallic, and a couple just give the strong sense of something decaying nearby. It's not as bad as plumeria, which on me literally smells of spoiled tuna fish, but it's not wearable. I can wear jasmine and orange blossom all I want with great smell fidelity, but I don't want. The consistent struggle for florals that will work on my skin and not smell oversweet to me has mostly left me not wearing florals, honestly.


Comment if you want five questions.

Comments

[niqaeli]

I realize they're meant to be cheap and disposable, but I grew up reading the ones my dad bought in his youth in the late nineteen-sixties and early seventies, and sometimes they just... casually drop one page from somewhere in the middle, while the rest of the block remains intact. Or split down the middle. Or the spine and both covers peel off and the page block clings together out of sheer inertia.

Or, not nearly as infrequently as you'd like, combine all of these failure modes and fracture into eleventy different tiny page blocks (each with a page or two in the middle that has also fallen loose) and a cover that has dissociated entirely from the rest of the block, while the whole thing is attempting to dissolve into book dust. I also grew up reading paperbacks of my father's of that same 60s-70s vintage, and I fear those tendencies were not especially effectively ameliorated by his chosen method of remediation, scotch tape. The soft-cover magazines like Analog held up much better than the paperbacks, but I suspect they were printed on rather better paper and the glue was of better quality as well.

[rushthatspeaks]

Yeeeeeeep. My dad's collection of Boy's Life from the 1950s was still going strong last time I saw it, but I have multiple paperbacks from that era that are a collection of individual little chunks. And of course each of them separates further when you try to read it.

[yhlee]

I'll take five if you're willing.

And I feel your pain--I love the smell of roses, but roses, like almost every floral, go straight to talcum powder on me as a perfume note, and I hate the smell of talcum. I don't avoid floral notes in perfume because they're girly, I don't care about that (and God knows my taste in perfume is super-girly anyway); it's that they inevitably turn into a smell that I dislike.

[rushthatspeaks]

1. If you could push a button and instantly be fluent in a language, would you, or is the learning process part of the point?

2. Are you interested in learning other forms of painting at some point, or are watercolors The Thing?

3. Do you like bad jokes?

4. What's your favorite food from childhood?

5. What's your favorite kind of weather?

[rosefox]

I'm always game for five questions.

[rushthatspeaks]

1. What's the significance of your default DW icon? It looks very specific and very pretty, but is there more to it?

2. Listened to any good music lately?

3. Any tips for circadian rhythm adjustment?

4. What's your favorite color?

5. What's the most memorably bad food you've ever had?

[rosefox]

Answered!

[nineweaving]

Botticelli painted angels from life, and they don't consent to show up in the reproductions.

This.

Nine

[ursula]

I used to crave red meat, dark chocolate, or spinach/kale in grad school, sometimes, when I was leaning more vegetarian. I always assumed the chocolate was hitting the subconscious desire for iron somehow.

[rushthatspeaks]

I am pretty severely anemic for unknown reasons, so I suspect chocolate also hits that for me.

[ambyr]

I think on the whole I am less bothered by glued-together paperbacks--which at least wear their cheapness, so to speak, on their sleeve--than I am by perfect-bound hardbacks, which are concealing their sins under false cover.

Artificial deckle edges also frustrate me. They just feel so different from the deckle edges of genuinely old books--irregular at precisely even intervals in a way that produces a sort of uncanny valley effect.

[rushthatspeaks]

I agree with you very hard about artificial deckle edges, especially because they usually make it actually difficult to turn the pages of the book.

[landingtree]

I've been wondering about Botticelli ever since he turned up in the Thessaly books. The one in the Gardner museum didn't catch me the way I though he might, but even a copy of that Madonna (which I hadn't know the name of till I looked it up just now) had me staring at it a long while. The circle of hands does something even when the angels aren't there. I'd very much like to see it when they are.

[rushthatspeaks]

It's really worth it, there's a Botticelli room in the Uffizi but everyone is staring at the Birth of Venus or the Primavera-- which are also very nice, mind you-- and so they aren't directly in front of the Madonna of the Magnificat and you can usually stand there a good while before anyone really wants the space. The Botticelli room at the Uffizi is the single best room of paintings I know.

[hobbitbabe]

I'd like some questions!

[rushthatspeaks]

1. What's the picture in your default icon? It's pretty and I don't recognize it.

2. What's your favorite theatrical production of all those you've been involved with?

3. Heard any good music lately?

4. Least favorite color?

5. What's the book you've reread most often?

[(Anonymous)]

Hi rush! I came across your writing two days ago through your old lj blog. I was looking for a quote from 'Last Letters From Hav' to post on my blog, and was completly sucked into your review!

I found my way here and have been slowly leafing through. The Fox updates are the dearest notes I have ever read. I hope you make a binded book (not glued!) out of these to give them when they are older.

I like Botticelli too! Btw, wouldn't Madonna of the Magnificat make the best name for a cat? :P

#3 is very true, I'm sad to admit.

I am very glad to have found your writing, and dreamwidth, by extension, which is a whole underworld I never knew existed.

I also wanted to ask your permission to feature your Hav review on my blog? I am starting to build a little anthology of my favorite essays of the Internet, especially of those that are a few years old and 'held up' through time. I would love to have yours in it! I blog for fun and make zero money out of this. Obviously, your wording will not be touched, you will be named as author and your dreamwidth blog will be linked!

Let me know if you're interested!

(my url is www.therepvblicofletters.co)

[rushthatspeaks]

Sure, go ahead if you'd like!

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you! It's now up! I look forward to keep reading from you!