Given the sad loss of great sports-related weekly columnists from the recent past, like Peter King, Dr. Z, and even Bill Simmons, who, though still alive and well, is more a media mogul than a writer now, the best column currently running is Screencaps on Outkick, which is amusingly eclectic and keeps regular tabs on everything from bikinis to books. I responded to Joe’s recent call for library pictures, which will look familiar to most Darkstream viewers, and he featured it along with one of Castalia Library’s upcoming books.
You just never know who’s reading Screencaps
— Vox writes:
If it doesn’t have leather books, is it even a proper library?
The non-leather books include complete sets of The Cambridge Medieval History series, 1911 edition, and The Cambridge Ancient History series 1928 edition. There is also a set of the original Dispatches and Letters of Lord Nelson, published in 1845, and one of the 300 original copies of The Bibliography of Military Books up to 1612 published in 1900.
I run one of the world’s only leather book binderies, so we buy a lot of rare books in order to make perfect high-end reproductions of them, like the first edition of Pride and Prejudice and the first complete English
translation of The Tale of Genji. We do high-end books in cowhide and pigskin, and even higher-end ones in goatskin with real gold. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll send you one. I’ve also included a
picture of the book we’re currently binding, part of a two-volume set for Cambridge University Press.
Speaking of the bindery, we hope to have some excellent news for everyone very soon, although unfortunately, it appears that we have become even more exclusive than we were last week when that note was sent, as the world’s number of leather book binderies just shrank by one with the closure of Maltby’s Bookbinders and the Green Street Bindery, an Oxford-based bindery originally established in 1834.
Tomorrow we’ll be announcing the new books for Library, History, and Cathedra. It also appears as many as FIVE books will be bound this month, but we’ll provide more details on that when I have confirmation.