What's the oldest book you own?
>>25081738I have an olde edition of Shakespeare
>>25081739*old
>>25081738Some books made in soviet times
>>25081738le petit princeand I think thee is some pollyanna somewhere but could be lost.
>>25081738I have a French edition of Pascal's 'Pensées' from 1882.
It's an english anthology of boys stories from 1936. Stories about english and american men of high character dealing with opium-smoking chinamen and savage tribals. One of the stories is Winston Churchill's escape from a Boer prison during that war. Not very literary and not very old, but it's the oldest I have..
I got a finnish translation of Kuprin's Olesja from 1946.
>>25081738my grammaw's family bible is 19th century and I've got a few hymnals and such as well, books of common prayer from the anglican tradition, from the 19th century as well.
I recently bought this octavo biography of napoleon ‘with introduction by dr channing’ from 1840 at a pawnshop for about four dollars. whoever first owned it seemed to have written something lengthy on the first page, but now it’s just a splatter of stains. should have used ink.
>>25081738a sci-fi books from the 60s I think
Got The New Heloise from 1762 I think (too lazy to check). Got it for 70 bucks.
>>250817381608, Plutarch
>>250817381898 origin of species
>>25081738the original OZ series complete published and my mom let the basement flood and they're all moldy. so I guess stranger in a strange land from the 60s?
>>25081738I have a tattered and falling apart first edition of Twain's "Roughing It." Really need to get it restored because in its present state, I fear I might damage it by just trying to read it.
Old Shakespeare collection from 1930Runner up is Water Margin at 1950
>>25083147I'm trolling, it's The Innocents Abroad. 1869.
>>25083167?
>>25085047Different book.
one that i bought 2 years ago
I don't own nor read any book
>>25081738My Great Great Grandfather's Bible which has his name written in the front. From 1912. I'd like to find myself some older books to add to my library but most things I actually would want to read are incredibly expensive antique collectors items.
>>25082862Did you read it?
>>25081738A 3 volume set of The Human Comedy from 1893, though I have no idea if its a reprint or not. If its a reprint then the set of Harvard's 5 foot shelf of books I have from the years 1909-1911 would constitute as my oldest.
The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms by Newton published in 1728, well it's a part of the family home rather than mine specifically I'd say. I haven't read it, because it's historical non fiction which I guess is not all that accurate at this point, but it ought to be worth taking a closer look. I was shocked when I first picked it out, because I don't believe we have anything else that is nearly that old, maybe my great great grandfather brought it from England or bought it in a shop somewhere. And its also somewhat random to me that Newton wrote a work of history, but to be fair I don't know all that much about the man.
>>25081738I have several books from mid to late 19th century.
>>25085396No and I won't. Reading old books doesn't make any sense, it's pointless, of decorative value. I just trade them as a supplementary source of income to finance purchases I intend to read.
>>25085642soulless
>>25081738Treasure Island, from 1930.
>>25085376Crazy my grandfather and your great great were nearly the same age
>>25086233There's no point in reading such old books. The text is most likely awful and any translation unfaithful.
the soviet war machine encyclopedia from 1977, got it at an antique store for 5 bucks
>>25086306It's the closest thing to a machine. Both you and a random fella from the 17th century are reading the exact same book, the same way.
>>25081738An original edition of Valery's slender book about Leonardo. Two decades ago I checked it out from a big municipal library, then "lost" it, at the cost of a mere $6.50 fine. A decade before that I "lost" The Complete Works Of Marcel Duchamp (a very nutty, heavy, and not particularly illuminating volume from the mid'70s) in exchange for a $100 fine, and "found" it for a full refund a couple years later after I was tired of it. The same thing goes for about 1K now, a rate of return comparable to average real-estate, if far short of index funds, in the long term. Not that I collect anything for profit. Sometimes I wish I'd kept rather a lot more glossy and/or niche magazines from the their 1980-2000 halcyon years of lavish production values. For instance certain issues of Omni with powdered aluminum graphic swaths, the odd issue issue of Taxi, XLR8TR, Wallpaper, World Art, Aboriginal Science Fiction, a few Vogue issues from the time Christian Lacroix was putting together gowns that compared, sometimes favorably, to the Ancien Regime sort.
>>25086273What is this... a book for ants?
>>25086350Why would you wish to read the same book as an overfed bourgeois in the seventeenth century? When I read Homer or Plutarch, I want what Homer and Plutarch actually wrote, not a corrupt and fragmentary text, clumsily translated from a medieval Latin version with an approximate knowledge of the language and the original period.Truth is, nobody is reading these books. 90% of the market revolves around authors that exist in a modern critical edition of higher quality, and I don't think I have ever bought a book that has been read cover to cover in this century. This is true of Cicero, true of medieval authors, and true of modern authors. Don't fall prey to the foolish notion an older book is getting you closer to the original text.
>>25086360No this is
>>25086380I never said it'd get you closer to the original text, you certainly will get closer to it by reading a recent edition.I just find it more interesting to see Plutarch or Homer filtered through the mind of a person living three or four hundred years ago than through the lens of American McGree: contemporary translator.Of course a good modern translation brings you closer to the ancient author’s perspective, but it’s still mediated by the translator’s choices. Unless you read the original language yourself, there’s always going to be some kind of filter.But I read 18th century books, not 17th century ones (yet, I assume). I'll always choose to read Dacier's French translation of Homer because I find it more fun. That is all. I think there's some real microhistorical value to things like this.
>>25086352*This is not to mention the stamp collection book my father (may he rest in peace) maintained and added to from 1937 to 1978. Even in the late 30s, Brit stamps for their tropical island holdings, from around the 1910s or so were easy to obtain. and evidently produced more for the trade than for practical use, and most of them are beautifully designed and manufactured, in paper & inks the bright colors of which were intended to last. Big scenic stamps, with more or less cinematic aspect ratios, were a thing in the 70s, and some of those also sustain a longer look.
>>25086416I doubt it does. Contemporary influences are but minimal. A translation, even one far removed from its source and executed on a necessarily obsolete state of the text, cannot turn into a manual of social history and aside from a pretty piece of literature, there isn't much to take there. A contemporary translator, even though he takes a position, is banned from going into the kind of aberration that prevailed until the beginning of the previous century (which in France culminates in atrocities such as Leconte de Lisle's Homer). Needless to say, our very knowledge of the text has advanced as well. The vast majority of Bacchylides was still unknown to us before the work of Blass on papyri, and Jebb's translation of 1905.The irony is that Dacier, like Simon de Colines and Jacques Amyot, aligned herself with this very ideal of accuracy and distanced herself from the belles infidèles that infested French society in the eighteenth century, which you are very likely to encounter when opening a book (see her preface to the 1741 edition, I and XXXIX–XL). If Dacier were among us today, she would urge you to read Mazon/Bérard. Since you evidently speak French, I would rather refer you to an article by Claude Robert, who set out the terms of the debate more systematically than I do in the revue des études slaves (www.persee.fr/doc/slave_0080-2557_1983_num_55_1_5309).
>>25085477>The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms by Newton published in 1728What a treasure.>not all that accurate at this pointIt never was, it was kind of crankish.>And its also somewhat random to me that Newton wrote a work of history, but to be fair I don't know all that much about the man.Newton was a massive polymath, although his work in mathematics, physics, and optics are what made his fame, he had many many fields of study, including alchemy.You should read up on the context and read a digital copy of Chronology. You are incredibly lucky to have a copy of it in the family.
>>25086450I see what you mean but I actually gotta go soon so I'll be quick. Reading a book from the time, held by the people of the time, with the language of the time, which shaped the mindset of the time is vastly different from reading the most faithful of all translations that is still bound to the language of its time.>If Dacier were among us today, she would urge you to read Mazon/BérardAnd I'd answer her that I find it more fun to read what the people the translation the people of her time read, as opposed to Mazon/Bérard which her contemporaries had no knowledge of.It's obvious that modern translations are more faithful, but you cannot get into an 18th century aristocrat's head by limiting yourself to them. It's just what I personally find fun to do. Will read your article when I get back
>>25086501>It's just what I personally find fun to do.Impossibly based.
1899, a copy of Lives
>>25085376Could you show me the tin/box on the right, anon? It looks appealing to me
