The Art of War, trans. by James Trapp (Amber Books)

[Gharial]

I was given this as a gift, and thought I'd quickly describe it and upload a few snaps so people could get a better feel for it than Amazon etc provides.

 

It uses traditional Chinese bookbinding techniques 'developed during the Ming dynasty', in which 'single sheets of paper are printed on one side only, and each sheet is folded in half, with the printed pages on the outside' (obviously LOL). 'The book block is then sandwiched between two boards and sewn together through punched holes close to the cut edges of the folded sheets'. The leading flip-through page edge is thus the folded edge, giving the pages a thick look and feel due to their doubled thickness. (I've made staple-bound photocopies of books in a similar way in my time!).

 

It's a parallel text with traditional Chinese on the left facing English translation on the right. There are 35 footnotes of varying length under the English, spread over the 96 pages, i.e. a footnote every few pages, and they concern things like weights and measures, historical figures (people), philosophy, and a few problems regarding matters of translation (and thus the one chosen).

 

I'd need to compare the translation to Cleary's say, but it doesn't look bad. In all it makes a nice gift.

[TheBigZaboon]

I think this type information processing is called a 'codex,' and was used by early Christians in preference to the previous technology, ie., writing on scrolls. There are discussions of it on Wikipedia. Most, if not all, of the surviving early Christian texts are pieces of some form of codex.

I hope this isn't considered off topic.

[Gharial]

I'm not sure, but I read on a related page (( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex >) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_bookbinding ) the following:

 

"Traditional Chinese bookbinding refers to the method of bookbinding that the Chinese (as well as Koreans, Japanese, and Vietnamese) have used before converting to the modern codex form."

[TheBigZaboon]

I based my remarks on an article I read somewhere (maybe the New York Times) last week about fragments of early Christian scriptures being sold on the Internet by private collectors. I certainly have no credentials to argue the merits of how 'modern' codex technology is.

A major point of the article was that early Christian preferences for using the new-fangled codex helped overcome the prevailing use of scrolls as Christianity gradually took over the Roman empire. It claimed the complete lack of any surviving fragments of Christian scripture on scroll-based technology was proof of the pudding. I would have thought this was 1000 years or so before the appearance of the Ming, but I have to concede and surrender to the superiority of Wikipedia on this.

I will do my homework better in the future, and certainly stop believing anything I read in the New York Times.

[Gharial]

You mean you trust Wikipedia? :0 ;)

[TheBigZaboon]

Between the New York Times an Wikipedia???

It's a toss-up...

[Shelley]

I think it looks very nice, but it looks like a halfway house between modern book binding and something that is supposed to look older. It looks like it has a proper hardback style binding with some holes punched into it and string threaded through to give the appearance of an old style of book.

 

I have a book from 1976, not that old but still done in the way I think your book is trying to emulate.

 

Here are some pictures of it.

 

The first picture shows the binding edge, the second shows the edge of the pages with the printing flowing over the pages and the last one shows the open book with the text going over the edge of the page.

 

The pages are uncut and I think if you were to cut the string   you would get a long piece of paper that was folded like a fan.

 

i think its a really interesting way to print books.

[Gharial]

The book definitely doesn't have much glue or any stitching down its spine, and there isn't a hard panel at all there (other than the thin bit of printed card with the title, author and publisher down it, which helps make the spine edge more presentable, as you can see in the second photo. That card extends onto and is glued against the inside of the hard boards, forming the red surfaces [half-only endpapers?] you can see in photo 3), so I'd hesitate to call it proper hardback-style binding.

[Shelley]

Oh ok, it is hard to tell from pictures, it is a very good looking book and a very nice gift.

[Gharial]

It's yours for a tenner, Shelley (which I'll put towards a better mobile~camera. 3MP with no autofocus just ain't cutting it! ).

[Shelley]

Hehe, that's ok, maybe put a better camera on your Xmas wish list