The Reading Room

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b_jonas

00:00

@Tsundoku And depends on whether photographing or photocopying the whole thing then throwing it out and cleaning the glass of the photocopier is acceptible or you want the physical book.

If you choose to photograph it, you can get that done professionally too.

As for professionals cleaning the book, there are museum specialists who fix old books and other artifacts. I don't think you can pay them, but they might give advice. If you want to pay someone, you can consider asking emlekmento.com for an offer.

@Merlin-they-them- ^

I should perhaps try to compose an answer.

8 hours later…

Bookworm

07:48

Q: Is Rabindranth Tagore talking about the actual wave nature of light here in Gitanjali?

The Nobel prize winning work Gitanjali by Rabdinranath Tagore quotes: Lilies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of light Is he referring to the actual electromagnetic wave nature of light? The mention of crest seems to suggest that he is, but given that Gitanjali was written in 191...

Rand al'Thor

@Bookworm Is this double-question too broad? I feel like it should be split into two questions (although I haven't read Animal Farm).

1 hour later…

Napoleon Wilson

09:04

Seems entirely independent, unawareness of the specific plot notwithstanding.

2 hours later…

Tsundoku

10:35

@b_jonas I think many professionals in this area work in big libraries, archives and museums. However, I don't think the question was about book scanning or digitisation. But if you have other tips for getting rid of mould, I hope you will post another answer.

Bookworm

11:34

Q: Was it usual for "society" to be written in capital letters?

In chapter 9 of The Just Men of Cordova by Edgar Wallace, the author was describing a young boxer constable and his work under his bad superior. The Earl of Verlond was a stickler for punctuality: a grim, bent old man, with a face that, so Society said, told eloquently the story of his life, his...

edgar-wallace

1 hour later…

b_jonas

12:40

@Tsundoku Both. The professionals who remove mold from old books also work in museums and libraries.

But at first you should find out how easy it is to get other copies of the book, and whether a good digitized version is already available. It might save some work.

Even if there's no digitized version available, sometimes there are newer editions, sometimes even fac simile copies. That happens with all the Jules Verne translations from the turn of the century.

There's a catch though: some books published in 1989 don't have the copyright protection of their content expired. And since books from back then are rather lax in listing publication date, illustrator, author, that kind of meta-information, often you can't even figure out anything about the copyright.

I personally wouldn't even consider cleaning the mold, I'd just either make a photocopy if the content is valuable enough.

Tsundoku

13:39

@b_jonas But "find digitised version of the book" is not really an answer to the question "How can I clean a book and remove mold / stains?", is it?

A digitised version is always good to have (e.g. for searchability, among other reasons), but not the same things as something you inherited.

b_jonas

14:09

@Tsundoku We don't know details about the book, so we can't tell what would be worth. I'm just guessing.

Napoleon Wilson

@Tsundoku Even disregarding that it's simply not the question at hand.

Showing alternatives to preservation is sure a nice idea and makes for good comments, or addenda to otherwise proper answers, but it's not really in the answerers' hand to convince the asker that their question isn't worth answering, even if it isn't.

1 hour later…

b_jonas

15:28

Yeah. So I didn't post an answer because I don't know enough about the actual answer.

2 hours later…

Prince North Læraðr

17:08

b_jonas

@PrinceNorthLæraðr You're a prince now?

Prince North Læraðr

@b_jonas Yup

It's a really, really, really long story

Faded Giant

17:28

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Do you need help with your money transfer out of Nigeria?

Prince North Læraðr

@FadedGiant Hehe

Bookworm

17:50

Q: Searching for a sci-fi short story

I remember reading a short story about three robots sent as ambassadors to (I think) Mars. It was an attempt by Earth to prevent a Martian invasion/ war. The robots arrived in a spaceship designed for them - no defence from lack of atmosphere etc, which confused the Martians. However, the Martian...

story-identification short-stories

Eddie Kal

@Bookworm This is a very very very good question.

To avoid ambiguity

Q: What is the message of Macbeth in terms of masculinity?

In class we talked about the inverse of gender roles in Macbeth. The only way for Lady Macbeth to gain power is through Macbeth using her rhetoric. But what about Macbeth? Do you think that the tragedy of Macbeth is the consequence of Macbeth being too sensitive to masculinity? What does Masculin...

william-shakespeare macbeth

Tsundoku

18:15

@b_jonas I don't know where the crown came from (long story, apparently), but I know where "prince" comes from.

@EddieKal For a moment I was wondering whether Macbeth was the Shakespeare play with the fewest female characters, but it has the three Weird Sisters, so probably not.

(That reminds me that Janáček's opera From the House of the Dead has only one female character. I once heard this opera at La Monnaie in Brussels; the almost exclusively male cast gives the opera a rather unusual auditory character.)

Bookworm

18:40

Q: Novel about a man who voluntarily has himself locked in another man's basement

I read a book about 15 years ago and I don't remember hardly any of the details at all. What I do remember of the plot is that a white man pays a black man a hefty sum of money in order to keep him caged in his basement for a specified amount of time (a month? a year?). Possibly motivated by some...

story-identification

Gareth Rees

19:13

@Tsundoku Also Hecate & Lady Macduff.

b_jonas

@Tsundoku And en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Pigmalione is about the smallest thing that is considered an opera, it has only two characters, one of whom only comes alive at the end. It also only happens to have one female character.

But en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Pasquale , which is one of the most popular operas of Donizetti, also only has five characters, of which only one female.

Bookworm

19:56

Q: What does "It is not meet" mean in "Idylls of the King"?

From Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur by Alfred Tennyson: To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere: 'It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus, Aidless, alone, and smitten through the helm— A little thing may harm a wounded man; Yet I thy hest will all perform at full, Watch what I see, ...