{"id":849,"date":"2013-07-27T19:00:43","date_gmt":"2013-07-27T19:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/?p=849"},"modified":"2013-07-27T19:15:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-27T19:15:01","slug":"what-does-it-take-to-make-a-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/2013\/07\/what-does-it-take-to-make-a-book\/","title":{"rendered":"What does it take to make a book?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest post by Saira Haqqi<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have a confession to make.<\/p>\n

I judge books by their covers.<\/p>\n

To be more exact, I judge them based on how they are made.<\/p>\n

This probably seems inexplicable. Whereas books were originally luxury items, created for the enjoyment of a wealthy few, they are now so common that we hardly give their binding a second thought. After all, they\u2019re just churned out by machines, aren\u2019t they? Isn\u2019t their content more important, at the end of the day?<\/p>\n

And yet, we are all aware of books that have been profoundly unsatisfying to read. That obese textbook that lurched out of its covers within a few weeks, that ornate tome that refused to open far enough to allow one to actually read it, or that paperback that disintegrated into a pile of loose papers before it had been read once \u2013 we\u2019re all familiar with books that just didn\u2019t succeed as books.<\/p>\n

\"Do

Do books have this luxury? They do not.<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve had occasion to think about all of these things this year, since I am spending my summer binding books the old-fashioned way \u2013 by hand.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The best – and worst – thing about bookbinding is that it feeds into relentless perfectionism. A friend and mentor once warned me that when making a book, you have to get everything just right from the beginning or the book will be a complete flop. Her words were, unfortunately, quite true, and become positively intimidating when you think of all the steps involved in making a book.<\/p>\n

Since I\u2019m making blank books, I (thankfully) don\u2019t have to worry about printing anything. I start by cutting and folding large sheets of paper into what are called \u2018gatherings\u2019 \u2013 a group of pages folded together. These are pressed in a contraption called a \u201cbook press\u201d for several hours, if not overnight, to squish them as flat as possible. Then the gatherings are cut \u2013 one by one \u2013 more exactly to size using a \u201cboard shear\u201d \u2013 a lovely little machine that could easily slice off a finger, if not an entire hand. For the books I\u2019m making these days (twenty gatherings, eight pages per gathering) this takes about an hour and a half per book.<\/p>\n

\"Saira

One gathering – nineteen to go!<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Then, each of the gatherings is marked with a series of holes through the center fold, which are then used to sew the book together, a gathering at a time.<\/p>\n

\"As

As you can see, this is a very neat process.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then the pages can be trimmed again; the edges decorated with paint or gold; the spine left flat or rounded (a process that involves a hammer and muscles you did not know you had); covering material prepared (and therein lies a tale); hard-cover boards cut; innumerable things measured, re-measured, mis-measured, and re-measured again; and the whole thing put together, usually with an air of washing one\u2019s hands entirely of the wretched thing.<\/p>\n

\"Two

Two books awaiting covering. Only about a four hours of work to go!<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

To say that the affair is an exercise in frustration is putting it mildly. It\u2019s physically exhausting \u2013 I\u2019ve spent almost every day these past few weeks standing and applying some kind of pressure with my hands and arms. The whole thing involves innumerable pointy, dangerous tools that result in all kinds of fun scars to show one\u2019s friends, and results in a wonderfully expanded vocabulary of a type that unfortunately cannot be printed in these august pages due to the fear of ruining the innocence of young eyes.<\/p>\n

\"The

The closest I shall ever get to practicing medicine.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

And yet! There is a certain joy to creating something all by oneself that can be explained by any five-year-old who has had a drawing stuck up on the fridge. And there is a sense of accomplishment to mastering skills that, no matter how easy they may sound, take years of practice to accomplish successfully. Simply cutting paper can be difficult when you have to cut it to an exact dimension \u2013 not a millimeter more, not a millimeter less.<\/p>\n

\"It

It helps that sometimes the books look pretty, too.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

So the next time you go into a bookshop \u2013 or simply glance across your bookshelf \u2013 take a moment to think about the way in which the books have been made. Think about the miracle that brought them to you in this format \u2013 that history of people who, like me, poured their body and muscles into creating this object to further the spread of knowledge. And marvel that we ever got this far.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Saira is currently enrolled in the New York University graduate program in art conservation, where she is specializing in the conservation of library materials. You can follow her personal blog at sairarias.wordpress.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest post by Saira Haqqi   I have a confession to make. I judge books by their covers. To be more exact, I judge them based on how they are made. This probably seems inexplicable. Whereas books were originally luxury items, created for the enjoyment of a wealthy few, they are now so common that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":956,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions\/956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}