It’s done! I finished up Translating Scripture, exported the whole thing to PDF, and sent it to the author, who’ll take it to the press tomorrow morning on CD. It’s a great feeling to be done — I’ve been working on the book for the past few months, and these past two weeks have been intense. I guess I’d better start doing homework again…

Now that I’m done, it’s time to move to my next project: the Project Gutenberg eBooks. I’ve got to balance my time between this and Beyond, though. And yet I don’t think it’ll be much of a problem — these texts won’t be too hard to set. Eventually I want to set Middle English and Old English and Latin and Coptic texts (and texts in other languages, too), perhaps learner’s editions that people can print out and take notes on (wide margins, lots of space between lines, etc.). I’m even thinking that I may do a Bible someay, just because all the old printers did them.

But not quite yet. We moved the deadline to tomorrow morning so we could review the book (Translating Scripture) again and fix any remaining problems. As soon as we send it to press I’m sure the inevitable dread will set in — what if there’s some glaringly obvious error we missed? Oh well. You can only do so much.

As for my Project Gutenberg typesetting project, I think I’m going to call it Quire Press. (From Answers.com, a quire is “A collection of leaves of parchment or paper, folded one within the other, in a manuscript or book.”) I came up with a preliminary regular expression in vim to fix the lines (%s/\n\([A-Za-z]\)/\1/g) but it’s not quite perfect yet. (And besides, I want to do it in Perl.) Pride and Prejudice will be the first book I produce and Phantastes (George MacDonald) will be the second.

Today is pretty much the final day for Translating Scripture — we’re sending it to press on Monday. All the formatting is done, so we’re down to just last-minute changes. And I’m redoing the transliteration system, and I’ve got to find out how to make an authentic copyright page.

Other than that, I stopped by the library for twenty minutes earlier today and sat down in the reading room with a copy of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. The first chapter was okay, but it wasn’t until the second that I started getting hooked. I fully intended to stop after the second, in fact, but I just had to read the third. And unfortunately I had to leave it in the reading room for a future date, for I still have to finish Jane Eyre. There are too many good books to read! A Tale of Two Cities is sitting on my desk waiting to be read, along with War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov. Someday…

[tags]bookmaking, Edith Wharton, Age of Innocence, Jane Eyre, Tale of Two Cities, War and Peace, Brothers Karamazov[tags/]

Okay, I’m getting really excited about this classics project. I went on Project Gutenberg’s websites and found that they only have a little over 100 PDFs (118, I think), and all of the ones I looked at were…less than satisfactory. Most likely machine-generated, in fact. And while I can see why they’d want to do that (it’s fast and easy), it’s not beautiful, not by a long shot. Beauty has to be handcrafted.

So, the process will go something like this: take a PG text (I’m going to start with Pride & Prejudice), run it through Perl to prepare it for entering into InDesign, and then design it in InDesign. I’ll produce two editions of each book: one for onscreen viewing (pages in sequential order), and one for printing (I just discovered InBooklet, which will let me do the impositions so the pages get printed where they need to be). I thought about designing each book differently, and that’s still a possibility, but I think this’ll be more of a “Modern Library” kind of thing (all in a set). Time to come up with a name for this new virtual press… Oh, and these will be downloadable for free, of course. I don’t care about money at all. (Which is why I’ll be poor till the end of my days, of course, but at least I’ll be happy.)

As for selection of texts, like I said, I’ll start with Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. From there I think I’ll move to lesser known texts, however. My second book will be George MacDonald’s Phantastes, and I’ll probably continue on with some of his other books (The Princess and the Goblin, etc.). I’d also like to do some foreign-language editions — Old English, Coptic, Latin, stuff like that. But that will have to wait.

In my History of the Book class today, a riveting idea took hold of me: take Project Gutenberg texts (of classics) and make them into beautiful books with InDesign, and put them up for download as PDFs on my website. Why? It’s nice to have freely available versions of the classics that are beautiful as well (and could be printed out if one so desires), and it’s good practice for book design. The texts are out of copyright and the texts are set (i.e., I don’t have to edit them), so all I’ll have to do is design them (copyfitting and all that), and that doesn’t take nearly as much time. I can’t wait!

I don’t want to be too puritanical, but in the case of The Da Vinci Code (specifically starting in chapter 55), enough is enough. When I started running into things like, “The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God.” (page 231), “Nothing in Christianity is original. The pre-Christian God Mithras — called the Son of God and the Light of the World — was born on December 25, died, was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days.” (page 232), “Jesus’ establishment as ‘the Son of God’ was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea” (page 233), and “What I mean is that almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false” (page 235), I couldn’t stomach any more. Yes, I realize it’s “just fiction,” but in all honesty there are better books to read. I did entertain the thought of reading all the way through to the end, to see if it ended up going back on these statements later, but I don’t see that happening. It’s really not worth my time. As for the “just fiction” argument, Brown paints the story so well (weak pun intended ) that you want to believe it. I can see people actually believing almost everything in it, really. Complete suspension of disbelief. And in the midst of it (and my guess is that it continues on throughout the rest of the book), a dagger stealthily slips into the unsuspecting heart. I don’t know if Dan Brown was trying to tear down Christianity or was just trying to tell his tale, but regardless, it’s an attack against Christ (as the Son of God, which is who He was and is, not just a mere mortal) and that’s enough for me to put the book away forever.

No, not of The Da Vinci Code. (More on that in a second.) One more chapter of Translating Scripture and I’ll be done, except for fixing errors and stuff like that. It’s late, though, so I’ll have to write more later. G’night.

Another short update. I spent around eight hours working on Translating Scripture today and I think I’ll be able to finish it tomorrow, time willing. (I’ll have to take work off.) It’ll be nice to see it when it’s done, a real, printed book. This bookmaking thing is addicting.

Anyway, I did take a short break earlier this afternoon to start reading The Da Vinci Code. The library’s copies have been checked out every time I’ve looked, so I borrowed it from a neighbor. And though I sat down intending to read only a single chapter, suddenly I found myself an hour later having read through ten chapters without meaning to. (It’s those darn cliffhangers at the end of every chapter. ) Anyway, I’m finding it quite interesting, and all the mention of art is pretty cool. That’s all for now, because I want to get back to reading it…

Oh, one last thing: I also started reading Kenneth Davis’s Don’t Know Much About Geography, and after a chapter or two I realized that my favorite nonfiction genres are history (particularly biography) and geography. So I’ll be reading more of those in the future.

This’ll be short because it’s late. I took the day off from working on Translating Scripture because I needed a break and Monday I’ll be working on it pretty much all day. Mostly worked on getting caught up on e-mails (successfully, I’m proud to say ), the Plan of Salvations, and other stuff. I also spent a wonderful half-hour reading Jane Eyre — I’m almost halfway through it now. I need to find a big chunk of time where I can read uninterrupted and really get into it, because five pages here and ten minutes there is not enough. The book is amazing, though. Every page is quite well-written and lures you into the story. Mr. Rochester is starting to warm up to Jane (I’m just past the fire incident in his chamber and I’m stymied as to who did it — Grace Poole doesn’t seem like the type — or why). And please don’t tell me what happens in the comments.

Today certainly seems to be a day for posting, doesn’t it. I just got back from watching the new Pride & Prejudice, and I absolutely loved it. Very well done. The performances were excellent, especially Keira Knightley’s. And Mr. Darcy’s speech at the end — “You’ve bewitched me body and soul” — is just plain awesome. Oh, the screening was one from Britain (we watched it on campus) and so they didn’t kiss at the end, interestingly enough.

Anyway, I went with my roommate and his girlfriend, and while she loved it, he was…well, bored. I suppose I’m of a different make from most guys — while the masculinity is certainly there, I find that movies like these appeal to me far more than sports do. And yet it’s not a concession to a “feminine side” or any such nonsense. (Why must I always feel duty-bound to defend my manliness whenever I talk about Jane Austen movies? )

Watching the movie reminded me that my favorite stories are inevitably love stories. That’s what comes of being a romantic, I suppose. Perhaps I’ll try my hand at writing one or two — heaven knows I’ve crushed enough hearts and had my own shattered sufficiently to be qualified for the job. But now the evening grows late and my bedchamber beckons.