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!

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.

I’ve been spending every spare moment working on the book, and we’re getting even closer. It’s a good feeling. I did go to see The Boxcar Children tonight, however, and it was a nice warm fuzzies sort of play. Other than that, I haven’t done much reading these past couple of days. Soon, though — soon. Oh, today at the bookstore I gave in to the temptation to get a Chinese Book of Mormon, and I ended up getting the simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean editions as well. I was going to get the Chinese hymnbook and German hymnbooks too, but I’m glad to say I had at least a tiny bit of self-control, even if it wasn’t enough to stop me from buying the other books. (Someday I need to write about my lack of ability to save money and how I almost always end up spending everything on books instead… It’s more than just a hole in my pocket — my wallet is the hole!)

I’ve done most of the chapters (all but two) and have started on the appendices. You can actually see a PDF of Chapter Two online at TranslatingScripture.com. My goal is to finish it by the end of the week (or at least as much as I can).

Because of it, I haven’t been reading very much lately. I did pick up Jane Eyre again and read a few wonderful pages. It was the part where Mr. Rochester examines Jane’s paintings, and as I read the passage I found myself wanting to paint.

I’ve worked on the book every spare moment today and edited all the chapters, but I was only able to format one of them (in InDesign). Although I thought I’d have most of the day to work on the book, I’d forgotten about the Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting (two hours) and ended up getting together with some of my extended family (two and a half hours). But that’s okay. The other chapters are much shorter than this one (five or six pages compared to 37 pages) and won’t take long.

So I’ve decided that tomorrow’s going to be my marathon day for finishing most of the Translating Scripture layouts. When I get done there’ll be only two chapters and one or two appendices left. We’re getting close. I started using OmniOutliner tonight to keep track of which chapters I’ve edited, which I’ve sent back, which I’ve gone through one last time, and which I’ve copyfitted. It’s a good system. Anyway, we’ll have a sample chapter up on the website (TranslatingScripture.com) pretty soon, and I’ll link to it when it’s up.

Today in my History of the Book class we made paper. A local guy, Rob Buchart, runs his own fine-book press and makes the paper and so he showed us how it’s done. He took the fibers (shredded rags beaten to a pulp, basically) and stirred them into a vat of cold water, then took a mold (a rectangular wooden frame with horizontal and vertical metal lines to provide structure) and put the deckle (an empty wooden frame) on top of it. Dipping it into the vat and pulling it back out again, he gently shook it in a few directions to help the pulp settle on the mold and drain it. Off to the side he had some felt rectangles, and he took one, sprayed it with some water to dampen it, removed the deckle from the mold, and then pressed the mold onto the felt in a rolling motion to release the paper onto the felt. And then he covered it with another piece of felt to let it dry. We all got to do it, and on Thursday the professor will bring our paper to class. Mmm. Someday, when I have a more permanent residence, I want to start a printing press in my garage and make my own paper and everything else (or at least as much as possible). The only problem is money. It’s always money. ~sigh~

In the next week I plan to finish the design of Translating Scripture: The Thai Book of Mormon and the cover (which I haven’t even started on yet), so that I can focus my time in this next month before the deadline (February 20) on editing and copyfitting. Let me just say that I’m really pleased with InDesign so far, much more than I ever was with Quark. Using Quark is like trying to walk in a straitjacket. (Okay, okay, maybe not quite that bad, but you get the idea.) I’ll post some drafts of the cover (which I’ll be doing in Illustrator, probably, though perhaps I’ll use InDesign instead) soon.