I'm starting reading as a hobby and would like to start

>>9411128
>buying

just go to a library

>>9411128
the words are roughly the same

>>9411128
just buy used books. donate the ones you hate and save the ones you love.

Don't huff paint thinner before buying books. I fucked up for years with this.

>>9411134
I do not have a proper library near me.

>>9411140
I am considering this. I hate falling pages, though.

>>9411144
Thanks.

Stealing books is the most credible way of building a collection. It's a time honor tradition of antiquity. Locate a source of books and then gather your forces and sack and pillage everything you want. All the best Libraries were built this way. Lets not start messing with tradition now.

Make sure you keep your books clean. Washing the pages in warm, soapy water once a month does the trick, but avoid using soap products containing triclosan or triclocarban as they will remove the 'new book' smell.

>>9411128
Penguin classics are ok if you're not buying translations but don't expect them to last for more than 2-3 readings especially if it's a 500+ page book.

>>9411155
>Not cutting out each page and individually cleansing it in sulfuric acid before re-binding the entire book once a week

>>9411150
falling pages? just make sure when you buy the used book it's marked good to very good condition if you're doing it over the net, and if in person, you can ensure it meets your standards before you buy it. i don't have really any used books that have leaves falling out.

>not just writing your own books and then keeping those. Why waste time with what other people wrote?

>>9411184
>reading what mere human pleb creatures write
>when you can simply witness the divine plot of the creation unveil in front of your eyes
>these are the people i'm associating myself with

>>9411128
Penguin publishes a lot of books, but the book quality is pretty low (cheap paper that isn't acid-free, so it discolors and becomes brittle as it ages, and the bindings are just glue so occasionally you get structural problems, plus the covers are thin and the edges of them are easily worn). The best quality, in my opinion, are Everyman's Library, but their selection is limited and the editions are expensive. Norton Critical is great where available, and provides you with lots of extra material (essays, criticism, etc.), but the selection is again limited. Oxford World's Classics tends to have good translations as well, and is higher quality overall than Penguin. Avoid Dover and other suspiciously cheap publishers, they tend to use public domain translations that aren't very good. Any time you're buying a book that's been translated, prioritize getting a good translation over the publisher's book quality.

>>9411253
>not learning each new language as needed and creating your own translations from original sources in archives and then hand scribing your own private editions with gilded pages and bound in the skin of the original authors nearest living relatives pet.

>>9411272
>Not spiritually inter-dimensionally linking your mind with the author's, thus learning about every single moment that the author has experienced in his life in order to experience the work as it was really meant to be experienced, furthermore making you a non-being and nothing but a fragment of the author, forming your mind into a part of the author's spirit
>Being this much of a blep

start with moby dick if youre american