User:Simon/The Garden of Branching Paths

bootleg book: The Garden of Branching Paths

Printed: 16.12.19
Dimensions: 130x210mm
Cover stock: 3mm Kraft board with Clairefontaine Trophee (white) 210gsm glued on
Text stock: Laser 80gsm
Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue with book binding tape
Pages: 108pp

I printed this book from a PDF found on aaaarg.fail. Tancredi had told me about Borges short story "The Library of Babel", which is contained in this anthology. Norman di Giovanni, the translator worked with Borges on quite a large selection of his works. Ultimately he was given a cease and desist order from Borges' estate. This PDF has been redesigned and bootlegged by a user at aaaaarg, with a nice sensibility (and respect) for producing a well-designed text. I wanted to try a different method for attaching the cover for this book, one I had seen before but never figured out how to do. I first bound the text block with cold glue, then I attached a strip of book binding tape to reinforce it. Then, I glued the printed front and back cover sheets to two thick pieces of kraft board for the cover. Finally, these thick boards were glued to the first and last pages of the book. It produced a strong binding, but unfortunately the covers warped, despite having left the book in the press immediately after gluing. At the Publication Station, Kim said that the way to remedy this is to glue paper on both sides of the kraft board, which is quite absorbent, and will easily warp with PVA. Gluing paper to both sides evens out the warp, which will want to pull in the direction of the glue.

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  Front cover

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  Spread: The Library of Babel

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  Back cover