The Works of Horace, Bound

The other day I bound the (almost) complete works of Horace.

For whatever reason, I decided to learn about bit about Horace, a Roman poet who lived between 65 and 8 BC. To commence upon this goal I downloaded a transcribed version of Horace's works from Project Gutenberg. I marked up the document in TEI and transformed the resulting XML into a FO (Formatting Objects) file, and then used a FO processor (Apache FOP) to create a PDF file. The PDF file is simple with only a title page, table-of-contents, chapters always starting on the right-hand page, and page numbers. What's really important is the pages' margins. They are wide and thus amenable to lots of annotation. I then duplex printed all 400 pages.

Four hundred pages (two hundred pages duplex printed) is too large to effectively bind. Consequently I divided the works into two parts and bound them. The binding is simple. I started with two boards just less than the size of the paper. I then wrapped the boards with a single large piece of paper, and I covered up the insides with another piece of paper. I then wrapped a book block within the resulting case. Finally, I used a Japanese stab stitch to hold the whole thing together. Repeat for part #2. The results are very strong, very portable, and very functional, depicted below:

covers

binding

For better or for worse, I seem to practice and enjoy a wide spectrum of library-esque activities. Moreover, sometimes my vocation is also may avocation. Geesh!

P.S. Why are the works (almost) complete? Because the Gutenberg version does not include something called "Carmen Saeculare". I guess you get what you pay for.