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Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday #20

toptentuesdayTop Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish in June 2010.

April 11, 2017: Top Ten Of The Most Unique Books I’ve Read Some variations: top ten unique sounding books on my TBR, top ten most unique books I’ve read in X genre, etc.

This is a pretty big category to wrap my head around. What makes a book unique? Is it the publisher, the rarity, the binding? Is it some gimmick, some limited edition thing? Is the the plot, the characters, the setting? Any of these things could be the right answer. There are a lot of ways books can be unique, and its one of the reason so many enjoy collecting them.

For this list I’m going to focus on books the look unique. This is mostly inspired by my local used book seller and his Instagram account, browsersbookstore.  I’m going to be using post from them and other Instagram book sellers / #bookstagram to complete this list.

Top Ten Unique Books

Why? Because little books are fun and also because it’s double history, the history of the Emancipation Proclamation in a book that is history itself.

Why? I freely admit to being a James Bond fan girl (As long as we leave Daniel Craig aka WORST BOND EVER, out of it.) I am working my way through the full collection of trade paper back my sister gave me, but there is something special about first editions.

Why? The cover is beautiful enough on it’s own, but illustrations of Mickey Mouse reading Gullivers travels? Priceless!

Why? Exquisite! Plus I love all thing Arthurian and Art Nouveau, which this book combines.

Why? I thought I did, but I’ve never heard of this book before. (I even own The Fellowship in Mandarin Chinese, which I picked up while teaching English in China mind you.) We have a whole Tolkien shelf combing the multiple copies and different edition we have of the books. And of course my husband claims to be the ultimate Tolkien fan because he married Arwen. 😊

Why? Another beautiful Art Nouveau piece of work. You could just look at these book all day long.

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This finely bound Book of Common Prayer is noteworthy because of its stunning bejewelled binding after a design by William Burges, with five brass-mounted semi-precious stones on each board together with two elaborate armorial brass clasps, again set with stones. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀William Burges was one of the pre-eminent figures of the Victorian mediaeval revival. This work was commissioned by Lord and Lady Ripon. Studley Royal and St. Mary's Churches were both built for the Ripons between 1871 and 1878. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Tragically the funds for these builds came from unspent ransom cash from a kidnap that went wrong and which ended in the death of a good friend of the family, Frederick Grantham Vyner. He had been apprehended by Greek bandits during an expedition to Marathon and was shot, along with three friends, in an ensuing gun battle with armed troops. Vyner's mother and her sister Lady Ripon then decided to dedicate the unused ransom money to this memorial project. #beautiful

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Why? The history behind this amazing looking book could be a book itself. The book is in great condition looking almost new.

Why? Because it made me laugh. Chicken scratch… from scratch…KGB Chicken… who comes up with this stuff?

Why? Again it’s a little book and tiny books are cool. And somehow this one has text find inside it in two languages.

Why? In case you didn’t know my day time job is as a freelance content manager and website developer. I’ve been doing a lot of code work lately so this one just stood out, even though it on morse code and not computer code.

Bonus:

These awesome bookends…

 

8 replies on “Top Ten Tuesday #20”

Yeah there are so many ways to spin “unique.” I just love the way some of these books look. Thanks for taking a look at my blog.

It really is and I also think that the Book of Common Prayer is pretty. Thanks for checking out my blog.

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