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My Most Valuable Books

2022-02-15 · list · John · 3:55 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books & writing (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal update · tags: calendar ritual

John shows the most valuable of the roughly 3,000 books in his and Sarah's library, scoring value as money times tears: rare first editions (Slaughterhouse-Five, Parable of the Sower, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Twain's Christian Science) matter less than irreplaceable copies, above all The Spring and the Fall, the book of his and Sarah's pre-dating emails.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Intro: about 3,000 books and the value formula (money times tears)

  • ★★ John says he and Sarah have about 3,000 books, all valued; he shares the most valuable, defining value as monetary value times the tears he would cry losing the book. (playful) — 00:00:00 · Sarah Urist Green

00:00:29 — Valuable first editions: Slaughterhouse-Five, Parable of the Sower, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Twain's Christian Science

  • ★★ John's most financially valuable book is probably a first edition of Slaughterhouse-Five, a gift from Sarah years ago, now worth about $2,000 and stressful to touch. (hedged) — 00:00:29 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★★ The book is close to John's heart because he ended up living and working in Vonnegut's hometown, in his long shadow, and because reading it in 11th-grade English brought him to life as a reader. — 00:00:29 · Indianapolis
  • ★★ John has a first edition of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, bought for $65 and now worth quite a bit more; he loves its cover design. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ John calls Parable of the Sower one of the most important American novels of the last hundred years. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John thinks about his first edition of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek almost every day; its endpapers are beautiful, and its poor condition makes it cheap enough to be his reading copy. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Twain's late book Christian Science eviscerates religion and Mary Baker Eddy; John's complicated feelings led to his college thesis on it, and his parents gave him a first edition (worth about $60) at graduation. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ John says all the most valuable books in their library are not financially valuable but irreplaceable. — 00:01:27

00:01:56 — Irreplaceable copies: Sula with marginalia, Sarah's signed You Are an Artist, Perry Lentz's Instruction Booklet and 'the social order'

  • ★★ John's copy of Toni Morrison's Sula is worth about $2, but he has read it since 2004 and it holds his marginalia, cringe-inducing and lovely on rereading. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ John loves Sarah's book You Are an Artist and uses it to think creatively; this copy is valuable because Sarah signed it with a lovely inscription. — 00:01:56 · You Are an Artist, Sarah Urist Green
  • ★★ Instead of Strunk and White or the AP guide, John's style guide is Instruction Booklet by his college professor Perry Lentz, covering em dashes to lie and lay; he has much of it memorized. — 00:02:26

  • ★★ John says 'the social order' instead of 'society' because Lentz argues persuasively that 'society' obscures hierarchies and inequalities that 'the social order' captures. — 00:02:26 · the social order

    “society as a word obfuscates hierarchies and inequalities that are better captured by the phrase the social order”

00:02:55 — The Spring and the Fall, the Like Letters P4A perk, comments ask and Hank's unsigned books

  • ★★★ John's most valuable book (retail about $7) is The Spring and the Fall, co-written with Sarah: given to him at their engagement, it holds every email from the year and a half before they dated. — 00:02:55 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★★ One of last year's (2021) Project for Awesome perks was Like Letters, a podcast in which Sarah and John analysed some of these emails. — 00:02:55 · Project for Awesome, Sarah Urist Green
  • ★★ John says they will make Like Letters again for this year's (2022) Project for Awesome. — 00:03:24 · Project for Awesome
  • ★★ John loves having a document charting how he and Sarah fell in like and then in love; don't print your emails, except occasionally do. (playful) — 00:03:24 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★ John asks viewers to say in comments what their most valuable books are. — 00:03:24
  • ★ John would have included one of Hank's books, but going through his copies he realized Hank has never signed one for him. (playful) — 00:03:24 · Hank Green

In the description and comments

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: The Spring and the Fall

Also: People: Annie Dillard · Kurt Vonnegut · Mark Twain · Mary Baker Eddy · Octavia E. Butler · Perry Lentz · Sarah Urist Green · Toni Morrison

Projects: Project for Awesome

Works: Associated Press Stylebook · Christian Science · Instruction Booklet · Like Letters · Parable of the Sower · Pilgrim at Tinker Creek · Slaughterhouse-Five · Sula · The Elements of Style · You Are an Artist

Terms: the social order

Places: Indianapolis

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