I really don't care, either, except that it can lead to discomfort when one is browsing a mixed shelf, say at book sale.

I've only seen Top-To-Bottom-Spines on US-Books so far. Also agree with the point, that if a book is lying face-up there's no need for readable spine-text. If it's face-down, there is.

All English-language books I've ever seen beside foreign-language books (so that I could notice the distinction) read from top to bottom. It's not just the US.

I thought that modern Russian literature is generally thought of as being kick-started by Pushkin and his generation.

Hence literary Russian is very heavy with borrowings from French, which became so ingrained into the fabric of the language that native speakers don't even notice.

Never understood it. I find something quite profound/exciting in a big bookshelf full of different sorts of books :)

wow, that sounds expensive. On the other hand, as far as ostentatious displays of wealth go, that sounds like one of the more classy ones.

(admittedly not perfectly, but enough to look good and last).

It started because a group of us at uni found out we really really love books, it was a bit of an addiction actually, so we started our "libraries" for a bit of fun.

Originally we were meant to have read every book for it to count :) but that quickly became impractical. I have about 6,000 books (most in boxes, sadly, till I find a bigger place) but that is small compared to some of the group :)

Not always a recommended hobby; it is impossible to walk past a second hand bookshop now, and they are surprisingly common :)

Personally, though, I'd rather spend time reading the books than rebinding them so they look nicer.

but yeah, I can understand the want to collect books, even books that you likely won't have time to read. But, I mean, if it's not something you are likely to read, it's more of a collectible or decoration than a book, especially if you are going to put a lot of labor into making them look good, which is why I say it sounds like a display of wealth.

People have strange habits when it comes to books, or almost anything else.

Does anyone actually see a difference in readability here?

> 1: Fear and Loathing > 2: In Las Vegas

If rotated to the right (considered top-to-bottom), line #2 is to the reader's left when viewed on a book shelf. This is opposite the traditional left-to-right reading direction we use in west.

Whether or not this impacts you individually isn't as significant as the difference in reading direction outlined above.

I tend to side with the "local" belief that "when the book is lying face-up, its spine is of little value, because you can read all you want on the cover."

  I tend to side with the "local" belief that "when the book   is lying face-up, its spine is of little value, because you   can read all you want on the cover."

In East Asia, tradition dictates that books are opened from left to right, using your right hand, with the spine on the right. As to the direction of the book title on the spine, there's no disagreement, because how it is written on the spine is how it is written on the pages - top to bottom and right to left.

Too bad Chinese books these days are starting to read like a western book. I wonder if it had anything to do with GOST 7.84–2002. It's either that or M$ Word has screwed everyone else's writing and printing tradition.

Any unrealistic assumptions are irrelevant, punchline is all that matters :)

I liked in particular the tiny paragraph numbers running down the left column.