Hi Lawrence, I am here for quite some time and Stu was always a gentleman and an honorable member of our community. One of your first posts on this forum and you are already attacking a community member, that is quite interesting. The term ‘’the West’’ has roots much older than the Cold war, your implication is not correct. The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance languages (ouest in French, ovest in Italian, oeste in Spanish and Portuguese). It stems from the Indo-European root *wes reduced from *wes-pero 'evening, night' which is related to Old Greek hesperos and Latin vesper 'evening; west'.The Western world, also known as the West, refers to various regions, nations, and states, depending on the context, most often including at least parts of Europe, Australasia, and the Americas. There are many accepted definitions and they are all closely interrelated. Use of the term West as a specific cultural and geopolitical term developed over the course of the Age of Exploration as Europe spread its culture to other parts of the world. So your idea that Stu was referring to the Cold war is not correct. Additionally, as you said this is an open forum and we in ‘’ the West’’ tend to have free speech so we can discuss politics if we wish too. As for the quality of Chinese books I am sure that there should be high-quality Chinese bookbinders out there. Unfortunately, most of my ‘’Made in China’’ products are low quality though.

Best wishes,
Lokki

Admin note - I'm talking over with the moderators our plans, but I would like to put a pause on this political conversation until we have a site policy in place. While I personally feel that everyone is entitled to their own policital and moral views, and base their collecting around those, I don't want this site in particular to get derailed into off-topic discussions or flame-wars.

Nothing decided yet (and PM me if you have strong opinions for what the site policy should be), but in the meantime... again I request that we pause this conversation. I will announce a plan and implement it soon (when I am not traveling internationally for work).

Lawrence wrote:

And secondly, I assume this is a public forum and therefore it would be most appreciated if you, Stu, could withhold your political opinions to yourself.

You could be a Chinese diplomat in Australia with that attitude! You also didn't actually address any of the important issues, whilst focussing on the largely irrelevant (this also qualifies you for that job).

But I'll respect Uruloke's request to avoid politics. I had actually wanted to avoid it myself, but felt pressured into expanding my opinions on the use of Chinese printers when pushed as to why it is a problem.

I think we can all agree to leave it there. There is a reason that politics doesn't come up as a point of discussion here, and it isn't because anyone demands it, either three-time poster or moderators --- it is because for 99.9% of the time it has no relevance to Tolkien collecting.

I did not mean to step on any toes - just stating that Tolkien books have printed there for a while, such as my Complete Guide to Middle-earth illustrated by Ted Nasmith. "Political reasons" is all that needs to be said. So much stuff is made there, it's kind of hard to avoid (cell phones, etc...). That's all I'll say, and again did not mean to step on any toes: I was speaking strictly in terms of the books themselves.

Just to provide a bit of balance here & get us back onto to talking books...

Chaucer is printed for OUP in the UK (CPI Group?) & is, from a book production perspective, a total pile of crap! :D

To my shame I have not even opened the Chaucer book yet. Had so much on that I well behind on my reading.

Got my Father Christmas yesterday. The book, on its own, is fine. There was some mention previously of glossy paper; this book is not printed on glossy stock (with the exception of the fold-out frontispiece). While photographic images sometimes don't work well on matte paper, I actually think in this case the printing is quite good.

As a member of the deluxe series, I find this book rather disappointing. The silver (rather than gold) gilt and festive doodads actually bother me much less than the color itself. The red is so bright; it just has no place among the other twelve titles (plus HoME set), all off which employ a sort of muted color palette. Some of the previous color choices aren't what I would have chosen, but this just sticks out like a sore thumb. Also, the texture of the spine paper is different from all previous titles. Minor quibbles perhaps, but bothersome to me nevertheless. With all the issues with previous title, I felt they at least looked semi-cohesive together on the shelf. Perhaps this one will be segregated!

Karl wrote:
Got my Father Christmas yesterday. The book, on its own, is fine. There was some mention previously of glossy paper; this book is not printed on glossy stock (with the exception of the fold-out frontispiece). While photographic images sometimes don't work well on matte paper, I actually think in this case the printing is quite good.

As a member of the deluxe series, I find this book rather disappointing. The silver (rather than gold) gilt and festive doodads actually bother me much less than the color itself. The red is so bright; it just has no place among the other twelve titles (plus HoME set), all off which employ a sort of muted color palette. Some of the previous color choices aren't what I would have chosen, but this just sticks out like a sore thumb. Also, the texture of the spine paper is different from all previous titles. Minor quibbles perhaps, but bothersome to me nevertheless. With all the issues with previous title, I felt they at least looked semi-cohesive together on the shelf. Perhaps this one will be segregated!

Thanks for the review and for the correction with regards to the "glossy" nature of the pages. They certainly look very smooth in the video. Interesting that the paper texture on the spine is different than the usual. I assume it is smoother? I think some of the reprints of The Hobbit (and possibly others) also used a smoother paper (IIRC from my examination in a physical bookstore when such things still existed!).

Stu wrote:

Karl wrote:
Got my Father Christmas yesterday. The book, on its own, is fine. There was some mention previously of glossy paper; this book is not printed on glossy stock (with the exception of the fold-out frontispiece). While photographic images sometimes don't work well on matte paper, I actually think in this case the printing is quite good.

As a member of the deluxe series, I find this book rather disappointing. The silver (rather than gold) gilt and festive doodads actually bother me much less than the color itself. The red is so bright; it just has no place among the other twelve titles (plus HoME set), all off which employ a sort of muted color palette. Some of the previous color choices aren't what I would have chosen, but this just sticks out like a sore thumb. Also, the texture of the spine paper is different from all previous titles. Minor quibbles perhaps, but bothersome to me nevertheless. With all the issues with previous title, I felt they at least looked semi-cohesive together on the shelf. Perhaps this one will be segregated!

Thanks for the review and for the correction with regards to the "glossy" nature of the pages. They certainly look very smooth in the video. Interesting that the paper texture on the spine is different than the usual. I assume it is smoother? I think some of the reprints of The Hobbit (and possibly others) also used a smoother paper (IIRC from my examination in a physical bookstore when such things still existed!).

The paper used is whiter than in previous deluxes, but definitely not glossy. As for the spine texture, it's a subtle thing. I'd say that whereas previous papers were textured to imitate leather perhaps, this imitates cloth with a grid-like woven texture.

Stu wrote:

You could be a Chinese diplomat in Australia with that attitude! You also didn't actually address any of the important issues, whilst focussing on the largely irrelevant (this also qualifies you for that job).

I think that is what diplomats' job is, honestly. And thank you for your advice. If I have no better things to do in the future, I might perhaps try my luck in the world of diplomacy and earn my bread. Just kidding :D

I agree this forum is not a place to discuss politics, and I'm sorry if anyone feels embarrassed or being attacked by my harsh words. I'd also like to edit a sentence that I've earlier said, "I assume this is a public forum and therefore it would be most appreciated if you could withhold your political opinions to yourself" to "I assume this is a forum dedicated to books collecting alone and therefore it would be most appreciated if you could withhold your political opinions to yourself", which could have expressed my feelings more accurate. I agree that my former statement is rather inappropriate.

And this is also the reason why I had confined my explaining on the subject of "cheap Chinese products", which I think is exactly THE relevant topic. The other issues are indeed enormously important yet irrelevant, and I'll be very happy if you wish to PM me for further discussions.

Lokki, thank you again for your detailed explaining on the origin of the expression, "the West", which is really impressive and educational.