I remember when I first looked up my assigned book, which I had to become friends with, I was astonished how long the title (name) was from my future friend, it has around 90 words, which are a lot compared to the other books in this old book community I suppose. This is something that stands out for me and is a sign, how precisely the author didn’t want to miss out any details on his subject of fortification. His aim and urge to list and explain all the details and variation which are possible, when building fortification, is something we recognise not only in the title but even more in the structure of the whole content (a sever organised relation between text and image and the well-structured system of headings, subheadings and numbers).This is why I ended up with the conclusion, that this book is kind of a reference book which can be used in academic studies or directly in praxis, when a village or castle needs to build a fortifications construction, which adapts the most properly to the individual conditions of the circumstances. Now after my assumption, it would be interesting to know if my conclusions are legitim or if the aim of the book was something different.
Though this time of two semester, I can honestly say, I feel like I have now an old book as a kind of friend, because even though I could barely read it, with my frequent contact with it, (which was not always that easy) I had to exertive search as many details as possible about the publications in the web, in this time I felt again like a detective, but to be fair, task three felt not useful or interesting to me. On the other hand, I had an enriching moment, when I had my one and only date in person with my book in the library at the very beginning of my friendship.
I found it fascinating to hold, feel, smell and just look at it as an old book in a kind of objective and curious observative way, without any pressure of need to read and understand it written content. Even the visit of the ETH Rara library with its unique atmosphere was an experience on its own (similar to the one in Einsiedeln, which was even more interesting). This was definitely my favourite (and probably the most useful) part of my journey with my book.
In Einsiedeln we learned once more that, only by browsing throw old books we can find out, what the author wanted to achieve or emphasise with his book, without even reading the text but looking at drawings, style of lettering, paragraphing, book binding and its cover etc. What the whole Einsiedeln experience made so interesting, was that experts explained us many different details about the old book, which I found rather difficult so exhaust so many interesting information from my own book, because it was maybe too unpopular or too difficult for me.