What Are Your Favorite Books To Copy?

[Hangglidernerd]

I had a 4th grade teacher who made the idea of copying books a horrifying prospect for me even around 40 years after.She used to make us copy pages from the dictionary after lunch for 40 to 90 minutes each day.......an eternity for a little kid who's handwriting was awful and who's hand hurt from the attempt to make it a bit less painful to the eye.......my limit for copying is a few paragraphs at most......I do oft write whatever tripe pops into my head in a poor impersonation of one of my favourite authors though,especially if I have my BCHR Waterman's 52 in my paws.

[Amberjack]

An excellent topic!

 

For me it's Scripture, Beatles Lyrics and currently The Enneads by Plotinus.

 

In the town where I was born,

lived a man who sailed the sea.

And he told us of his life,

in the land of submarines....

 

Copying another's work allows me to reach back across the centuries to the monks of the Dark Ages - toiling away in a dimly lit scriptorium to preserve what knowledge had been saved to that point. It is to these men that we owe the vast majority of what we know of ancient civilizations.

[DrDebG]

I copy Scripture, especially as part of my daily quiet time. I find that I must stop to think about the words as they flow from my pen.

[DrDebG]

Question for all of you who copy: What paper are you copying to? Do you use a journal, a pad, or single sheets?

 

I've been using journals for many years, but have thought about changing to single sheets.

[mooshi]

I've been coping The Art of War by Sun Tzu.

[kpatters5274]

I've been slowly (veeeeerrrry slowly) copying the Hunger Games in German and translating it into English. Works well for me because it's a story I'm familiar with, in first person, present tense, and without all the crazy specialized vocabulary of Harry Potter or the like. I don't seem to be making much progress, though...

 

But I use a notebook so I could have the two languages on facing/ opposing pages.

[CAG_1787]

Question for all of you who copy: What paper are you copying to? Do you use a journal, a pad, or single sheets?

 

I've been using journals for many years, but have thought about changing to single sheets.

I've been using the Black and Red notebooks. They're inexpensive, the paper has held up to every nib and ink I've used, and at the end, they look nice on a shelf.

[GJMekenkamp]

For me copying texts works to improve my handwriting.

 

I was afraid I was the only one, but looking at this topic: now I know I'm not the only one

[Bookman]

I mostly copy passages from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Rutgers University Press, 1953), Moby-Dick, and The New Oxford Book of English Verse (Oxford University Press, 1972). Not so much to improve my penmanship but rather as a warm-up to letter-writing (my penmanship is considerably less sloppy if I warm up a bit) or to satisfy a frequent urge to write with a fountain pen. I make a practice of regularly copying English verse to improve the rhythm of my sentences.

Edited December 20, 2015 by Bookman

[PaganArcher]

I copy the various translations of the Havamal when I find myself frustrated by things around me.

[Piper 987]

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes are two of my favorite sources for passages to copy. They are both right beside my desk. For individual authors, I like Mark Twain and Richard Feynman (Nobel laureate in physics and a personal inspiration).

[tbryce]

I've been copying out stanzas from Edmund Spencer's "The Faerie Queen", Rainer Maria Rilke's "Sonnets to Orpheus", and Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales". I'm about to start working through some poems by Robert Frost and T.S. Elliott. I'm finding poetry a little easier to work through, since I can copy an individual stanza and set it down, and pick up another time or day at the next stanza or poem. It definitely allows me to focus on the letters and words, rather than also having to put together new words myself. Plus, I get to read and think about the stories and images much more carefully than just reading them.

 

Copying out Spencer in Spenserian is quite fun, and seems oddly appropriate.

 

I use different inks, different papers, and different pens, sometimes a new one for each session. This gives me a reason for inking up pens that I haven't used for some time, seeing how they work with the alphabet I've chosen, and gauging the pros and cons of each.

 

I find copy out longer passages very soothing and meditative.

[AAAndrew]

The longest project I've done was one of the Aubrey Maturin books, the first, Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brien. I've also pulled out a few of the letters from those books as well the couple of letters you actually get to read in Jane Austen and written those as if I'm writing a letter. Just to get a sense of what it was like writing one of those letters.

 

If you really want a challenge, write out Shelby Foote's Civil War Series. At over 3000 pages, that seems like insanity. Until you learn he wrote them all using a dip pen, an Esterbrook 313 Probate to be exact. And he did it twice. Once for the first draft, and then again for a "clean" copy.

 

Sheesh. That's one experience I don't think I'll attempt to re-create.

[richila]

Question for all of you who copy: What paper are you copying to? Do you use a journal, a pad, or single sheets?

 

I've been using journals for many years, but have thought about changing to single sheets.

I copy my Scripture into a Journible. My husband and I are currently copying the book of Matthew and discussing it together.

 

I copy from Scripture and have miniature copies of the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Shakespeare's Sonnets that I carry with me to copy into my daily notebook before adding a final draft in my big beautiful journal. I also copy favorite hymns and prayers into my daily notebook so that I will have them with me.

[migo984]

Extracts from Sam Harris' "Letter to a Christian Nation" , along with A. C. Grayling's "What is Good?".

[KellyMcJ]

At the moment, a German vocabulary book. I want to brush up on my German and I can practice writing at the same time!

[CaramelNib]

WOW what an amazing idea! If I were to choose.... I would either copy Persuasion by Jane Austen, or a book in Hindi using the devnagri script.

In fact, this seems like a perfect summer project!!! Maybe we should start a NaCoFaBoMo..... National Copy Favorite Book Month!

[GJMekenkamp]

Right now I am copying the first book of the Bible, Genesis.

[Skyclad]

Today I picked up a used copy of Great Lines from Shakespeare for a dollar. Not that im a big fan of Shakespeare, but for practicing my penmanship I thought it would be great to use. I have complete works of Poe, complete works of Rudyard Kipling and a book of poems by Robert Frost and one of Robert Service, and though theres nothing wrong with any of them, I wanted something different - something a little eloquent. And this happened to be just the thing!

 

Now if I can only get my handwriting to be more consistent. I've seem to have landed on a plateau thats lasted a long time. Plus being left handed and not having a surgeons hand doesnt help any.

[Skyclad]

I have also just come across this site (I know, not a book.. but...) which looks like it would be very good to copy from, especially since I find practicing my penmanship very meditative, almost zen like.

 

The Meditation Archive http://www.interluderetreat.com/medarc.htm