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Comment by Semaphor | Hacker News Reader

Taschen is German for "pockets" (or "bags"). Paperback in German is "Taschenbuch", literally "pockets book". This title was very confusing to me.

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It’s just the founder’s last name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedikt_Taschen

Since the founder is German he’s certainly aware of the double meaning.

He’s like Bilbo Baggins. Except taller, and German.

Benedikt owns the Chemosphere in LA; nice spot.

Taschen primarily makes quality artbooks in the trade paperback size instead of coffee table book size like most art books. So they are pocketsized artbooks, at least compared to most artbooks, few of their books actually would fit in any reasonable sized pocket due to their tendency to be in the thousand page range.

Ah, that actually makes for a cool name, then.

A pocket sized art book, that’s thousand of pages, that’s the size of the average paperback book. Hmm…

I am suspicious as to whether you have ever seen a taschen brand book before. They are not trade paperback size, they are coffee table books. According to Amazon they tend to be in the 500-600 range.

Taschen makes a variety of different books. They do indeed have a "pocket size" line about different artists, but I think it might be discontinued now. I have one here about Mozart.

They make tons of coffee table books. Most of their books are larger than pocket size. Most are at least 8x11 and lots are size xl or the “Summo” size which is quite large.

Sumo comes with a stand made out of metal.

As you are not using units for 8x11 I guess that's inches, which is a funny unit, considering this thread started about German meaning of "Taschenbuch"

8cm x 11cm = 3.14in x 4.33in

8in x 11in = 20cm x 28cm

While "Taschen" is the German (plural) word for "pockets" it is the last name of the book publisher too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedikt_Taschen

It's a pretty well known publisher, their books are usually very good.

The books from taschen are usually pretty, with very shallow texts, most of them sound like PR pieces

They publish the quintessential coffee table books. Pretty but shallow.

They published Oliver Byrne's modernist visual take on the first six books of Euclid's elements. It's not all shallow.

Yep probably, still room for some light and visually pleasing reading I guess! Just like I might enjoy watching some John Wick movie knowing full well it won’t go down in history like Citizen Kane.

The text appears in 3 languages side by side, so there is not much space for exposition.

When I visit Germany I love to have a Dönertaschen.

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