Several years ago, a Kickstarter project called Bibliotheca took the Bible world by storm...kind of. The idea, which seemed novel at the time, was to make the process of reading the Bible more enjoyable as a reading experience. Adam Greene, the creator of the project declared that he would publish a reader's edition of the Bible in four volumes (five, if you wanted the Apocrypha), that would use beautiful typesetting, quality paper and binding, and rid the page of all the chapter and verse markings that make the Bible into kind of a reference book. Greene ended up collecting far more money than his original goal, and due to the increasing complexity of the endeavor, ended up releasing Bibliotheca significantly later than originally planned.
Like many other Bible collectors, I was enthused about the Bibliotheca project, and blogged about it here on Bible Bookshelf when it arrived. I was excited about reading this Bible for which I'd waited so long. Only one problem...I never ended up reading it. Oh, I made a few attempts. But a few things got in my way: first, Greene chose to go with a modified version of the public domain American Standard Version (from 1901), a version that has become kind of antiquated and stilted; second, that whole thing about getting rid of chapters and verses sounded great in theory, but I found it made reading more dull. It's just page after page of text, with some space between chapters, but nothing to break things up. And forget ever going to Bibliotheca to read your favorite passage: it's way too difficult to figure out where things are. Crossway and Zondervan Bible publishers ended up doing their own reader's Bibles, and I believe both companies decided to at least include some running chapter/verse references on each page (but not in the text), to help solve this problem.
And so I've finally decided to get rid of my copy of Bibliotheca. I can't justify having this bulky set on my shelf if I'm never going to touch it. I appreciated the passion behind Adam Greene's idea, but I just don't think it ended up living up to its promise.