“When you read a book, you don’t notice the paper and the ink and the glue and the stitching. All of that dissolves, and what remains is the author’s world.”
–Jeff Bezos
“When you read a book, you don’t notice the paper and the ink and the glue and the stitching. All of that dissolves, and what remains is the author’s world.”
–Jeff Bezos
Comments
7 responses to “The Invisible Book”
alas, i could not find an ‘invisable book’ meme to reply with…
” you don’t notice the paper and the ink and the glue and the stitching.” — unless you are a collector of books, and that is exactly what we notice. And, the illustrations, and the impression of the letter press, and the marbleized paper frontispieces —
P
I own many books solely because they are works of art. But for reading, I prefer ebooks (especially fiction) because I like old books, new books, and books I can read on the fly without worrying about throwing a beautiful thing in my purse and beating it up or taking it traveling and possibly losing it… beautiful books are great, but so is the experience of falling into an author’s world without having to worry about the vehicle conveying it.
All those collectible things are what you notice when you are examining the book. If the book is worth owning for other than collector value you notice none of them while actually reading
23 shidoo
I’ve recently come to think of literature as a kind of telepathy. The author puts his thoughts out in a published work. The reader reads the work, the author’s thoughts become the readers — voila! telepathy.
> If the book is worth owning for other than collector value you notice none of them while actually reading.
Sorry that’s your experience. To me, reading an old book is a multi-facted experience which includes the physical book. Otherwise, I would just read it on my laptop. Most of the old books have been scanned by now. Thankfully, much attention has been paid to the making of book so that they might last for centuries. I also enjoy cemetery art.
PLB