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    The Secret Life of Books: Why They Mean More Than Words
    Unavailable
    The Secret Life of Books: Why They Mean More Than Words
    Unavailable
    The Secret Life of Books: Why They Mean More Than Words
    Ebook207 pages5 hours

    The Secret Life of Books: Why They Mean More Than Words

    By Tom Mole

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    We love books. We take them to bed with us. We display them on our bookshelves. We write our names in them. They weigh down our suitcases when we go on holiday. We take them for granted. But there's much more to them than meets the eye.

    From how books feel and smell, to burned books, banned books and books that create nations, The Secret Life of Books is about everything beyond the words on a page. It's about how books - and readers - have evolved over time. And about how books still have the power to change our lives.

    'A real treasure trove for book lovers' ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH

    'Every sentence is utterly captivating ... probably the most compulsive text ever penned about what it means to handle and possess a book' CHRISTOPHER DE HAMEL, author of Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts

    'Wonderfully insightful' ALBERTO MANGUEL, author of A History of Reading

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherElliott & Thompson
    Release dateSep 19, 2019
    ISBN9781783964598
    Unavailable
    The Secret Life of Books: Why They Mean More Than Words
    Author

    Tom Mole

    Tom Mole is Professor of English Literature and Book History at the University of Edinburgh, where he runs the Centre for the History of the Book. He has taught at universities in the UK and Canada, and has lectured widely in Europe, Australia and North America. He has written or edited several volumes about books and literature, including What the Victorians Made of Romanticism, which won the 2018 Saltire Prize for Research Book of the Year. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife and young daughter.

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    Reviews for The Secret Life of Books

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    • 4/5
      Worthy survey of books as a physical objects – a reminder we all need in an age that increasing treats books as digital content in a cardboard or computerised wrapper. But I kept comparing it in my head to Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris and her other book writing, which is a bit more sprightly and assured, and Henry Petroski's The Book on the Bookshelf, which is more detailed and thorough.
    • 4/5
      I am a book addict. There I have said it. They seem to consume my life at the moment. I have read more than ever this year, so much so that I am going to finish my Good Reads Challenge a month early this year. I spend lots of time in bookshops and charity shops looking for new things to read and the bargains. I have 12 bookcases around the home, all full to overflowing and ever-increasing tsundoku (piles of books) that my long-suffering wife is now commenting about…

      Like Tom, I always look at the books when I visit someone’s home, even if I have been there many times before. Your library is a rare glimpse into your very soul. Shockingly, I have even been to houses where there are no books. NO BOOKS! (Yes this is a real thing). They feel empty and barren. There is much more to a physical book than thin slices of a tree with random marks on. I don’t know quite what it is about books that makes them so appealing. Perhaps it is the heft that you get from a quality hardback, or the detail that goes into binding them or for the price of a couple of coffees you can have an entertaining few hours venturing into another world that someone has created or that you can learn something about our amazing world and the people in it. For me, though I find their presence in my home reassuring, that I can access knowledge and experiences from other people by taking a book off the shelf.

      Tom Mole is another fellow obsessive book collector. (It’s not hoarding if it’s books) He works at the University of Edinburgh and is Professor of English Literature and Book History, so he is perfectly placed to write this book about books. Beginning with clay tablets and papyrus he takes us all the way through the scrolls to the codex format that we see all around us today. You will learn about binding errors, how we can become utterly absorbed in the magic that is reading, how some people manage to read their books and leave them utterly pristine and others who pass them on (or horror of horrors back) most foxed and often slightly badgered too. There is a certain amount of pleasure in owning a signed book, even more so if it is dedicated.

      Some people develop relationships with their copies of favourite books, scribbling notes, folding the corners of the pages down, leaving splatters from cooking and adding their own unique and distinctive embellishments. There is a chapter on how books can affect people’s lives and two on the future direction and technology of books? Is it kindles? Or apps on a phone? The physical object is resilient to the ravages of time there are books around that are hundreds of years old that can still be read, whereas if you have a novel on a 5 1/4″ floppy disk then you will be extremely lucky if you can ever read that again.

      It is a well-researched book stuffed full of interesting anecdotes and facts and Mole has done a great job in not making this feel like a slightly stuffy academic paper. The chapters are short and can be dipped into in no particular order and I liked the brief interludes. If you have the remotest interest in reading or books then I can highly recommend this book. Great stuff.