What We Talk About When We Talk About Books

Release on 2019-08-20 | by Leah Price

Even readers who buy a printed book outright often do so in the expectation that they'll own it only temporarily. ... Nothing more humbling than spotting the novel I assigned last semester back on my campus bookstore's shelves, ...

What We Talk About When We Talk About Books
  • Author: Leah Price
  • Publisher: Hachette UK
  • ISBN: 9781541673908
  • Category: Language Arts & Disciplines
  • Page: 224
  • View: 866

What We Talk About When We Talk About Books

Reports of the death of reading are greatly exaggerated Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues in which printed, bound objects once trained us: the willpower to focus on a sustained argument, the curiosity to look beyond the day's news, the willingness to be alone. The shelves of the world's great libraries, though, tell a more complicated story. Examining the wear and tear on the books that they contain, English professor Leah Price finds scant evidence that a golden age of reading ever existed. From the dawn of mass literacy to the invention of the paperback, most readers already skimmed and multitasked. Print-era doctors even forbade the very same silent absorption now recommended as a cure for electronic addictions. The evidence that books are dying proves even scarcer. In encounters with librarians, booksellers and activists who are reinventing old ways of reading, Price offers fresh hope to bibliophiles and literature lovers alike. Winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award, 2020

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