What
exactly is a book?
It seems
like a simple question, but the answer can be surprisingly varied, even
complex.
Some
say a book can even be one that is not read, but is heard. The audiobook has exploded in the second decade
of the 21st century.
Others claim a book comes in the printed form, with a cover and about 200 pages
inside for an adult, non-fiction book and perhaps 350-400 for fiction, though
sometimes it could be double that.
Some
will champion the e-book and its digital ease of availability. The ebook could morph into something big,
including videos, images, and links that could turn it into a warehouse of
information.
Books
can come in all formats, lengths, and styles.
A children’s board book is as much a book as anything else. At its core, a book seems to have targeted
content with a beginning, middle, and an end.
It tells a story or presents information in a way that should be helpful
to its readers.
Everyone
has a raw sense of what a book is – and most will probably agree on its ideal
format. It’s what’s inside the book,
regardless of format, layout design, length, or cost, that matters.
Books
could contain few or no words, such as with books of photography and
illustrations. They can be full of reprinted
texts from blogs, books, essays, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, pamphlets,
and other materials. They can share a
shocking but true story or they can feature the most fantastical, made-up story
in the history of humanity. Books can
save our souls, heal our spirits, nurture our bodies, educate us, or lobby us
to act a certain way. In short, what
goes into a book can be any images, words, ideas, or
collection of facts and fantasies.
Scholarly
books and self-published poetry books, as varied as they may be are considered
books. A 32-page, colorful children’s
book for a six-year-old is no different than a 400-page tome on hospice
care. A self-help book in Braille is no
different than an erotic thriller audiobook.
Hardcover, trade paper, mass market, e-book, audiobook, and all
formats containing all kinds of content -- are indeed books.
No
doubt, technology, creativity, entrepreneurial experimentation, and other
factors – perhaps some political, financial or environmental – may dictate
future forms of the book. Over the years
the form has changed greatly, from written scrolls to five-pound, oversized
printed books to mass-produced pocketbooks, then books on tape, to ebooks, and
now downloadable audio and print-on-demand.
What’s next?
The
only thing radical that could happen is that something negates the need to read
or listen to a book, where one day humans download information into their
brains. Perhaps as we become
part-human, part-machine, we will consume our information differently.
Or
perhaps the next major war will destroy our infrastructure to the point books will no longer be produced. Perhaps the
Internet gets destroyed or printing presses are, obliterated. Maybe environmental destruction or a nuclear
bomb will simply wipe out much of humanity and its books.
I’d
like to bet that we don’t destroy our world and that invasive technology will
have its limits. Books should and will
be with us for many years to come, whatever form people choose to enjoy.
Insights On Books From A Few Famous Authors
On Reading Writing and Living with Books is a wonderful
but brief paperback book by The London Library (Pushkin Press). The London
Library claims it is “the world’s largest independent library. Founded in 1841 by Thomas Carlyle with over
seventeen miles of shelving and more than a million books.” This book contains
a number of essays from famous writers. I quote three of them:
E.M. Forster
“Everyone
able to read a good book becomes a wiser man.
He becomes a similar centre of light and order, and just insight into
the things around him. A collection of
good books contains all the nobleness and wisdom of the world before us. Every heroic and victorious soul has left his
stamp upon it. A collection of books is
the best of all Universities; for the University only teaches us to read the
book; you must go to the book itself for what it is.
“Knowledge
will perish if we do not stand up for it, and testify. It is never safe, never
harvested. It has to be protected not
only against the gangster but against a much more charming and seductive
foe: the crowd., “I know what I like and
I know what I want,” says the crowd, “and I don’t want all these shelves and
shelves of books Scrap them.”
George Eliot
“The
author’s capital is his brain-power –power of invention, power of writing. But man or woman who publishes writings
inevitably assumes the office of teacher or influencer of the public mind.”
Virginia Woolf
“To
admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and
let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we
read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Where are we to begin? How are we to bring order into this
multitudinous chaos and so get the deepest and widest pleasure from what we
read?”
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