Thursday, June 05, 2008

For the Love of the Book

Our relationship with books is often complicated. Here are three recent articles from US newspapers well worth a read. :
Books entered my house under cover of night, from the four winds, smuggled in by woodland creatures, and then they never left. Books collected on every surface; I believe that somehow they managed to breed.
Take a wander around Luc Sante's book collection (left) in this very enjoyable piece from The Wall Street Journal.
I’m not suggesting that gigantic books are useful only as an excuse for avoiding responsibility.
You might not be so convinced as Joe Queenan talks about his love for big fat tomes in The New York Times.
I say: shore up the library. Stock it with printed matter. Reinforce its reading rooms. But don't think of it as a warehouse or a museum.
Robert Darnton looks at the future of the research library in the The New York Review of Books, and underlines the importance of the physical book even in this electronic age.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

unnh. thanks to the oil hike, i wont be buying that many books for a long time..