A compilation of short (2-3 pages) essays on sundry topics relating to books. Although a fan of books, the author is uncommitted about whether they'll fare well against digital files. I suspect he hopes so, but he would be disappointed, but not devastated, if not.

The author is German, and it is possible that he is well-known enough to that audience that background details were not needed. But given that he sprinkles the essays with snippets of personal stories, it would be nice to know more about who he is, and what has been his relationship with books he is here writing about. Books with marginalia, he tells us, have no value for him, and thus it would be helpful to know how he could have acquired such wrongheaded notions.

Perhaps his most significant claim is that we should consider the "text" apart from the "book." No one ever writes a book, he says; one writes a text which he hopes will one day be produced into a book. They are thus distinguishable, and the texts of books will be perfectly shared by digital formats, and it is only the book as a physical object, apart from the text, that he writes about. Careful readers will note that he cannot maintain this divide consistently. For instance, it is difficult to understand how he can claim that the book is a "fundamentally ethical object" without considering how the reader has interacted with the text within the book as well as the book itself. Nonetheless, the point is still, maybe, something to keep in mind, even if one does not agree. ( )

A collection of very short essays about books, bibliophilia, and bookselling. With nice illustrations by Line Hoven. Not particularly earth-shattering, but nice to sink into an armchair with for an afternoon's reading. ( )