The subtitle on this one may be "the history and future of reading," but I think what it's actually about is something subtly different. It's the history (and present, and perhaps to some extent the future) of how we think about books and reading. There's a lot here, for instance, about the modern trend towards condemning reading from screens as inferior, as "not real reading" and as bad for our brains... but those condemnations look a lot different with some deeper historical perspective. "Real books," after all, were once the newfangled technology themselves, and reading novels was once condemned as bad for the brain and body in surprisingly similar terms. And did most people, most of the time, really ever read in the way we accuse screens of preventing us from doing now?

It's all really interesting, thoughtful stuff, and a very different take on bookish history than I'd seen before. ( )

"Every minute that you give to How Proust Can Change Your Life is a minute that you're not spending with Remembrance of Things Past."

p.140-1
This. Just substitute the titles with What We Talk About When We Talk About Books and ANY BOOK AT ALL.

This book = Leah Price spouting her opinions as facts. For example, on p. 158 when discussing biblioactivists' goal of exchanging books outside of the money economy (through barter or gifts), Price turns this into "one more instance of digital dwellers idealizing the special occasions on which they visit the world of print" by "declaring them too sacred to be bought and sold." Did she even consider that these biblioactivists might have completely different politics from her, which include subverting the money economy at every chance and for all products? There are so many other reasons why people might want to give books away for free or barter (including plain old community building) that have nothing to do with sanctifying books.

Also, I find it pretty rich that in a book that discusses the ever-changing view of books (they'll make you ill/insane turned to they'll cure what ails you), the author decides to declare that people over the age of 18 who read young adult books are "infantilized" and "regressing." Wow.

I guess I should just believe all of Price's slapped together opinions because, as she keeps mentioning, she's a book historian and a scholar. Blargh. ( )

I slow read this to start and then fast-read this to finish (primarily because its due back before today's opening at the Hershey Library). It is more a history of BOOKS and HOW and the PHYSICAL of books rather than the WHY, WHAT, or WHO of books.

There is a lot to unpack in this, and its done very well. This easily would be a 3.5 on LibraryThing where here I give it a 3. A lot of good information, a lot of fun snarkyness, and a lot of fun interesting side notes, anecdotes, and general facts and informative quips and nuggets of factoids. There is definitely a lot of good in this book and a lot of stuff to make you go "hmmm". It is interesting to see a history of books and how things went from animal skin to onion skin to paper, etc. And how that changed how books were made, why they were made, etc.

It also puts the constant (in this day and age) repeat of "digital media is killing books" into perspective. And as some of her stats and factoids show, this isn't the case, now or in previous few years, and most likely not (at least for now) for a while.

( )

In the end, this is a fascinating book. But for much of its length, this slender volume is far to discursive for my tastes. Professor Price is probably a charming and engaging teacher, but I find her most recent book to be wandering about.

Perhaps the problem is with my expectations. I thought the book would be tightly structured. Such a framework would help me see the connections that Professor Price was trying to make. But the chapters were not distinct enough from one another. Although the chapters dealt with different aspects of book history, I felt like I was reading the same chapter over and over.

In spite of my reaction, I think Professor Price makes some very good points about the history of reading and the history of the book as a physical object. I would recommend this book to people who prefer a more free-form discussion of this fascinating topic. ( )

Didn't much care for her writing style - a bit pompous in my view. I found it hard to clearly identify her thesis since she seemed to contradict herself from one chapter to the next. Also, her claim that mental health professionals, in recommending self-help books, have outsourced their work to librarians, completely neglects to mention that the same self help books are often written by other mental health professionals.

Not recommended. ( )