Emma Smith

Our Long Love Affair with Books

Portable Magic

“All books are magic.  All books have agency and power in the real world, the power to summon demons and to dispatch them.”

I’m not the best of non-fiction readers; I tend to get bogged down very easily if it’s not of the most narrative, easy-reading variety.  I just prefer fiction.  When I read, I want to get lost in a story. But, there are exceptions.  I love books about books, and about how other people interact with books.  That’s why I decided to pick up this book.  Portable Magic is intellectually stimulating in the way that a very well written dissertation on an interesting topic is stimulating.  It’s incredibly informative, and intriguing in a very erudite way, but it’s not exactly light reading.  To be blunt, it’s painfully dense in places.  I wish it had been a bit lighter and more anecdotal, but I do feel like I learned a lot during my time with it.

“We are all made up of the books we have loved and, more, of the books we have owned, gifted, studied, revered, lived by, lost, thrown aside, dusted, argued over, learned by heart, borrowed and never returned, failed to finish and used as doorstops…”

<i>Portable Magic</i> is all about the reader’s relationship with books, as both conveyances of ideas as well as objects in and of themselves.  It dissects our collective love affair with books and looks at both the positive and negative connotations of that love.  It also addresses and digs into the “interconnectedness of book form and book content,” as well as the “reciprocity and proximity of books and their readers, in the relationships that leave both parties changed.”  In other words, it’s about the importance of books, inside and out, and how our relationship with books impacts not only us, but the books themselves.

“As books became part of human life, they began to change us.  They do not simply reflect us, but shape us, turning us into the readers they would like to have.”

“…a book becomes a book in the hands of its readers.  It is an interactive object.  A book that is not handled and read is not really a book at all.”

One of the major points of this book is how wildly we overvalue books as objects.  There have been people tried and giving wildly outlandish sentences for defacing books or book theft, to the point that their lives were forever ruined.  That’s utterly senseless.  A book is never more important than a person.  But then others go to the opposite extreme, seeking to eradicate books that contain stories or ideas by which they feel threatened or offended.  This eradication can range anywhere from censorship to book banning to the actual buying of books.  I’m not going to say that these are equally wrong, because people are alive and books are inanimate, but books and the thoughts they house do deserve to be defended.  A balance must be struck.

“Where men burn books / They will burn people also in the end.”

“Books last, and their long lives sometimes have unexpected consequences.”

The impact books have had on us, individually and collectively, over the ages is also discussed in depth in this book.  Our impact on books is also addressed.  We see how stories change as we do, and how stories change us.  We see how books in form have changed with the time, and how we have adapted our technology to continue paying homage to the biblioforms we love.  It’s a fascinating dichotomy with a variety of facets.  We also see how readers interact with authors through not just the consumption of their work, but by annotating and even writing fan-fiction based on the work.  Stories matter deeply to us and become part of our identity.  The way our love of said stories impact the form that houses them is also interesting.

“The book-human relationship is reciprocal: if we are made up of books, books are made up of us.  Books are deeply anthropomorphized.”

“…books are ordinary things that become special in the unpredictable and unique human connections they embody and extend.  We all encounter rare and valuable books all the time.”

While I found a lot of food for thought in this book, it was not at all an easy read.  It was dry, and dense, and overly erudite for a layman audience.  I can see this being wonderfully well received in the academic world, but I’m not sure how well it will do among the general populace, of which I am one.  I appreciated what I was learning, but I’m not sure how much of it will stick with me.  The academic tone and voice made it a bit of a slog to get through, and I found myself fighting against and urge to skim.  I’m glad to have read this, but I’m not sure it’s something I’ll ever revisit.

Celeste Richardson

“All books are magic.  All books have agency and power in the real world, the power to summon demons and to dispatch them.”

I’m not the best of non-fiction readers; I tend to get bogged down very easily if it’s not of the most narrative, easy-reading variety.  I just prefer fiction.  When I read, I want to get lost in a story. But, there are exceptions.  I love books about books, and about how other people interact with books.  That’s why I decided to pick up this book.  Portable Magic is intellectually stimulating in the way that a very well written dissertation on an interesting topic is stimulating.  It’s incredibly informative, and intriguing in a very erudite way, but it’s not exactly light reading.  To be blunt, it’s painfully dense in places.  I wish it had been a bit lighter and more anecdotal, but I do feel like I learned a lot during my time with it.

“We are all made up of the books we have loved and, more, of the books we have owned, gifted, studied, revered, lived by, lost, thrown aside, dusted, argued over, learned by heart, borrowed and never returned, failed to finish and used as doorstops…”

<i>Portable Magic</i> is all about the reader’s relationship with books, as both conveyances of ideas as well as objects in and of themselves.  It dissects our collective love affair with books and looks at both the positive and negative connotations of that love.  It also addresses and digs into the “interconnectedness of book form and book content,” as well as the “reciprocity and proximity of books and their readers, in the relationships that leave both parties changed.”  In other words, it’s about the importance of books, inside and out, and how our relationship with books impacts not only us, but the books themselves.

“As books became part of human life, they began to change us.  They do not simply reflect us, but shape us, turning us into the readers they would like to have.”

“…a book becomes a book in the hands of its readers.  It is an interactive object.  A book that is not handled and read is not really a book at all.”

One of the major points of this book is how wildly we overvalue books as objects.  There have been people tried and giving wildly outlandish sentences for defacing books or book theft, to the point that their lives were forever ruined.  That’s utterly senseless.  A book is never more important than a person.  But then others go to the opposite extreme, seeking to eradicate books that contain stories or ideas by which they feel threatened or offended.  This eradication can range anywhere from censorship to book banning to the actual buying of books.  I’m not going to say that these are equally wrong, because people are alive and books are inanimate, but books and the thoughts they house do deserve to be defended.  A balance must be struck.

“Where men burn books / They will burn people also in the end.”

“Books last, and their long lives sometimes have unexpected consequences.”

The impact books have had on us, individually and collectively, over the ages is also discussed in depth in this book.  Our impact on books is also addressed.  We see how stories change as we do, and how stories change us.  We see how books in form have changed with the time, and how we have adapted our technology to continue paying homage to the biblioforms we love.  It’s a fascinating dichotomy with a variety of facets.  We also see how readers interact with authors through not just the consumption of their work, but by annotating and even writing fan-fiction based on the work.  Stories matter deeply to us and become part of our identity.  The way our love of said stories impact the form that houses them is also interesting.

“The book-human relationship is reciprocal: if we are made up of books, books are made up of us.  Books are deeply anthropomorphized.”

“…books are ordinary things that become special in the unpredictable and unique human connections they embody and extend.  We all encounter rare and valuable books all the time.”

While I found a lot of food for thought in this book, it was not at all an easy read.  It was dry, and dense, and overly erudite for a layman audience.  I can see this being wonderfully well received in the academic world, but I’m not sure how well it will do among the general populace, of which I am one.  I appreciated what I was learning, but I’m not sure how much of it will stick with me.  The academic tone and voice made it a bit of a slog to get through, and I found myself fighting against and urge to skim.  I’m glad to have read this, but I’m not sure it’s something I’ll ever revisit.

Portable Magic Our Long Love Affair with Books

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