SleuthSayers: “The Book as Object”

For my column at SleuthSayers this week, I talked about several small presses (prompted by Michael Dirda’s recent column in the Washington Post) and then about the book as object—books you value not just for the words inside but as physical objects: first editions, special editions, specific editions with some personal significance.

Here’s a sample from my post, elaborating on that central point above:

There are a couple of ways to think about books as objects, of course. A reader may well feel some sentimental attachment to a specific book. I still have, for example, an old “junior deluxe edition” of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which isn’t in terrific shape but which my mother read to/with me when I was a child. My tattered copy of the first volume of The Norton Anthology of American Literature never fails to transport me back into the classroom at my old boarding school, The Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia. And I treasure a copy of Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies not just because of the joy I take in reading it but also because it was a gift (Christmas? Valentine’s?) from an ex-girlfriend—to whom I gave a copy of another Gorey title as a present on the same day!

The book as object can be a container for memories, I guess that’s what I’m saying.

Interestingly, that ex-girlfriend was the one who first questioned why I enjoyed special editions of books: first editions, for example, or handsome special printings of some kind. Aren’t there the same words in a tattered paperback as in a pricey hardcover? And aren’t the words inside what matter?

Read the whole post here.

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