<![CDATA[The Book on the Bookshelf]]>

false <![CDATA[The Book on the Bookshelf]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171308307m/95979.jpg 95979 4 Consider the book. Though Goodnight Moon and Finnegans Wake differ considerably in content and intended audience, they do share some basic characteristics. They have pages, they're roughly the same shape, and whether in a bookstore, library, or private home, they are generally stored vertically on shelves. Indeed, this is so much the norm that in these days of high-tech printing presses and chain bookstores, it's easy to believe that the book, like the cockroach, remains much the same as it ever was. But as Henry Petroski makes abundantly clear in Book on the Bookshelf, books as we know them have had a long and complex evolution. Indeed, he takes us from the scroll to the codex to the hand-lettered illuminated texts that were so rare and valuable they were chained to lecterns to prevent theft. Along the way he provides plenty of amusing anecdotes about libraries (according to one possibly apocryphal account, the library at Alexandria borrowed the works of the great Greek authors from Athens, had them copied, and then sent the copies back, keeping the originals), book collectors, and the care of books. Book-lover though he may be, however, Henry Petroski is, first and foremost, an engineer and so, in the end, it is the evolution of bookshelves even more than of books that fascinates him. Pigeonholes for scrolls, book presses containing thousands of chained volumes, rotating lecterns that allowed scholars to peruse more than one book at a time--these are just a few of the ingenious methods readers have devised over the centuries for storing their books: "in cabinets beneath the desks, on shelves in front of them, in triangular attic-like spaces formed under the back-to-back sloped surfaces of desktops or small tabletop lecterns that rested upon a horizontal surface." Placing books vertically on shelves, spines facing outward, is a fairly recent invention, it would seem. Well written as it is, if Book on the Bookshelf were only about books-as-furniture, it would have little appeal to the general reader. Petroski, however, uses this treatise on design to examine the very human motivations that lie behind it. From the example of Samuel Pepys, who refused to have more titles than his library could hold (about 3,000), to an appendix detailing all the ways people organize their collections (by sentimental value, by size, by color, and by price, to name a few of the more unconventional methods), Petroski peppers his account with enough human interest to keep his audience reading from cover to cover. --Alix Wilber 1554589 book 1999 The Book on the Bookshelf total:114|5:16|4:40|3:43|2:11|1:4| 114 395 355 25 4 0 false false Sun Feb 15 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Oct 13 09:52:34 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 13 11:17:09 -0700 2009
This fascinating (although at times painfully slow) book explains the changes of reading material into bound books as we know them as well as how the...more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Jan 20 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 13 07:45:19 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 20 11:11:22 -0800 2009 The Book on the Bookshelf, it's the fact that no technology is so basic as to be self-evident. I always thought of the humble bookshelf as a foregone conclusion: faced with a bunch of narrow rectangular solids, it only makes sense to place ...more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 25 13:38:11 -0700 2007 Sun Nov 11 11:47:27 -0800 2007 Library: An Unquiet History (which I found deeply disappointing). In fact, in some ways, this, too, is a history of libraries, or more properly, library facilities, told from the point of view of the book and the bookshelf. My ...more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Jan 13 13:58:01 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 13 13:58:21 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Aug 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 03 19:47:20 -0700 2007 Sat Aug 15 17:08:37 -0700 2009 "This book began with a question: From where did the bookshelf and bookcase come? The question soon turned into a hypothesis: The bookcase evolved, as I believe all artifacts do, in response to real and perceived problems with existing technology....more...]]> 5 0 true false Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2003 Thu Jul 30 09:10:23 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 30 09:11:52 -0700 2009 1 more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Mar 12 15:40:36 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 12 15:40:36 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Sat Sep 12 18:54:31 -0700 2009 Sat Sep 12 19:02:05 -0700 2009 very in depth.]]> 2 0 false false Sat Dec 27 11:26:22 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 27 11:27:18 -0800 2008 0 0 false false Mon Sep 14 12:19:47 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 14 12:19:47 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun Jan 25 05:14:16 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 25 06:22:04 -0800 2009 2 0 false false Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Mon Feb 12 11:25:18 -0800 2007 Tue Sep 11 09:47:38 -0700 2007 more...]]> 0 0 false false Sat Aug 15 17:15:32 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 15 17:16:18 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Mon Dec 15 21:45:43 -0800 2008 Sun Oct 14 11:26:28 -0700 2007 Mon Dec 15 21:45:43 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jun 23 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 12 05:52:44 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 24 07:41:30 -0700 2009 If you're interested in books and the history of their development, this is a very good book. In rereading this book, I've just been pulled back into the details and fascinating history behind the everpresent bookshelf.

I'll admit there's a few lag points in the middle where the au...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Apr 06 21:17:29 -0700 2008 Wed Aug 06 15:16:39 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1 0 false false Sun Apr 05 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Feb 28 23:56:12 -0800 2009 Sun Apr 05 21:27:45 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Wed Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Mon Sep 10 15:13:01 -0700 2007 Mon Sep 10 15:15:45 -0700 2007 5 0 false false Mon Oct 06 14:51:54 -0700 2008 Mon Oct 06 14:52:51 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Sat Jun 02 21:06:31 -0700 2007 Sat Jun 02 21:07:36 -0700 2007 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=95979