Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers

by Emma Smith

A history of one of humankind’s most resilient and influential technologies over the past millennium—the book.

Stephen King once said that books are “a uniquely portable magic.” Here, Emma Smith takes readers on a literary adventure that spans centuries and circles the globe to uncover the reasons behind our obsession with this captivating object.

From disrupting the Western myth that the Gutenberg Press was the original printing project, to the decorative gift books that radicalized women to join the anti-slavery movement, to paperbacks being weaponized during World War II, to a book made entirely of plastic-wrapped slices of American cheese, Portable Magic explores how, when, and why books became so iconic. It’s not just the content within a book that compels; it’s the physical material itself, what Smith calls “bookhood”: the smell, the feel of the pages, the margins to scribble in, the illustrations on the jacket, its solid heft. Every book is designed to influence our reading experience—to enchant, enrage, delight, and disturb us—and our longstanding love affair with books in turn has had direct, momentous consequences across time.

Revelatory and entertaining in equal measure, Portable Magic will charm and challenge literature lovers of all kinds as it illuminates the transformative power and eternal appeal of the written word.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Books About Books, Audiobook, Literature, Writing, Historical

312 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 28, 2022

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

EMMA SMITH was born in Cornwall in 1923 and was privately educated. In 1939 she took her first job in the Records Department of the War Office before volunteering for work on the canals; this gave her the material for Maidens' Trip (1948), which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. She spent the winter of 1946-7 with a documentary film unit in India and then lived in Paris and wrote The Far Cry (1949), awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the best novel of the year in English. In 1951 Emma Smith married and had two children. After her husband's death in 1957 she went to live in rural Wales; she then published very successful children's books, short stories (one of which was runner-up in the 1951 Observer short story competition that launched the winner, Muriel Spark, on her career) and, in 1978, her novel The Opportunity of a Lifetime. Since 1980 she has lived in Putney in south-west London.

Note: Information taken from Persephone Press site: http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/page...

Reviews

[Rachel (not currently receiving notifications) Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I primarily read fiction I doubt there are many book lovers who could resist a book about all things bookish and more specifically the history of the book in human hands. This book is exactly that and traces development from pre-Gutenberg times through to ebooks and includes details on everything from production, censorship, book burning, malicious damage of library books and book collecting. As Emma Smith states, “books are ordinary things that become special in the unpredictable and unique human connections they embody and extend”, but there is no doubt that form matters. Although when we talk about books we emphasise how they made us feel and what they made us think as opposed to how they felt, quite often the content is inseparable from the form in which we first encountered them (probably best evidenced by our connection with the books of our childhood).

Having seen incredibly favourable reviews of Portable Magic in two broadsheet newspapers I was eager to immerse myself in the contents which sounded like the perfect book to dip into, with chapters that standalone and do not need to be read in a specific order. The book is jam-packed with fascinating snippets and facts about the history of all things bookish and its scope is phenomenal. Indeed for a mainstream general reader I felt it needed to be pared back somewhat because frankly the prose is so free-ranging that I found it all rather dizzying! Chapters start and seem to lurch at breakneck speed through a thousand topics and by the time I reached the end I found I had lost sight of where it all started out. Emma Smith is clearly fiercely intelligent and there is no doubt that she writes well and in a lively manner which I enjoyed for the most part, but if she had only stayed a little more on-topic I expect I would have found the contents a whole lot more accessible.

Whilst Portable Magic is undoubtedly a valuable resource for any bookshelf, as a regular reader and not an academic, I found it too discursive and a bit all over the shop! Terrific content but it is not the easiest read and I would be hard pushed to recommend it for the average keen fiction reader. Notes on each chapter with further references are included along with an index.

[Книжкові історії · Rating 5 out of 5]

У 2025 році в січні виповнилося 100 років з дня публікації роману Ф. Скотта Фіцджеральда «Великий Гетсбі». Тому ловіть тематичний цікавий факт:

Кілька днів тому я дізналася з книжки «Кишенькова магія», що насправді, коли цей роман тільки вийшов, його зустріли дуже неоднозначно. Хтось казав, що це найгірша книжка автора, але були й ті, хто відгукувався схвально.

Проте роман, продавався погано, і в 1940 році, в рік смерті Фіцджеральда, роялті склали $13…

Друге життя роману дав проєкт «Видання для Збройних сил». Вони надрукували 155 тисяч примірників у кишеньковому форматі й роздали військовим на фронті. Так роман знайшов нову заповзяту аудиторію, завдяки якій «Великий Гетсбі» і сьогодні залишається кульовим.

Таких цікавих фактів там дуже багато!

Це книжка про книжки як фізичне втілення людської історії. Дуже незвичний погляд, мені сподобалося!

P.S. так мило у «Лабораторії» перегукуються три книги навколо теми «Видання для Збройних сил»: «Кишенькова магія», ще один нон-фікшн «Книги на війні» і художня «Бібліотека спалених книг» 🥰

[Celeste · Rating 3 out of 5]

“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…”

Portable Magic 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.

[Crystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non-Fiction>History, 312 pages (about half are the 'real' content), published 2022

My overall take on this is that it is a great book about books. So this is literally about the written and published thing that is a book-not about content or story flow or plotlines, but about printed and bound books and the cultural interaction with them.

This is certainly an informative and interesting read, but I do wish the whole chapters weren't centered around very specific examples of the author's point. It's not terribly long, so to do justice to the history of every part of the book she would likely have needed more space, so it is not very deep on any one subtopic/chapter but at the same time is fairly deep on the one aspect in each chapter she chooses to go into. For example, she talks in Chapter 5 about the makings of a 'classic' but spends far too much time going on and on about Rachel Carson's Silent Spring as if there aren't 100 other classics to delve into.

The author states that she intends each chapter to stand alone and the reader can read them in any order according to the topic of interest. She has notes throughout the text that such-and-so is further discussed in Chapter # for further reading on it.

I would recommend this to anyone interested in knowing more about the history of book publishing technology or that enjoys reading books about books. The topics covered are varied and include the Gutenberg Bible, WWII Armed Service Edition books, gifting books, posing with books in portraits/pictures pre-smart phone, collecting books, religion's influence on the format, book burning, censorship, libraries, Hitler, choose your own adventure and various format variations, the deeper meaning of the physical copy of a book, and different binding materials (including human skin).

"What makes the master the master, and the pupil the pupil, is their ept or inept use of the book: it is the object that secures their relative positions. It is an active agent of social differentiation, conferring status upon its handler."

"They are, as Stephen King puts it in his terrific memoir, On Writing, from which I have taken my title, “a uniquely portable magic.” And a book’s magic always inheres in its form, including that portability, as much as in its content."

"To understand our long love affair with the book, we need to recognize its dark side. This is a relationship in which each partner has the capacity to abuse the other: books can crack our spines, loosen our leaves, mark us with their dirty fingers, and write in our margins just as much as we can theirs."

"The 1820s was the decade in which exchanging Christmas presents went mainstream. Books were in the vanguard of this commercial assault..."

"A surprising number of photographic shoots of Monroe depict her reading."

"However ordinary, books still retain an aura, a vitality, that is always in excess of their actual contents."

"But it is worth remembering amid our careful curation of books on our own shelves and in libraries that it is the fate of most books to be destroyed, one way or another..."

"Wheatley was a literary prodigy who, like 6 million others in the age of slavery, had been taken from Africa in childhood. She was sold in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1761. She became the first person of African descent to publish a book in the English language..."

"I thought I would stay away from the existential question “What is a book?” In part this is because the answer is usually either reasonably uncontentious or insufferably pretentious."

[Ria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely adored this although at times the author and my principles didn't exactly coincide.
The main point being all the discussion about book burning, using them for art work and the fact books are replaceable hence less important than humans.
Hello, humans wrote them so it makes them important, plus as I'm anti social and my human contact is derived from book reading to me books are far more important in my life than people.
But semantics and differences of opinion aside this was an absolutely fascinating and exhaustively researched read.
I loved the author's, at times witty style and the epilogue and thank you to the reader for reading her work was quite emotive and nearly had me in tears, to think as she described my DNA is now embedded in her book purely by my touch and reading it, that is such an obvious and simple fact that I had just never thought of before but it's a beautiful idea, I am a part of every book I read and they are a part of me.
The historical aspect of this was incredible, such a wealth of detail from the first pamphlets, books and scrolls either written or printed, even a detailed analysis of the Gutenberg bible.
Even down to such modern day technology, kindle, audio, authors and books like Harry Potter, Fifty shades, all manner of reading and its ephemera are discussed, whether considered "trash" reading or high brow works of literature.
Then there was the chapters on art installations involving books, even books made of cheese, works of art depicting books, which of course sent this sad old bookworm down a rabbit hole of researching and googling!
This was just a pure delight to any bibliophile as all topics and areas of books, their history, their authors, their magic is explored, how can any true reader fail to be enchanted by this?

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an enjoyable miscellany of aspects of books and reading. It travels roughly forwards through time (with some meandering in each chapter) from the Gutenberg Bible through the years of banned books and book burning to modern concepts such as the non-book (from a biscuit tin to 20 slices of mortadella) and the rise in e-readers and audiobooks.

Lots of fun with snappy facts and thoughtful analyses side by side. Smith is an academic and she sometimes brings an academic eye to her issues - e.g metafiction or book architecture - but also has a wealth of cultural anecdotes and a variety of examples to back up her points, from Joe Orton’s ‘vandalism’ of library books to the treatment of an early African-American poet, Phyllis Wheatley. I also liked the chapter on definitions of a book - I would have expected this at the beginning but it actually worked quite well near the end to back up the points being made earlier - and loved the idea of the word ‘tomicide’ as a killer of books (or tomes).

I listened to the audiobook read by the author and her clear warm voice was very easy to listen to, although she could have delivered the jokes with more oomph as her sly wit sometimes got lost in the delivery. Overall very entertaining, a book you could dip into or read all the way through, and with plenty to delight and provoke the bookish reader.

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a weird but interesting non-fic about (physical) books. I read it as a part of the monthly reading for September 2023 at Non Fiction Book Club group.

This book is all over the place, it is like browsing a Wikipedia and following every second link. This can give you a lot of information, but it will be very broad. For example, this book starts with a fairy tale about wizard’s apprentice, I guess the most commonly known from Disney’s 40s interpretation, but the author more cares about the formal appearance of the magic volume (with clasps!) and the moral of the original tale. From the tale the author jumps to the famous ‘first printed book’ the Gutenberg Bible, giving interesting details (like the book was in two colors, the other added by hand) and showing that its primary is a myth for European enlightenment – Asia actually had both movable fonts and other printing novelties first, but they were ‘forgotten’ by Europeans, who tried to back their technological dominance. The book jumps both forward in time to WW1 and WW2 mass books to Allied soldiers, and backward to the early CE Rome and shift to book-like codex from scrolls… then investigating questions from who gets royalties from Hitler’s book to what were real books bonded with human skin, how censorship and book burning affected books, etc., etc.

There are a lot of interesting facts, even if sadly the book chiefly deals with western Europe and the US, not a global coverage.

[Iryna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Більше відгуків на моєму каналі https://youtube.com/@yellowbooknook?s...

Це одна з найкращих книг на тему історії читання і книг, що коли небудь зі мною траплялися. Єдиний хто може скласти достойну конкуренцію пані Еммі Сміт - Альберто Мангель, але його роботи ще не перекладено українською.
Ще одна перевага роботи пані Сміт над текстом пана Мангеля - в неї значно більше концентрація фактів і менше звернень до особистого досвіду.

Рекомендую всім, хто цікавиться темою. Кількість підкреслень і стікерів в книзі зашкалює🙂‍↕️

[Óscar Moreno (OscarBooker) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este es un bello libro sobre libros que nos cuenta diferentes relatos de éste pero desde la perspectiva como objeto: libros talismanes, impresión, religión, arte, objeto de poder, etc.

Creo que si eres un amante de los libros este vale la pena pues está lleno de datos interesantes que no te van a defraudar.

Veámoslo como un primo de “El infinito en un junco” pues siempre habrá algo que te va a sorprender.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smith is telling us about the actual physicality of books. "Form matters.... [This] is a book about books, rather than words." She makes the case that, for example, the advent of the Armed Services Edition of a variety of works enhanced the appeal of paperbacks for all, implying even, perhaps, that paperbacks were even more democratizing than the invention of movable type. She also points out the negative uses of books, for example as propaganda in Europe after WWII. (Which, I dunno, is that really such a "dark" thing?)

I'm still only about 70 pp. in so we'll see. But the point I'm making right now is that one does not need to read the book so carefully as an argument, to decide whether Smith has enough evidence, or to judge whether she makes her case clearly. One can also read this as a simple collection of interesting facts, almost like a trivia book. So far I'm enjoying it both ways, kinda....
---
About halfway. Too much interesting trivia. Why did Henry Stanley burn a volume of Shakespeare? Read the book and find out!

Also interesting arguments. Smith denies the validity of the aphorism from Hienrich Heine "Where men burn books, / They will burn people also in the end." She summarizes by saying, "... burning a book is irrelevant. Where people burn books, they are usually inadequate attention-seekers rather than genocidal tyrants. In the end, books are not people, and it is morally repugnant to bracket their destruction together in the same breath." I say, she's not entirely wrong. But it's a very slippery slope, and one I believe we are sliding down now, in 2025.

Too much to quote (and explain) from the chapter "Library books, camp, and malicious damage," but it was a fascinating chapter and worth the whole book, imo. (The chapters can be read in any order - they're more like essays).

On censorship, how the US was banning books despite claiming that we were better than Germany for having freedom of the press, freedom to read, interesting. Also, the more recent awfulness against books for children is clearly being undertaken by the ignorant: "One complaint stated that libraries should not 'put books in a child's hand that require discussion.'" Wtf?!

I do agree that classics tend to get dusty, and therefore that to call Silent Spring a classic endangers it of becoming dusty, even though it's still all too relevant.

There are here lots of book titles I'm investigating, but most are not leading me to add to my to-read lists, so I won't bore you with them.

There are lots of terrific bits of trivia, not not-so-trivial bits. I can't share them all. One I can't resist is re' The Macklin Bible - it encouraged extra-illustration aka grangerization. Buyer, iiuc, adds illustrative pages before the tome is bound. Like a spiral-bound cookbook with room to add your own recipes or notes, but even niftier.

"Roger Stoddard reminds us that 'whatever they may do, authors do not write books,' a formulation that redirects the book as the product of material artisanal, rather than verbally creative, labor. Stoddard's initially counterintuitive formulation is helpful in showing how in conventional book production there is a decisive separation of roles between the author preparing the text and the editor, designers, printers, and so on preparing the book."

So, yes, overall I do highly recommend this book, and its content. I found it fascinating all through, reading it a chapter at a time, and I bet most of you would find plenty of value & interest even if you only skim. But the author has a lovely voice so I'd like you to consider reading it (or listening to it) with care.

[CHORNOBROVA KAROOKA · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10

Про що «Кишенькова магія»?

⏺Про те, що скільки б емоцій чи знань не приносив нам зміст книги, форма все ж має значення. Тут йдеться про книжки як про матеріальні об'єкти, чиї розмір, шрифт, палітурка чи ілюстрації впливають на досвід читання.

⏺Про те, як розвивались книжки і яку історію вони проживали - від першої друкованої книги (яка насправді була не такою вже і першою) до «Кіндла», включаючи все, що було між ними - цензура та книгоспалення, Мерилін та «Улісс», виробництво книжок, «Майн Кампф», псування бібліотечних книг, подарункові видання та колекціонування, книги-талісмани, «Видання для Збройних сил» та відповідь на запитання «так що ж таке книга?».

✨ Мені сподобалось, що у кожного розділу є назва, яка відображає те, про що в ньому йтиметься. Крім того, розділи не пов’язані між собою, тому цю книжку можна читати з середини, з кінця чи з самого початку - починаючи з теми, яка зацікавить вас найбільше.

✨ Однак, варто зазначити, що в той час як тут насправді багато цікавої, корисної, аргументованої інформації, це не найлегша для читання книжка.
Іноді складалось враження, що авторка так хоче розповісти про все і нічого не забути, що починаючи говорити про щось одне, вона з шаленою швидкістю перемикалась на щось інше, тож іноді складно було встежити за її думкою. Тому читала я досить довго.

Втім, якщо вас цікавлять книжки - їхня історія, форма і те, як змінювались стосунки книжок і читачів з часом, можете звернути увагу на «Кишенькову магію», тут багато цікавинок.

[Jo_Scho_Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up. A fascinating insight into the history of books. From the start of their creation to the current day, Portable Magic explores and considers the evolving history of books and readers’ relationships with them. Split into 16 chapters the author has crafted a book you can dip in and out of at your own leisure.

Exceptionally well written, it’s a highly intelligent collection of statistical data, references and musings over the history of books. While I did find some parts interesting, a lot felt a little too high brow for me. The most appropriate word I could find to describe this book would be scholarly. More often than not I felt like I was reading a dissertation. The author is clearly an expert in her field and for academics with an interest in literature this would be a fascinating book, but for me it was a bit too much of a challenge.

[Pia Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fucking delight. Emma Smith isn’t just an incredible academic but also incredibly funny and insightful. I did not expect for this particular book to make me cry but here we are. Sorry not sorry to all my friends who will now be forced to read this book (any upcoming birthday gifts are sorted ✔️) or at the very least be forced to hear me gush about it at length. The audiobook version is read by the author and I could (and now have) listen to her for hours.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“All books are magic. All books have agency and power in the real world, the power to summon demons and to dispatch them ... While some books do have old-master price tags, really, books are ordinary things that become special in the unpredictable and unique human connections they embody and extend.”

From the Gutenberg Bible, scrolls and wax tablets to Kindle this book examines, through an array of examples, the book as a physical object and the complex ways in which our relationship with books has changed across time.

The topics covered are broad. The book in wartime, for the entertainment and education of the soldier to aiding the process of denazification. Book burning and censorship. The first issue of book tokens – the historical gift card, and the experimental works that have deliberately played with structure and form across time – from Tristram Shandy to choose your own adventure. To name but a few.

A great book to dip in and out of and although not all was new to me, it was fascinating to read another perspective on the book across history. I am still shaking my head as I reflect on subjects including anthropodermic binding, the traces we leave on the physical object of the book, and that there are people “one” can employ to customise the covers of your books and the colours on your shelves to match your décor! By far my favourite chapter was the last – What is a book? You might be surprised that the answer may not be as simple as you think.

[Natalie Mayer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the sound of this book, the history of books isn't something I know much about. However, upon reading it, it's just so heavy going that I couldn't read more than a few pages at a time. I love non-fiction books and for my job I read scientific papers on a regular basis, but this was so much more difficult to read than scientific papers! There are so many long words that I've never heard before, breaking the flow of the narrative, and it just feels like the author is trying to convince you that she knows so much more about this than you do (which she obviously does). I think it was Einstein who said once 'you don't really understand something until you can explain it simply', and that feels true with this book - there's no doubting the amount of research which has gone into preparing it, but it wasn't conveyed in an easy-to-understand way. The best thing about it was finding a typo which gave the age of someone on the Titanic as 314!

[Kirsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dazzling celebration of books as physical objects, Portable Magic is itself a love letter to the medium it explores. Smith takes us on an enlightening journey through the history, power, and significance of books as objects - from their size and shape to their smell and cultural impact. This isn't just another book about the joy of reading; it's a fascinating exploration of books as tangible artifacts that shape our world.

Pros:
- Accessible writing
- Fresh perspectives on our paper friends
- Historical insights
- Clever structure and engaging narrative voice
- Perfect balance of depth and readability
- Challenges how we think about books themselves

Cons:
- Some readers might want more focus on content than form
- could be longer, a tome of tomes
(that’s all I got, it’s a stimulating book!)

Rating ★★★★★ (5/5 stars)

Portable Magic transforms how you'll think about every book you pick up. I feel like from now on I will be less judgemental to those that maul and mark their books, we all commune with them in our own way. Essential reading for bibliophiles, but elegantly written and full of fascinating details that it will enchant anyone interested in how books shape our culture and imagination.

[Paulina Frankiewicz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Świetna czytelnicza przygoda, która w odróżnieniu od znanych mi książek o książkach podkreślała ich wyjątkowość z uwagi na formę, nie treść, a także wyjątkowość będąca efektem tego, co z danym egzemplarzem zrobi czytelniczka.
Czuć świeżość tej opowieści (pisanej w lockdownie i uwzględniającej doświadczenie pandemii jako doświadczenie czytelnicze), doceniam autorsko wybrane wątki. Napisana z werwą i na luzie.
Acha, i nie wiem, jak można aż tak bardzo spaskudzić okładkę książki o książkowości. Straszna lipa z tą polską okładką.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book! Incredibly insightful, joyous, surprising, readable! Books and their readers really are fascinating species!

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Portable Magic.

I love to read.

Those words seem inadequate to describe how much I love to read, but it's true. I'd rather read than watch a movie sometimes.

I read pretty much anywhere; on my commute, on line at the bank or supermarket, the back of the cereal box at breakfast; during lunch, and if I finish my book on my commute, I read the advertisements in the subway car.

I love to read, learn and discover new things.

The author's essays on what makes a book, its potency and magic, how it influences religions, political events, even ourselves, is a fascinating and thought provoking read.

The tone of the writing was drier than I expected, with a few jokes thrown in for levity, but I learned so much, not least of all that printed material was long established before Gutenberg.

I really like the word 'bookhood,' just one of many words I picked up from reading this.

Ultimately, a book changes the reader, inspires and affects you in a myriad of ways, and after you've finished it and pass it on to someone else to share, all the better.

[Ashley Lambert-Maberly · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a history of books as objects, not the history of literature or writing, which seemed like it might be a fun change of pace. Unfortunately it all seemed rather scattershot, zipping from one fact to another, rather than telling an engaging story ... as if I were reading hundreds of magazine sidebars in a row. Nonetheless I was nearly 90% finished—then she devoted an entire chapter on the disturbing subject of books bound in human skin, with lots of specifics (e.g. what unfortunate person, what part of the anatomy, who did it to them, etc.) and I'd had finally had enough. I can handle 'a bit boring' but I don't need to read 'actively disturbing.'

(Note: I'm a writer, so I suffer when I offer fewer than five stars. But these aren't ratings of quality, they're a subjective account of how much I liked the book: 5* = an unalloyed pleasure from start to finish, 4* = enjoyed it, 3* = readable but not thrilling, 2* = disappointing, and 1* = hated it.)

[Bryen Fabry Dorsam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored this book. It’s a true book lover’s book from front to back, full of fascinating history, insightful meditations, and sharp wit. Emma is, as always, a perfect guide – a warm and friendly presence with a hatful of knowledge. Humble, earnest, and well-grounded, she walks us through a subject that could easily teeter into buttoned-up academic philosophizing, or, on the other hand, wistful sentimentality. Instead, we are invited into a compelling history compellingly told, with detours through the pre-Gutenberg print shops of the Middle East, Marilyn Monroe’s bedroom, the trenches of World War I, the digital e-book marketplace, and the very bottom of the ocean.

[Becky Loader · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a quilter, I am a fabric snob.
As a dog aficionado, I am a dog snob.
As a reader, I am a book snob.
Emma Smith makes me look like a rank amateur.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emma Smith's Portable Magic is, as she says near the end, 'about books as objects, not as works'. It's deliberately written as a series of non-chronological episodes in book history; Smith writes 'I hope that the chapters can be read in any order, depending on whether you think you are interested in Madame du Pompadour or the Gutenberg Bible, school library censorship or queer collage'. This means that Smith is writing far outside the bounds of her own specialism (she is an early modernist, a professor in Shakespeare Studies at Oxford), which is a brave task to take on. Inevitably, also, readers will find themselves more engaged by some chapters than others, depending on what most appeals to them.

I thought that Portable Magic worked best when Smith found a single focus but then managed to bound across time and space to explore the significance of that book or mode of reading. The first chapter, on the Gutenberg Bible, is an excellent example, digging down into why it has become such a talismanic object in Western Christian culture, even for the non-religious (there's a great analysis of the guy who totes a Gutenberg Bible around in The Day After Tomorrow). Smith jumps back to second-century China to emphasise that Gutenberg, contrary to popular myth, was not the first book, and explores how Gutenberg's company printed these Bibles as a propaganda response to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. A later chapter, on 'choose-your-own-adventure' books, is just as good: Smith explores Lady Bradshaigh's annotations on Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1747-8), where she not only edited the book throughout but wrote out her preferred ending on its blank endpapers, but also takes in modern gamebooks and the computer game Myst.

Where Portable Magic was less successful, for me, was in chapters that had a stronger academic focus on a single issue, which made it less fun to read, although often very informative. To be fair, these chapters are fewer in number than the kind of chapters I enjoyed, and so this didn't make a big impact on my overall impression of the book. However, these chapters also expose Smith more, opening up the potential holes in her expertise (holes that are completely understandable when you're trying to cover so much, but can be frustrating). There's a real clanger for historians of childhood right at the end, when Smith not only repeats the long-debunked claim that 'children were... considered small adults' before the eighteenth century, but suggests that early 'children's books' from the 1750s were part of the recognition of this new stage of human life, as they both 'established and met' children's needs. Having read Teresa Michals's excellent Books for Children, Books for Adults: Age and the Novel from Defoe to James, I'd suggest that she has this the wrong way round; as Michals argues, it was the emergence of books intended specifically for adult readers in the nineteenth century that was the real innovation. When early 'children's books' started to be published, the novel was still aimed at a mixed-age audience.

Nevertheless, I'd recommend Portable Magic; it's readable, interesting and lively, and the eclectic mix of topics means you're likely to find something that catches your attention.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for review. It's been shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2023.

[Jamele (BookswithJams) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a fascinating book, this is literally a book about the history of books and I really enjoyed it. Emma Smith takes us on the journey of how books became so iconic, how they pass from person to person and how we leave a part of our DNA on each one so that it is different when we leave it than when we first got it. How some are comfortable with dog earing the pages (GAH) or using bookmarks, how certain types of books are preferred to others (paperbacks vs hardbacks), how they are shelved (by color, by author, etc.) and how all of this passion has led to ridiculous opinions such as book banning, book burning, and other crazy things ever since they have been around it seems.

I read this via audio and was glad I did, this was thoroughly enjoyable and I am happy to have a finished copy on my shelves. A huge thank you to Knopf for the gorgeous edition to review and keep.

[Candace · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded up. Some interesting content! Less focused in the second half.

[Nadia · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب عن الكتب الورقية كسحر يمكن حمله بين اليدين من غوتنبرغ الى الان .

[Jorge Zuluaga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una ecléctica colección de ensayos sobre los libros y sus historias.

Confieso que me acerque a este libro atraído por la posibilidad de encontrar en él una especie de continuación de "El infinito en un junco" de Irene Vallejo o de "La ruta del conocimiento" de Violet Moller, libros que adoré al instante.

Si bien "Magia portátil" no tiene la calidad literaria del texto de Vallejo, o la profundidad histórica del libro de Moller (de allí viene que no lo califique con 5 estrellas), es cierto que a través de 15 historias independientes, Emma Smith efectivamente amplio, para mí, y creo que para las personas amantes de los libros y su historia, algunas de las historias de los libros que encontramos en los textos antes mencionados. Lo hace especialmente, y como mencione en la primera línea de esta reseña, de forma ecléctica; con un enfoque muy original que hace de esas historias verdaderos textos por leer.

Una de las mejores característica del texto es que cada ensayo puede leerse independientemente, lo que lo convierte en un excelente "libro de compañía".

Me gustaron especialmente los ensayos "Los inicios" (el primero), que, como era de esperar, abre el libro con la Historia de los primeros libros impresos por Gutenberg y las verdaderas motivaciones de la empresa; "La reina Victoria en las Trincheras" dedicado a los libros de bolsillo, los verdaderos, los originales, es decir, los que llevaban los soldados a las trincheras de la Gran Guerra; "Mi lucha: ¿libertad para publicar?" sobre la Historia del infausto libro de Hitler, cómo se escribió, publicó, prohibió, para después volver a circular libremente como lo está haciendo en el presente; "Jugarse la piel", dedicado a los libros que fueron empastados con pieles humanas, en especial la tétrica historia de libros sobre personas esclavizadas que fueron empastados con sus propias pieles; y "¿Qué es un libro?" en el que la autora intenta dar una definición a un objeto que todos reconocemos sin dudar pero que en la era de la desmaterialización del mundo empezamos a confundir con otros productos digitales.

Pero esta corta selección no hace justica a una lista mucho más larga de datos curiosos e historias desconocidas que descubrí a lo largo del libro. Así por ejemplo, el concepto de shelfie, es decir, la costumbre de pintarse o tomarse fotos con libros o bibliotecas, que me llevo, por un lado, a descubrir la maravillosa imagen de Marilyn Monroe leyendo El Ulises de Joyce, y por el otro ponerle nombre a una práctica hoy muy común en la era de las redes sociales y de los eventos en línea (yo mismo me confieso participante del fenómeno). Con "Magia Portátil" redescubrí el clásico del movimiento ambientalista "Primavera Silenciosa", que me he puesto como meta leer muy pronto, y del que la autora cuenta su historia asombrosa de éxito editorial, pero también de influencia social. ¿Sabían que "Biblia" es el plural de libros en griego "biblio"?, es decir, una traducción más correcta para el nombre de esta compilación de textos sería, "Los Libros", "Las Biblia", o "Los Biblio". En el libro aprendí también el perverso papel que jugo el indispensable invento (o redescubrimiento en Europa) de la imprenta para los proyectos coloniales europeos, con su visión del mundo como compuesto de un lado civilizado, leído, poseedor de libros y escritos y uno salvaje, analfabeta y pagano que necesitaba recibir "la palabra". No sabía tampoco que durante mucho tiempo la virgen María fue representada en la iconografía de occidente y en el momento de la anunciación, leyendo; esto porque en los evangelios apócrifos (excluidos de las Biblia durante la edad media), María llevaba una vida monástica que incluía la lectura como preparación para su apoteosis futura ¡Hágame el favor!. En el texto aprendí también que la "bibliomanía" es una conducto egosintónica, es decir que no se percibe como problemática por coincidir con la propia visión del mundo.

Por el lado negativo, no les puedo decir que el libro sea de esos que te sientas a leer con ansiedad o que no puedes abandonar una vez comienzas. Algunos de los ensayos tienen apartes verdaderamente soporíferos, algunos con referencias culturales muy específicas y otras demasiado generales.

Aún así y como sucede con muchos libros que las personas tendemos a abandonar en el primer pasaje pesado, a la larga el libro deja "un buen sabor de boca", o debería decir mejor, un buen recuerdo de hipocampo.

Para cerrar me gustaría señalar que la autora presenta, como mencione antes, en el ensayo final una exploración de la definición de lo qué es realmente un libro. Me gusto mucho su definición pero dejaré que la descubran por su cuenta.

[S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the information that was given to me during the book. I’m not a big non fiction reader so that’s why it’s 2.5 stars. It was a bit redundant in information but I enjoyed it for what it was. I learned a lot of new things but it also confirmed knowledge I already knew.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Portable Magic is a fascinating, in-depth examination of books as physical objects, from their earliest incarnation as collections of scrolls or wax tablets to modern paperbacks and, yes, ebooks.  The blurb gives you an idea of the breadth of the book’s subject matter and this review would itself be as long as a book if I mentioned everything of interest I found within its pages. Therefore, I’ve confined myself to picking out a few things that caught my eye in various chapters.

Precursors to the paperback were softback editions designed especially for the armed forces that would fit neatly into the pocket of a uniformAnnuals and highly decorated gift books were the first commercial products designed to be given away by the purchaserBook tokens emerged to alleviate the ‘stress’ of choosing books as gifts‘Shelfies’ have a long history with figures such as Madame de Pompadour being depicted holding books or with books in the background. Marilyn Monroe was famously photographed holding a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses that it looks like she’s a fair way through.There is ‘a gestural vocabulary’ associated with handling books, e.g. turning pages from the corner far edge, using a finger or marker to refer to different points, flexing a spine to make it stay open.Book burning has taken place for purposes other than censorship including as part of waste management, at the hands of a book’s author, for publicity or as part of a ritual.As the case of Lady Chatterley’s Lover showed, efforts to ban books are often good for sales.Books can have a talismanic quality. During the First World War, steel covered Bibles designed to be carried in the breast pocket were widely advertised as gifts for servicemen.Bibliomancy is the act of opening a book at random for prophetic wisdom.When we read a book, thousands of microscopic particles of our DNA rub off on its pages. ‘Inside each book, there is a miniscule, uncatalogued but carefully preserved library of its human handlers.’E-readers, the author argues, want to be books. ‘Text is presented in vertical orientation (an e-reader is portrait, rather than landscape, in format), pages are flipped from right to left to move sequentially through the text and there is a facility to bookmark or underline particular passages.’

Those of us for whom books play a significant part in our lives will surely identify with the following passage. ‘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 or to raise a computer monitor.’

The fact that nearly fifty pages are taken up with notes and index demonstrates that Portable Magic is the product of extensive research. Although there were one or two points where there was perhaps a little too much detail, I found Portable Magic an absolutely fascinating read.

[Mha · Rating 1 out of 5]

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