Status Updates From I troppi libri. Leggere e p...

"the book as commercial product did away with the book as sacred object. But did it really? ... To have at home and at hand what once could only be viewed in the temple is a great boon for demand, because books embody all the prestige of the temple. Democratic desacralization flourishes like simony: it allows the selling of something priceless. It doesn’t do away with sacred books; it causes them to multiply."

The end of books has been predicted many times, usually via replacement by a newer, flashier media. However, as Zaid states repeatedly, most media is expensive enough that it needs advertising to help pay for it. Books are cheap enough that they only need an audience of hundreds to exist. The main obstacle to reading is not lots of expensive equipment, but the level of skill where reading isn't a mental slog.

'It is worth asking, in the first place, whether all books need or deserve a mass readership. The immense majority of books are not written for large audiences, nor do they need them in order to make money. At the other extreme, some bad books reach huge audiences, comparable to or larger than those reached by the press, radio, or television, though this in no way makes them any less bad.'

To ignore the public is, ultimately, the actual negation of culture: a failure to communicate, but also salvation from the perdition of commerce and success, a guarantee of purity. Commercial success can be counterproductive, leading to a loss of credibility in the best circles. We want books to be democratic objects, to be read by everyone, to be everywhere accessible, but we also want them to continue to be sacred.

'Thanks to books, we know that Socrates distrusted books. He compared them to conversation and believed they fell short. ...People rely upon it [writing] and fail to develop their memory, knowledge, or imagination. Even worse, they begin to believe they know things because they own books.'

'"Every private library is a reading plan," Spanish philosopher José Gaos once wrote. ...a book not read is a project uncompleted. ...This explains the invention of books that aren't meant to be read. Books, in other words, that can be displayed without consequences or guilt: dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, art books, cookbooks, reference books, bibliographies, anthologies, complete works.'

This book is so boring I might not be able to finish it, which says a LOT. I hate leaving things unfinished, but life is short and idk if I want to spend any more time of mine reading this.