000			02541nam a22002177a 4500
005			20250506111302.0
008			241125b ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9780141991931
040			_cAL
041			_aEnglish
082			_223 _a828 _bSMIP
100			_aEmma Smith _9209423
245			_aPortable Magic : A history of books and their readers
260			_aLondon _bPenguin books _c2023
300			_a343 p. _bPB _c20x12 cm.
365			_aXG10-291178 _b₹439.69 _c₹ _d₹699.00 _e0% _f14-11-2024
520			_a'A fascinating journey into our relationship with the physical book...I lost count of the times I exclaimed with delight when I read a nugget of information I hadn't encountered before' Val McDermid, The Times Most of what we say about books is really about the words inside them: the rosy nostalgic glow for childhood reading, the lifetime companionship of a much-loved novel. But books are things as well as words, objects in our lives as well as worlds in our heads. And just as we crack their spines, loosen their leaves and write in their margins, so they disrupt and disorder us in turn. All books are, as Stephen King put it, 'a uniquely portable magic'. Here, Emma Smith shows us why. Portable Magic unfurls an exciting and iconoclastic new story of the book in human hands, exploring when, why and how it acquired its particular hold over us. Gathering together a millennium's worth of pivotal encounters with volumes big and small, Smith reveals that, as much as their contents, it is books' physical form - their 'bookhood' - that lends them their distinctive and sometimes dangerous magic. From the Diamond Sutra to Jilly Cooper's Riders, to a book made of wrapped slices of cheese, this composite artisanal object has, for centuries, embodied and extended relationships between readers, nations, ideologies and cultures, in significant and unpredictable ways. Exploring the unexpected and unseen consequences of our love affair with books, Portable Magic hails the rise of the mass-market paperback, and dismantles the myth that print began with Gutenberg; it reveals how our reading habits have been shaped by American soldiers, and proposes new definitions of a 'classic'-and even of the book itself. Ultimately, it illuminates the ways in which our relationship with the written word is more reciprocal - and more turbulent - than we tend to imagine.
650			_aA fascinating journey into our relationship with the physical book. _9186295
700			_aSMITH (Emma) _9186296
942			_2ddc _cBK
999			_c231976 _d231976