For my final project I will write an essay analyzing how the book is a perfect object that can be not only read, but consumed fulfill all of a persons needs.
For my project I will describe how the object of the book is consumable, I will not be focusing on the text that can be read from the book, but instead every other feature that the codex is made from to be a perfect consumable object.
To view the book as an object that is consumable by people I will overview and describe the book object’s ability to satisfy a human’s hierarchy of needs and be consumed by each of a person’s five senses.
Since books can take a variety of different forms and appearances, this project will primarily use a Penguin Publishing Group ‘Classics’ paperback book as the example and definition of a book object.
The reason for a Penguin book to be used as this projects’ book object reference is to be able to utilize what may be the most commonly known and used book form and shape. Since the Penguin Publishing Group is one of the most popular books publishers in the world, the form it’s books take can be used to exemplify what most people would consider a “book,” to be.
Thesis: The Book is a perfect consumable object. Using a Penguin Random House Classics book this project will analyze how beyond the text that it holds, each facet of a book can be consumed and ingested by each of a person’s five senses, giving one the ability to fulfill all of their needs through the consumption and absorption of a book.
I’d like to see you cut the first part of your claim “The Book is a perfect consumable object” because “perfect” is a judgment and does not support analysis. The focus on Penguin Random House Classics, however, is promising. Perhaps you could do a deep dive into this publishing sector, in the forum of a biography of the book, as you did in the midterm. You could do research into what makes a Penguin Random House Classic– what does it look like, what types of text does it contain, when are these things codified as a genre, etc. I think that would be a far more concrete topic for research and analysis.
If you pursue this line of thinking, you’ll be working in similar territory as Avery, Warren, and Trinity– though you all will be working on different presses. But I would take a look at their proposals for inspiration and assistance.