Author Archives: Kaan

The Book as a Body

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Sometimes I forget that a book is more than just words on paper. While reading chapter 2 of The Book, however, I came across Borsuk’s description of the codex as if it was a human body, with a spine, a head, and even a tail (p. 77), which reminded me that books are more than just that. At first this sounded almost funny to me. Why would we talk about a book like a person? But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. If you take a closer look, a book is not just a neutral object. It is something we interact with, hold in our hands, and even treat with a certain care, as if it had its own presence.

This made me rethink my understanding of reading. Usually I imagine reading as something between me and the words. But Borsuk makes clear that it is also something between me and the material form of the book itself. The hinge of the cover, for example, gently pulls the first page open, almost like an invitation. That small detail makes the book feel active, as if it greets us which suddenly makes reading look less like purely consuming content.

I also thought about how this comparison points to the life story of a book. Just like people are shaped by their environment, books are shaped by many forces before they even get to us. The author gives them their voice. The publisher and designer choose their appearance. The printer turns them into a physical object. And then, once the book is finally in the world, readers add their own traces. Names on the inside cover, underlined passages, folded corners. All of these leave marks like experiences leave marks on a person.

When I think about books this way, they stop looking like static containers of text. They start to look like companions that carry their own history. Every copy has grown through different stages, passed through different hands, and therefore carries something of that process with it. To read a book is not just to read words, but to meet something that has already lived a kind of life.

In the end, Borsuk’s description made me realize how much more personal reading becomes once you see the book as a body. It is not just information to take in. It is an encounter with another form, one that has its own presence and its own story, waiting for us to open it.

The Endless Scroll

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Reading chapter one of Amaranth Borsuk’s The Book, I paused at her description of the papyrus scroll and found myself drifting into thought. She describes papyrus as light and flexible, yet not easy to carry around. A scroll required both hands to handle, or a table to place it on, and reading moved in one long, continuous line. There was no flipping back or comparing passages. The form itself made reading linear and tied to time.

What stood out to me here is how much the material itself shaped reading. On the one hand, a scroll was very simple to use. You unrolled it and followed the line forward. That simplicity made reading easy. But at the same time, it was clumsy to transport and hard to navigate. You could not easily go back to a section or hold two places at once. In that sense. While reading was straightforward, it was also limited.

This suddenly reminded me of how we read today on phones. In many ways, social media feeds are modern scrolls. They run in one continuous stream, moving from top to bottom, easy to follow but difficult to step outside of. The big difference is that technology has solved the old problem of portability. What was once heavy and awkward to use is now light, instant, and always in our pocket. So in a way, we carry the scroll everywhere.

But this comes with new effects. The papyrus scroll at least had an end. After some time, you would eventually reach the bottom. The digital scroll, however, never ends. Feeds refresh again and again, keeping us moving and holding just enough of our attention. This shapes how we read. We skim, swipe, and move on quickly, very rarely stopping and taking some time to reflect. Where the codex brought depth and comparison, the feed pulls us out and throws us into an endless scroll.

Borsuk’s description of papyrus made me realize that reading has always been about more than words. It is also about the form that carries them. The scroll once kept reading on a linear path. The codex later opened new ways of moving through text. And today, our screens have brought the scroll back, this time in a portable, digital form. The question is whether this return to scrolling opens up new freedom or if it traps us in a flow we can’t really step out of.

When Books Change, So Do We

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Reading Michelle Levy and Tom Mole’s The Broadview Introduction to Book History, one passage in particular about the codex stood out to me. In their text, Levy and Mole describe it as “portable, resistant to wear and tear“ and most importantly able to let the reader “flip back and forth between pages and […] move more easily between different sections of the text.“ While this description may seem very obvious to us at first, since this is how we have known books for years, thinking about how the codex was not actually the standard for such a long time really struck me. Taking a closer look at history, one can see that it actually took centuries to replace the scrolls.

This raised one big question for me: how much of reading is not about what we read, but about the form that allows us to read? With the scroll, reading was linear. You started at the top and moved downward. Very simple. With the codex, however, reading suddenly became more flexible. Now you could move forwards and backwards, skip ahead or compare two sections at once. This non-linear movement transformed reading into much more than just consumption. It became an act of navigation. The codex made it easier to divide texts into chapters and pages, to give precise references and to mark important places. In short, the format of the codex did not only shape the book itself, but also the intellectual habits that came with it.

What I find interesting is how similar this is to our current experience of digital reading. When reading online, you cannot only read in a straight line but also switch between various tabs, jump from one webpage and/ or text to another or scroll back and forth. Looking at it, the internet feels closer to reading a codex than reading a scroll. At the same time, it also contains elements of the scroll. Long pages that we read by scrolling down, like articles, news, blogs or comment sections. Digital reading feels like a hybrid which mixes the navigability and flexibility of the codex with the linearity of the scroll. However this parallel also makes me wonder, how fragmented reading can become before it begins to lose depth. If we constantly cross-check passages, open new tabs and shift our attention, do we risk losing focus? On the other hand, digital formats create new ways of thinking, just as the codex once opened new possibilities. They allow for faster comparisons, even broader connections and new forms of creativity.

In the end, what Levy and Mole show with the codex is that a book is not merely a container of words but also a technology that reshapes our relationship to knowledge. From scroll to codex, each form does not simply preserve text. It transforms how we read it. Ultimately, it is not about celebrating or fearing new formats, but about seeing how they slowly shape the way we read and even the way we think.

If Everything Has Already Been Written

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After reading Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Library of Babel” from 1941, one aspect in particular stuck with me: the concept that, because of the infinite amount of literature in the Library, there already exists a book about everything. From the autobiographical past of a person, to the exact history of a person’s future, all the way to his own death. In the text it says: “The certitude that everything has been written negates us or turns us into phantoms.” which really made me think.

On the one hand, I ask myself how much originality and individuality can still be present if everything is already written and exists in some literary form. Because of this, every thought immediately loses its individual independence. Every idea of an author becomes at once a double creation or a repetition of an already existing work. As magical as the concept may sound at first, it also means the end of any creative originality. Furthermore, the question arises of how much a person can still truly be considered their own self if somewhere there already exists a potential book that documents his entire life up to the very end. If everything, down to every spoken or written sentence, already exists, then speaking or writing is no longer an act of creation, but only repetition.

With this concept, Borges touches on a very modern and current topic. On the internet, for example, content is produced and reproduced so quickly that it sometimes feels as if there is less and less originality. More and more contributions on the internet feel like an echo of another contribution. One of today’s challenges is no longer to invent something completely new, but to find orientation. In this flood of repetitions, how do we discover what is actually important? What I find exciting is that Borges does not only see something threatening in this. He also shows that the value shifts. Where once invention and creation stood in the foreground, now discovery and recognition take their place. Therefore our task is not to control infinity, but to find our orientation within it.

In the end, this means that the concept that everything has already been written does not simply destroy originality, but also opens up a completely new view of creativity. Borges reminds us that in a world full of content, our search for meaning remains the most important thing.

Introduction Kaan

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Hi I’m Kaan!

I’m an international student in my 6th semester as an education major in Germany. After my stay abroad, I will (hopefully) have finished my bachelor’s degree and can finally start my master’s. 

I am really, really passionate about videography and photography (as briefly mentioned in class) and enjoy producing short skits, short movies, and more recently, vlogs in my own unique style. My passion actually developed very early, as I loved experimenting with our camcorder as a child, producing short skits which were in no way even close to professional (or even watchable nowadays). One beautiful day, child-me discovered a way to actually edit my videos by selecting multiple clips and creating one big “movie” instead of covering the lens with my hand and quickly changing the scenery. That’s when I saw a whole new world of opportunities unfold in front of my very eyes. All of a sudden, almost everything I could imagine was possible. From there on, my passion stayed and only grew bigger as I increasingly became more knowledgeable about my craft. 

Today I love spending time filming and especially editing my videos, sometimes putting hours into creating and perfecting my work. But no matter how long it may take, putting the finishing touch on a video or short movie and finally watching and experiencing it in its full glory for the first time is such an amazing feeling. Even better is the reward of seeing people being immersed in, or simply enjoying, my work after having spent hours upon hours finishing it. Whether it is the impact or the message I share through one of my short films, or one of my more lighthearted and entertaining skits to brighten someone’s day. I love making people smile. not only with my videos and skits, but in everyday life as well. With how much is going on in everyone’s lives and how much each and every person has to deal with, be it because of work, university, etc., I think it is important to have a few moments of positivity, even if only for a few seconds.

That’s all I have to say. Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I am really looking forward to this class and this whole semester in general!