This chapter was really interesting to read, learning about all of the different aspects of the book and how its evolution affected different aspects of the book. Animation, spacing of texts, digital realism, forms, spatiality of a book and etc. What initially caught my attention was the first line of the chapter “The thing we picture when someone says ‘book’ is an idea as much as an object” (pg. 69). I did not realize (or think about) that I think of books this way too, as stories and pretty objects that look good on my shelves. Books as ideas as much as objects, in my opinion, is the best way to describe a book. Yes, they are aesthetic objects that hold meaningful ideas and stories, but I had never thought to define them that way myself. I think if you put the word book in front of people, everyone is going to have a different description of definition. This definition adds more of a deeper and broader of the meaning of a book. I feel like this allows everyone to have their own personal definition of a book but also the same basis. This definition adds value to every aspect of a book, crediting the similarities but also the differences of all books.

Another aspect of this reading I enjoyed was the discussion of the ebook or the kindle. “When books become content to be marketed and sold this way, the historic relationship between materiality and text is severed.” (pg. 69) I thought this was a great connection to my first point about the definition of the book. That definition highlights the importance of the book as an object itself and an idea- but the ebook doesn’t apply to this. The physical object and aesthetic is gone, which brings as much value to the book as the content itself does. This is then severed and the book has an entirely different definition now. This gave me a new aspect on kindles and ebooks, and I have a kindle and love the portability of it, but I realize my definition of a kindle versus a book is entirely different. This changes the book industry as a whole, the idea of a book being a work of art different in this context, as is the definition. I did not think about how the medium in which a book is presented changes is definition, something this chapter made me think about.