Tag Archives: Borsuk

Chapter 3: The Book as Idea

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In Chapter 3 she writes: “Muted books take on a totemic significance. Because we can’t ‘read’ a book object or book sculpture, we see the idea of the book, a metaphor that has penetrated our culture so deeply it informs the language we use to describe ourselves.”

This made me realize how much the book is more than just paper and ink. Even when we strip away the actual text, the shape and idea of a book still carry symbolic meaning.

Borsuk connects this to how deeply the book is embedded in culture and language. I never thought about how many expressions in English (and in German, too) are built on the metaphor of the book. For example, someone can be “an open book,” or we might “judge a book by its cover.” These phrases have nothing to do with literal books, but they show how strong the idea of the book is in shaping how we talk about people and life.

The phrase “totemic significance” stood out to me as well. I learned a totem is something that represents a belief system or community identity, and thinking of the book in this way is powerful. It means that books are not only tools for reading but also cultural symbols we treat almost with reverence. I thought about how in my home, even when we didn’t read certain books anymore, we still kept them on the shelf, as if just having them there made the room feel more intellectual or meaningful.

For me, this passage helped to see that books work on two levels at once. They are objects you can read, but also symbols you can’t escape. Even in an age of screens and e-books, the metaphor of the book is still shaping how we understand knowledge, identity, and even morality.

New understanding of „Bibliography“

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When I first heard the word “bibliography,” I honestly thought only about the list at the end of an essay you know, where you dump all the sources in MLA or Chicago style. That’s what I did in high school in Germany and it felt like the most boring part of writing. But after reading the Bibliographical Society of America’s page “What Is Bibliography?”, I realized that I had completely misunderstood the term.

The line that stuck with me was: “Bibliography examines the artifactual value of texts … and how they reflect the people and cultures that created, acquired, and exchanged them.” I had to pause on the word “artifactual.” It means that a book is not just words on paper, but also an artifact, like a piece of history you can hold. Thinking about it this way, even the small scratches, the kind of paper, or notes in the margins become part of the story.

The site gives the example of watermarks in old paper. I never thought about this before, but these tiny patterns can tell scholars where and when the paper was made. It’s like a hidden code inside the book. I find this so cool because it shows that books are physical witnesses of history. You don’t just read them you also “read” their material.

I also liked how the page made a difference between “bibliographic” and “bibliographical.” At first, I thought this was just English being confusing again. But now I see that “bibliographic” means data like author, date, publisher while “bibliographical” means the actual study of the object itself. It’s a small detail, but it helped me understand the field better.

For me, the big takeaway is that bibliography is not only about organizing sources. It’s about looking at books as objects that carry the marks of people, cultures, and histories. As a student who mostly reads PDFs on a laptop, I think it’s important to remember that the material side of texts matters too even if the “page” is just a screen.

You Are What You Read

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Within the grasp of our fingertips, an entire civilization unfolds, a lineage is traced back hundreds of years, and the power exists to alter our physical perception of anyone, including ourselves. This is the digital age, and to understand why this is feasible, or specifically why we’d desire such content so close, we may look at the Middle Ages and the concept of Girdle Books. Through that moment in history, among many others sharing the need for information at hand, it is revealed that codices and electronic devices are extensions of the human.

Our knowledge both expands and limits our freedom of expression. This concept seems simple enough, as a student undergoing med school may read a plethora of medical textbooks, allowing them to go on and on about whatever subject they wish, so long as it is medically related. Though in this performance, the student may be limited in their articulation of sheetrock repair or any other area they disregarded in place of studying medicine. In our day and age, with the excess of information, this isn’t as common an issue, though applying it to the Middle Ages is drastically different. 

With no internet and the time being before the Gutenberg press, Girdle Books largely determined one’s area of interest or expertise. An important choice of diction from Chapter 2 of The Book furthers this claim when looking at this sentence describing Girdle Books as “an oversized soft leather cover whose flaps could be looped under one’s belt for easy consultation on the go.” Notice how Borsuk chose the word consultation, rather than enjoyment, reading, or any other word for examining a book. This is because the owners were largely monks, professionals, and individuals who possessed relevant knowledge they could then apply to whatever circumstance. Of course, there were the select wealthy individuals who held knowledge with no “real” reason for it, but even then, the reason may be to gloat about their expanse of knowledge, useful or not.

With our accessible knowledge continuously expanding, there may be a point of collective knowing. This is speculative, of course, but I think all fun things are. As cellphones are the new girdle books, already multiplying our information at hand by an absurd amount, I am curious what technology will take the place of cellphones. Is imagining a society that collectively is tapped into an all-knowing AI that far off? Value could lie in the undigitized creations of mankind or the critical thought aspect. But honestly, is it unreasonable to imagine a doctor who’s programmed with all the knowledge necessary to achieve excellence in his division? Or is a human being just in the way at that point in the future? And lastly, off my main point, could all-knowing humans even be unique at that point? I pose this to the aether, and to any future person able to answer this question one day, until it’s finally true.

Week 5: Book as Content and Commodity

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In Chapter 1, “The Book as Content”, in Amaranth Borsuk’s, The Book, Borsuk walks us through our changing perception of books as content rather than object. Borsuk explains that, “we might generalize the historic moment at which the printed text arises as one of increasing intimacy between individuals and texts, which accounts, in part, for the form of the book as we know it today” (Borsuk, 83). The book, in the form we know it today, reflects the shift of books becoming not only a more intimate experience between book and reader, but also evolving around the needs of the reader. Instead of simply consuming information, actively engaging with the text, a “dialectical relationship” between reader and author became valued. 

This shift in perception allowed for books to become commodities. Borsuk explains that, “these reader-focused elements were just as important to marketing as to book use. They mark the codex as a commodity” (Borsuk, 88). “Authors and publishers activity courted this kind of dialectical relationship”, and began to consider not just the information books contained, but also how the physical design appealed to buyers. Features that we see today like open margins left space for and encouraged “active annotation–a visible and tactile engagement of mind with page”, making books more interactive and personal, and in turn increased desirability and market value (Borsuk, 89). As the needs of the reader changed, the form of the book did as well. The printing press allowed for books to be standardized, mass produced, and more accessible for a widening audience of readers. However, this also made books products to be designed and sold, rather than rare, sacred objects only found in monasteries and universities. The new commercialized market for books, shaped by consumer demand “played a key role in the commodification of the book and in our changing perception of it as content rather than object” (Borsuk, 109). 

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 Book as Content

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Throughout this class, and especially while reading The Book, I realize how lucky we are as reader’s of today’s books. Reading through how books and the presentation of their content has changed has taught me how much of how we expect to read is actually new, and it makes me a bit sad to realize which practices have been lost in favor of ease of access and consumption.

Until the mid sixteenth century were shelved with inward facing spines, with their edges facing out, each distinguished by designs on their edges (Borsuk 81). What a lost art! Of course anyone could go into a book store and find books with sprayed edges making them look beautiful and rare, but those books would likely be few, or part of some special edition only sold for a set period of time. Books with distinct and decorated edges are not common enough today, if I were to flip all the books on my shelf backwards I’d only be looking at column of papers, risking a papercut anytime I wanted to pick one out. However, ss Borsuk describes, this change from out facing edges to out facing spines came out of necessity, “readers became collectors whose ever-expanding libraries served as displays of both intellect and wealth, that books were shelved with their spines outward to showcase their bindings…a feature of the codex we now take for granted.” (81). The progress of the book is the progress of the reader, instead of their fore-edges book spines become detailed in order to showcase information relevant to a reader who now owns a multitude of books, as the needs of the reader change, the book must change. The book evolves and becomes portable to, “show off one’s literacy and wealth,” the book changes and becomes a gift as “a symbol of great kinship,” and the book explodes into a catalyst of transformation to change readers, “by what [they] have read.” (82, 84).

The changes of the book has undergone have resulted in the book being amazing devices, being of reasonable weight and size for transportation featuring informative and pretty spines, and featuring plenty of room in their margins for annotations. But they are not perfect yet, they will undergo more changes and adaptions for the needs of readers now and readers of the next generations. In the future perhaps books will all be made from recycled paper, to support sustainability, or there might finally even be mass produced glow-in-the-dark books for readers who would like to read in the dark but not from an illuminated screen, only time and the desires of readers will tell how the book’s presentation of it’s content evolves.

The Book. Chapter two

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When reading this next chapter, the first paragraph really caught my eye. We saw a picture of the girdle book at the end of last class and it stuck with me. “Girdle Books, a popular form among pilgrims in the Middle Ages, continued to be made: with an oversized soft leather cover whose flaps could be looped under one’s belt for easy consultation on the go.” (pg.43) This is interesting to think about or imagine. I would have just put my book in a bag, carried it, or even had a kindle in replacement nowaday. The image of the girdle book stuck with me, this little sack that carried the book around seems unnecessary to me. But I guess everything we have now could be classified the same way, accessories more than necessity. Aesthetics more than need. That’s what our world is made up of, items and things that we can consume or own. This has existed forever, and it has progressively gotten worse: I am not immune to this. I love little knick knacks and collecting things I do not need. I am not sure what that says about me, but it makes me feel better that even in the Middle Ages they were doing this aesthetic with books too. The Girdle itself is like many unnecessary things I own, and it’s interesting to think of how this made books more portable than before. In my mind books had always traveled and moved with you, but I guess when I really think about it this isn’t true, they used to live in libraries of the rich. The Girdle is just another example of this aesthetic obession of the book, and with everything else we now consume, that might not be necessary.

Further in the chapter the rise and importance of Codex books also caught my eye. “As codex books became private items, rather than shared objects experienced publicly, copyists simply couldn’t keep up with demand.” (pg. 43) I keep forgetting the fact that books were something that were shared publicly and read aloud. The image of seeing people on the street reading a novel out loud is foreign to me, that would never happen now. But this is how it all started, and as the codex was created books became private, expensive, and a sign of education and status. Rather than stories being shared in pubs or public places they were being read privately in the home. This is how reading has always been for me, rather than when I was little and my parents read to me, so the fact that this was not normal is intriguing. Reading was related to wealth and status rather than community, so when I really think about it that is true still. Reading is a privilege not everyone has access to. Reading is political, as most things are, and reading is something that is meant to be shared and discussed, but usually it is not. I am really enjoying the new perspective this book is giving me on the history of books but also the history of reading as a political, wealth, or status statement of the past.

Week 4: Book History, Beyond the Text and More

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Books have always been thought of as an object in which it only transforms because of the information that it carries inside of it, but that’s not the only case. Amaranth Borsuk presents a point that I believe is very hard to argue against and that is that books are ultimately decided based on what the needs are of the time period. Some of these things being the fact that new information was wanted as well as how they were going to obtain the materials to create these because at the beginning it was all done by hand and not machine. “Book historian Fredrick Kilgour refers to the book’s development as a series of “punctuated equilibria” driven by “the ever-increasing informational needs of society” a useful way of thinking about the book’s transformations”(Borsuk p.3). Stories, novels, books, comics, manga’s, e-books and such all have developed in their own way because of the type of technology they use for the codex. The style of the how the book is created makes each of these types of books stand out in their own category which is something that I never really paid attention to until now. I mention this because chapter one dives into the history of scrolls, clay tablets, palm leaf manuscripts and how those materials influenced how information would be put on them.

If anything, this chapter has made me think of how books have been influenced by us and our needs of how we as a society want it to be. An example of this is how e-books are being used every day by people. The demand and use for e-books through kindles and such will essentially shape the way we show information to our viewers and how it will affect them.

I still can’t wrap my head around the technological advancements of how we created the book from the codex. It’s starting to make me analyze books in a way of “Is there really any other way to make this even BETTER or have we truly created the best possible way to absorb information through this thing we call “book”. Ultimately, Borsuk already has me turning my brain upside down in how I should start looking at books since we read the history and context of how it all started from the various different cultures. It really goes to show that text is not only the biggest influencer on how a book will be created for the current society, but rather multiple factors that you wouldn’t even guess.

Week 4: Reading and Writing’s Shift

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In Chapter 1, “The Book as Object”, in Amaranth Borsuk’s, The Book, what really struck me was how writing, as we know and define it today, was mistrusted by the most revered scholars of the time. In the final section of the first chapter, “Reading and Writing’s Shift”, Borsuk explains that “the great thinkers of Greece, in fact, mistrusted writing as a technology that would destroy the oral arts of debate and storytelling on which they based their sense of the world” (Borsuk, 55). For the kind of reading we know today it “would have to change its context and text in form… which means literacy would have to extend beyond the elite and monastic communities” (Borsuk, 56). 

What we base our entire education on, and how we define the book and our access to knowledge, was distrusted, discouraged, and feared by Socrates. He believed that transcription “is a crutch that will both hamper memory and more philosophical thought in ambiguity, leaving interpretation in the hands of the reader” (Borsuk, 56). While context is still important, how we  (the individual holding the book) interpret literature and writing (separate from the intention of the author) is now the most crucial skill we learn. The transition from oral and limited transcription, to our more accessible, modern practice of writing actually “allowed rhetoric to flourish” (Borsuk, 56).  The “book” as we know it today is not in its final form, just as the tablet and scroll evolved, so will our definition. Many of us express how digitized literature, media, and AI scare us, how we are fearful for future generations’ attention spans and ability to think for themselves. Past scholars’ concerns “echo contemporary anxieties about the ways digitally meditated reading and writing shortens our attention spans and ability to engage deeply with texts” (Borsuk, 58). It makes me realize that future technology has always been feared and mistrusted. As mediums of reading evolve, how we read reflects that evolution. What Socrates feared is why we are all here today, and it makes me reconsider how I view and fear future technological advancements in writing and the “book”.

Books Don’t Die

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The chapter from the book “The Book” by Amaranth Borsuk is a adequate introduction to understanding books as objects. I was particularly struck by the realization that book forms do not disappear completely in history. This thought could also be connected to our discussion in class: „Fear of new media“. Borsuk argues that “Different technologies of the book exist side by side throughout its history: tablet and scroll, scroll and codex, manuscript and print, paperback and e-book”. Clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, books and hypertexts coexist for centuries and do not simply disappear. Borsuk emphasizes that the development of these forms should not be seen as a linear sequence. The new does not immediately replace the old. They complement each other.

Their coexistence shows that media change is much more complex than one might think. I find this idea particularly interesting. There is obviously a lot of discussion about whether digital media means the “end of the book”. However, Borsuk criticizes that question and emphasizes the coexistence and diverse functions between print and digital. But if no form is replaced, does coexistence mean that no form is ever definitive? According to this argument, the “true book” or the “true form” would not even exist. It is merely a matter of transporting knowledge and stories, which works in different ways. It is therefore a question of generations and individual needs as to which medium is preferred. Occasionally, I read a paperback on a hammock, an e-book on the train or bus. 

The e-book, on the other hand, which is often seen as a threat to the printed book, could be seen as part of a long history of the coexistence of individual media. Instead of splitting these different forms off from each other, we should see them as complementary media. Each form has its strengths. While the printed book convinces through its materiality, haptics and durability, the e-book is mobile, easily accessible and flexible. Both forms help to preserve knowledge and make it accessible. 

Borsuk’s chapter thus shows that the book has evolved. Each new form expands, but never completely erases. The keyword here is diversity. Dr. Pressman stressed the fear of new media in class. I somehow cannot understand this “fear“, because instead of seeing the emerge of new media as a linear process we should see it as a circular one. This whole idea of remediation is really important and an advantage for our acquisition of knowledge.