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.