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.