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What We Talk About When We Talk About Books : The History and Future of Reading - Leah Price

What We Talk About When We Talk About Books

The History and Future of Reading

By: Leah Price

eBook | 20 August 2019

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Reports of the death of reading are greatly exaggerated

Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues in which printed, bound objects once trained us: the willpower to focus on a sustained argument, the curiosity to look beyond the day's news, the willingness to be alone.

The shelves of the world's great libraries, though, tell a more complicated story. Examining the wear and tear on the books that they contain, English professor Leah Price finds scant evidence that a golden age of reading ever existed. From the dawn of mass literacy to the invention of the paperback, most readers already skimmed and multitasked. Print-era doctors even forbade the very same silent absorption now recommended as a cure for electronic addictions.

The evidence that books are dying proves even scarcer. In encounters with librarians, booksellers and activists who are reinventing old ways of reading, Price offers fresh hope to bibliophiles and literature lovers alike.

Winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award, 2020

Industry Reviews
"A deeply researched and deeply fun-to-read reassurance that there is still hope for books-and that there always has been."-Shelf Awareness
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Non-FictionComputing & I.T.Computer ScienceHistoryGeneral & World HistoryEducationEducation Equipment & TechnologyRegional & National HistoryHistory of the AmericasTeaching of a Specific SubjectEuropean HistoryLiterature, Poetry & Plays
History & Criticism of LiteratureGeneral Literary StudiesLiterary Studies from 1900 to CurrentLanguage & LinguisticsLanguage Learning & TeachingSpecific Skills of Learning LanguageReading Skills

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