Books On Books

A few months ago, Greg Smith, a  Toronto-based artist, reviewed Claire Bishop’s “Digital Divide” (Art Forum, September 2012).  The review and Bishop’s article touch on a recurrent theme in Books On Books:  the materiality and immateriality of books.

http://www.scoop.it/t/books-on-books/p/2204574815/expanded-artists-books-envisioning-the-future-of-the-book

http://www.scoop.it/t/books-on-books/p/2540958720/a-bookmark-for-letters-outside-themselves

http://www.scoop.it/t/books-on-books/p/2276808444/ebooks-do-we-really-want-our-literature-to-last-for-ever

http://www.scoop.it/t/books-on-books/p/2204732117/bookmarking-a-forthcoming-title

http://www.scoop.it/t/books-on-books/p/2213422701/the-bookless-library-and-what-will-become-of-the-paper-book

http://www.scoop.it/t/books-on-books/p/2173038714/and-there-you-have-it-the-kindle-of-the-late-eighteenth-century-mike-kelly-amherst-college

http://www.scoop.it/t/books-on-books/p/2182994587/this-is-for-you-in-support-of-libraries-books-words-ideas

http://www.scoop.it/t/books-on-books/p/2123229496/to-see-a-world-in-a-grain-of-sand-or-tobacco-leaf

http://www.scoop.it/t/books-on-books/p/2082258113/post-artifact-books-and-publishing

http://www.scoop.it/t/books-on-books/p/2079452417/the-making-unmaking-and-remaking-of-books-guy-laramee-s-book-art

But the review and Bishop’s article resonate with some more recent and popular seismic tremors in the world of ebooks.  With all but Macmillan caving into the US Justice Department, we are still left wondering where and when the consumer benefits in cheaper ebooks will be handed out.  The prices on e-reading devices have plummeted, but in the world of ebooks, a slight unease about the inevitability of e-readers is creeping in as tablets and mini-tablets seize the imaginations of some with the loudest digital megaphones.  “Are e-reading devices doomed?”  And by extension – given that tablets are far more than ebook devices — “Is the trajectory for ebooks leveling off?”   While the post-Xmas sales analysis will be more assiduously examined for the “evidence” than the equally predictive gizzards of our Xmas fowls,  as Greg Smith paraphrases Julian Oliver, “the New Aesthetician”:   material or immaterial, “we should all just keep focused on making stuff.”