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balletbookworm's review against another edition
3.0
Cute, quick read. But I've read a lot of books like this on these exact topics.
alythespoon's review against another edition
5.0
I've read lots of books about books, but none that I'd recommend as readily as Portable Magic. Emma Smith managed to write an academic work that doesn't come across as stuffy or pedantic, which is a feat in and of itself, but on top of that she wrote a book about books that celebrates books without fetishizing them. And that, my friends, is what I found truly remarkable about this book.
Rather than navigating the history of the book chronologically, Smith takes a thematic approach in Portable Magic. The result is a work that can be read in virtually any order and still be comprehensible. However, I'd recommend that readers start at the beginning and read straight through, because the way that Smith segues from chapter to chapter is so perfectly seamless that it defies description. If you've ever listened to an album in which all of the tracks meld perfectly together without gaps, you'll know what reading this book was like. I particularly enjoyed this approach because I had a good time trying to anticipate the content of the next chapter based on how the one I was reading was wrapping up. I'm weird, I know, but I make no apologies.
If you love books, read this book. If you enjoy short, well-written academic works that will make you feel smarter for having read them, read this book. Just do it. Read this book.
Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the eARC of Portable Magic, provided in exchange for this review.
Rather than navigating the history of the book chronologically, Smith takes a thematic approach in Portable Magic. The result is a work that can be read in virtually any order and still be comprehensible. However, I'd recommend that readers start at the beginning and read straight through, because the way that Smith segues from chapter to chapter is so perfectly seamless that it defies description. If you've ever listened to an album in which all of the tracks meld perfectly together without gaps, you'll know what reading this book was like. I particularly enjoyed this approach because I had a good time trying to anticipate the content of the next chapter based on how the one I was reading was wrapping up. I'm weird, I know, but I make no apologies.
If you love books, read this book. If you enjoy short, well-written academic works that will make you feel smarter for having read them, read this book. Just do it. Read this book.
Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the eARC of Portable Magic, provided in exchange for this review.
arthurium's review against another edition
5.0
I bought 'Portable Magic: A History of Book and their Readers' somewhat impulsively, and it is one of my best impulsive purchases. A book about books written with the magic promised in the title and introduction.
rebelqueen's review against another edition
3.0
Smith gives us a thorough history of books. There were some chapters that felt off topic, but I learned things like the history of portraits featuring women reading.
riaryan's review against another edition
5.0
I absolutely loved this book! Incredibly insightful, joyous, surprising, readable! Books and their readers really are fascinating species!
gbeach's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
4.0
Overly detailed at times. Interesting chapters and ideas about the power of books integrated nicely with history.
bigbeardedbookseller's review against another edition
4.0
Another book I’ve had sitting on the shelf for a while and picked up asa commute read now that I’ve two hours on a bus each day. It’s doing wonders for my reading rate!
This is another book I picked up as I’m fascinated by the book world and examining the book as an object of social history and the people and themes that abound in that social history sounded exciting.
It really is! The book travels through time from the beginnings of a compiled codex form and looks at the uses and forms that a book has taken since it’s first inception including a look at pre-book objects such as scrolls.
Each chapter looks at a different facet of the social history of the book and links into the next chapter seamlessly allowing a feel of progression throughout history.
Touching on areas such as book burning and banning, religion and how essential the book was to establishing some of the dominant world religions, the use of books for American troops in WWII as a means of propaganda, even getting down to looking at the question of ‘What is a Book?’
Near the end we also look at how books (especially the bible was used as a tool of colonisation and repression of Indigenous American culture and language, and this was a biting yet fascinating chapter of history that I knew nothing about and will be looking onto further.
This is a great yet oh too short exploration of form and function of one of my favourite objects and is well worth a read, creepily though as I read the book the closer I got to the end the more the glue started to give way and I now have a collection of pages in a cover rather than a bound book!
This is another book I picked up as I’m fascinated by the book world and examining the book as an object of social history and the people and themes that abound in that social history sounded exciting.
It really is! The book travels through time from the beginnings of a compiled codex form and looks at the uses and forms that a book has taken since it’s first inception including a look at pre-book objects such as scrolls.
Each chapter looks at a different facet of the social history of the book and links into the next chapter seamlessly allowing a feel of progression throughout history.
Touching on areas such as book burning and banning, religion and how essential the book was to establishing some of the dominant world religions, the use of books for American troops in WWII as a means of propaganda, even getting down to looking at the question of ‘What is a Book?’
Near the end we also look at how books (especially the bible was used as a tool of colonisation and repression of Indigenous American culture and language, and this was a biting yet fascinating chapter of history that I knew nothing about and will be looking onto further.
This is a great yet oh too short exploration of form and function of one of my favourite objects and is well worth a read, creepily though as I read the book the closer I got to the end the more the glue started to give way and I now have a collection of pages in a cover rather than a bound book!