A review by schopflin
Book Parts by Adam Smyth, Dennis Duncan

4.0

This book relates to my PhD thesis and I had to put it aside when brain fog meant I couldn't give it the attention it deserved. So glad that I picked up momentum again. Nearly all the chapters are entertaining, some humerous, and all showing a great love of books as objects. The chapter on footnotes was really a literary history, rather than a paratextual one, as if footnotes were too obvious to write about as a concept. Conversely, the endleaves chapter was at the dry end of book production history. This book is possibly a niche pleasure but a joy nonetheless and a beautiful object in itself.