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What We Talk About When We Talk About Books: The History and Future of Reading Kindle Edition

by Leah Price (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 59 ratings
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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
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  1. Print length
    168 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Basic Books
  5. Publication date
    August 20, 2019
  6. File size
    8579 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
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Editorial Reviews

Review

As entertaining as it is insightful, What We Talk About When We Talk About Books is part history, part social commentary, part memoir, and fully engaging. Leah Price pithily assesses the uses of books past and present, and upends assumptions about the future of books in a digital age. Her contagious delight in books makes this book a delight. --"Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World"

"As entertaining as it is insightful...Her contagious delight in books makes this book a delight."

-- "Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch"

"No one writes about books--and their bookness--with anything close to the daunting curiosity and dazzling acuity of the inimitable Leah Price. What We Talk About When We Talk About Books is a...bookshelf of delight and instruction, as entertaining as it is illuminating."

-- "Jill Lepore, New York Times bestselling author "

"Leah Price's radiantly intelligent book makes us rethink and re-view the endlessly alive, endlessly shape-shifting and self-reinventing activity that is reading."

-- "Neel Mukherjee, author of A State of Freedom"

Predictions of the death of the book weren't only greatly exaggerated; as Leah Price notes in What We Talk About When We Talk About Books, they were old news. The book has survived numerous death sentences in the past, and this time, as before, it's been the occasion to reinvent old practices of reading. What the Victorians called furniture books continue to adorn coffee tables and the Ikea shelves widened to accommodate them. People still hold books in their laps on couches and in coaches (enjoying the library atmosphere of Amtrak quiet cars). Self-help books have their roots the bibliotherapy proposed a century ago. It is still a very bookish world that we inhabit, and I know of no guide to it more witty and engaging than Leah Price, whose insights, erudition, and apercus had me dog-earing every other page.-- "Geoff Nunberg, resident linguist, NPR's Fresh Air"

No one writes about books-and their bookness-with anything close to the daunting curiosity and dazzling acuity of the inimitable Leah Price. What We Talk About When We Talk About Books is a rags to paper to Amazon Kindle bookshelf of delight and instruction, as entertaining as it is illuminating.-- "Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States"

Leah Price's radiantly intelligent book makes us rethink and re-view the endlessly alive, endlessly shape-shifting and self-reinventing activity that is reading. Its cracking readability -- when was the last time you had to disable the wifi for a book on books? -- should not disguise how cogently and coherently it is argued, and the depth of learning with which its arguments are meticulously substantiated. It is also profoundly witty, funny, and beautifully written (when was the last time you thought that about a book on books?). You emerge, after turning the last page, a smarter, better informed, joyous person.-- "Neel Mukherjee, Man Booker Prize-finalist author of The Lives of Others and A State of Freedom"

At once authoritative and accessible, Price's account busts many myths about both the past and the future of reading. Long may it keep us talking about books! --"William H. Sherman, Director, Warburg Institute, University of London"

A dizzying, myth-busting history of reading. Upends a whole toolbox of old saws about readers' habits. --"Keith Houston, author of The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time"

About the Author

Leah Price is a professor of English at Harvard University. She is the author How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain and the editor of Unpacking My Library. She lives in Massachusetts.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07L2VM7XD
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books (August 20, 2019)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 20, 2019
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 8579 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 168 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 59 ratings

About the author

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Leah Price

Leah Price

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Leah Price is Professor of English and Chair of the History & Literature program at Harvard University. She teaches the novel, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British culture, narrative theory, gender studies, and the history of books and reading. Price is Humanities Director at the Radcliffe Institute; she also co-directs the faculty seminar on the History of the Book at the Harvard Humanities Center. In 2006 Price was awarded a chair in recognition of exceptional graduate and undergraduate teaching.

Price's books include The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel and (co-edited with Pamela Thurschwell) Literary Secretaries/Secretarial Culture; she has also edited (with Seth Lerer) a special issue of PMLA on The History of the Book and the Idea of Literature. She writes on old and new media for the New York Times Book Review, the London Review of Books, and the Boston Globe.

Unpacking my Library: Writers and their Books is just out from Yale University Press; How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain is forthcoming from Princeton in spring 2012. Price is at work on a new book, The Book that Never Was: How Idealizing the Printed Past is Distorting Our Digital Future.

Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars
3.7 out of 5
59 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Birdlandbill
5.0 out of 5 stars Prescription: Read this amuse-cerveau if you fear books are nearing the end of their run
Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2019
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Originally a 2012 essay in the New York Times Book Review, this book extends the author's lively book riff. Although the chapters, particularly the last two are saltatory and maybe even tangential to the issues originally addressed, the author's extremely engaging wit and occasional mischief kept this reader fully absorbed. The book (clearly a misleading term implying singularity), it seems, is alive and well and was never fully bounded by the medium used to encase it. "The" book has always been far more than "tree flakes encased in dead cow" (W.J. Mitchell in City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn) as Ms. Price makes clear. A reader of book history and of book and paper-making, I found new information freshly (meant in every sense of the word) presented in this book. Made me wish for a deeper bibliography.

Few of the references in the bibliography are live links to the provided web addresses. Some of them require passwords to access, which is irksome to this reader. But this is quibbling.

There are occasionally authors one reads and thinks, "this would be an enjoyable person to converse with on this and probably other topics." Such a one is Ms. Price.
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Ann Carol
4.0 out of 5 stars This book is fully packed!
Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2020
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Leah Price's book is like a suitcase that needs to be sat upon to close. She offers book related ideas and topics thatnever occurred me. Bibliotherapy, the long reach of self-help books, the books considered dirty, disease laden when owned by immigrants, homeless, poor folks, prisoners and others. The history of the written word from ancient times, the Codex, Guttenberg and his press to the dilemmas in accepting ebooks, kindles, tablets and so much more. You will want to read this book in a quiet place to ingest the immense subject matter and at the same time do read it in a place with others in the room to share parts that you must read out loud. I am devoted to reading novels and nonfiction on my Kindle for the numerous web searches I pursue by touching the text. I have just ordered 2 real books because they are not available in Kindle format. I also prefer poetry, art and photography books in print format. I have kept my own data base of books I have read for decades.
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J.
1.0 out of 5 stars A diary-like book of uninteresting anecdotes about the author
Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2020
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Despite its promising title, Leah Price's book is the most disappointing title I've read all this year (it's November, which should say it all). Firstly, the book is full of odd and irrelevant anecdotes about the author herself, and she mentions that she is a Professor of English a total of thirteen (13) times (I actually counted). The word "Harvard" is mentioned a total of ten (10) times by the time the reader gets to p. 76. That is using the H-word more often than every 8th page (somehow really sad). Secondly, if the author is going to remind the reader every 8 pages that they are a _Harvard_ Professor_, they should be able to write much better than this. It also feels like this book did not have an editor, because the text not only jumps around from 1400s to 2018 but also has no structure whatsoever. There is also an unnecessarily gimmicky chapter about the author's back pain and recovery through physiotherapy (what book am I reading??), and those pages (110-117) are meant to be read horizontally (confusing some readers, as is evident from previous reviews). The chapter serves no purpose and fails to be interesting. I don't know if the author was in a hurry or just cannot write well, but this book is a painful experience in reading. Lastly, the author seems to be obsessed with Amazon, Facebook and Kindle because she spends large portions of the book discussing their online advertisements (not even kidding, again, online ads have no relation to the actual topic). All in all, if I could un-read this book, I would. Save your money and take a look at this book at your local library if you're interested in browsing through a scattered mess of historical names and years. What did I learn about the topic of this book? Nothing. What did I learn about the author of this book? She is a Harvard Professor who has back pain and who is in love with tech giants. Yikes, avoid!
5 people found this helpful
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Bookish
5.0 out of 5 stars a brilliant read
Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2019
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This book arrived yesterday -- and though I only meant to peek, for now, I read cover-to-cover (which makes me an exception to Price's account of how most readers read and how I usually do too). It's funny, relatable, chock-a-block full of fun facts and unlike any other book I've ever read, beautifully voice-driven too. All my pieties and vanities about being a book person were exposed as just that -- and somehow it was a totally amusing experience. I'd probably buy this one for the cover alone but it is absolutely worth reading!
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Top reviews from other countries

Dave the Rave
3.0 out of 5 stars Very literal
Reviewed in Canada on October 14, 2019
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This is an impassioned defense of reading that takes as it subject a very literal interpretation of it's title (i.e., the actual physicality of a book, it's cover, it's pages, it's touch). I found the approach interesting at times, but very easy to put down.
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