Fantastic Metropolis

Intro · Likes · Rituals · Necessity
Examples · Memories · Bios

Ian Covell

Its physicality. An attractive cover.

Peter Crowther

I just adore books… the smell of them, the riffling sound of pages being flicked, the actual feel of the stock, a well-thought-out cover, and even flaps on paperbacks. I’m a complete sucker for flaps on paperbacks—it would be far cheaper for us to drop the paperback flaps from our PS Publishing line [of books] but I’m holding off from doing that until I’m absolutely forced into it.

Jack Dann

For me, books are physical objects. I love beautifully bound books, illustrations, acid-free paper, i.e., the book as a physical work of art.

Ellen Datlow

I like the look of a beautifully designed book.

Alan DeNiro

Actually, I ran into a great Karl Marx quote about that: “Our time has no longer that real taste for size that we admire in the Middle Ages… You do not need to read the books; their exciting aspect suffices to touch your heart and strike your senses, something like a Gothic cathedral. These primitive gigantic works materially affect the mind; it feels oppressed under their mass, and the feeling of oppression is the beginning of awe. You do not master the books, they master you.” So yeah, what that Karl guy said.

Cory Doctorow

Its portability and cheapness. But I hate the book as a physical object. I’d chuck all 12,000+ of mine for ASCII files.

L. Timmel Duchamp

The book as material object speaks to me, always, of its history, both its own particular history—its age, its having been handled and read by a particular person or persons, the marks that have been inscribed in its pages, its itinerary in the world—and its shared history with the other volumes in its print run, representing, as that shared history does, the hours of devotion and labor and the financial investment implicit in the production of any book, beginning but not limited to its author’s. I am as subliminally aware of that history of the physical book as I am of its non-physical history (i.e., its place in the world as a text).

Lawrence Dyer

Apart from all the usual, outstanding things that everyone else will mention too—smell, texture, design and so on—I very much like the shape and weight of books. As someone who has in the past built drystone walls—and whose storytelling grandfather was a house builder—I love fitting books into a bookcase, or stacking them on a shelf or elsewhere. This may seem trivial, but the weight and thickness, compressibility, height, and width of a book are all significant as they relate to other books in the same space: books relate by subject matter but also by their physical characteristics. Taking the idea a stage further, I’ve often thought about a drystone wall made of books—or, rather, a drybook wall. Such a wall would be both a wonderful library and a superb balance of the weight and size of each book in relation to the others.

Carol Emshwiller

I love books as physical objects. I’d pine away without them. My son once said, “It’s such a beautiful sunny day I think I’ll go out and buy a book.” But another time, much later, he said, “What a dreary day. I think I’ll go out and buy a book.” That’s how I feel, too. Every weather is better with a book. I always feel excited when I order a book or go out to buy one. I always think the new book is going to be wonderful—exactly what I’ve always wanted and needed and every now and then it is. And every now and then it’s better than I could have wished for. Reading a good book is about the most exciting thing I do. I try to get myself out to get exercise, but I have to force myself. I’d rather be reading.