In “So Many Books”, author Gabriel Zaid offers his observations on the literary condition: a highly original analysis of the predicament that readers, authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians and teachers find themselves in today – where there are simply more books than any of us can contemplate.
So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance
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. . . so many more thought-experiments, serene witticisms and ideas that almost all other books look incontinently windy by comparison. -- The Guardian, 30 October 2004
... a playful celebrant of literary proliferation .... -- The New Yorker
... incisive, wry, ultimately celebratory meditation on the exciting and felicitous world of books …. will engage every serious reader. -- The New York Times Book Review
... surprising .... witty .... provocative. -- Anne Fadiman, Editor of the American Scholar, Author of Ex Libris
Gabriel Zaid's defense of books is genuinely exhilarating .... its wisdom is delivered with extraordinary lucidity and charm. -- Leon Wieseltier, Literary Editor of the New Republic
... a playful celebrant of literary proliferation .... -- The New Yorker
... incisive, wry, ultimately celebratory meditation on the exciting and felicitous world of books …. will engage every serious reader. -- The New York Times Book Review
... surprising .... witty .... provocative. -- Anne Fadiman, Editor of the American Scholar, Author of Ex Libris
Gabriel Zaid's defense of books is genuinely exhilarating .... its wisdom is delivered with extraordinary lucidity and charm. -- Leon Wieseltier, Literary Editor of the New Republic
From the Inside Flap
So Many Books is not so much a book as a conversation: about books, about reading, about the mad business of how a book is born every 30 seconds. It is a book of proposals and arguments and debate about books, from the age of Socrates to our own. Join the conversation.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By Gary Clarke
Format:Hardcover
"This small book is a gem : an absorbing conversation about the whole point of reading, the surplus of titles, and our own lack of time". So says the quote on the cover of Zaid's work and it sums the book up perfectly. Zaid's book may indeed be small but the ideas within are huge as the author cleverly uses the world of books and reading to sum up the absurdity of life and in particular the pitiful brevity of life. As he correctly and knowingly states "time is by far the most expensive aspect of reading".
Zaid twists and turns ideas like a kaleidoscope throughout the book and has the honesty to question thoughts he himself has put forward. For example, he sagely asks "after reading 10,000 books in a lifetime, what have we read? Nothing". But he immediately goes on to question whether quantity is the measure of a cultured, well read person and argues that what really matters is that after reading a book we feel more alive.
The author trots out an array of statistics to bolster his arguments and calculates that 1 million books are published worldwide each year. He then proceeds to use this figure to muse that "the knowledge gained from reading several hundred of them is dwarfed by the ignorance of the several hundred thousand that we don't read". Marvellous stuff!
Zaid also debunks a few myths about books along the way - mistaken notions that books are a means of mass communication; that they are expensive; and that the book is dead (and isn't it ironic that people always WRITE about the death of the book?!).
Zaid feels deeply that today it is a luxury to read, not because books are expensive but because our time is scarce. As Baltasar Gracian wistfully says "there is so much to learn and so little time to live".
Zaid twists and turns ideas like a kaleidoscope throughout the book and has the honesty to question thoughts he himself has put forward. For example, he sagely asks "after reading 10,000 books in a lifetime, what have we read? Nothing". But he immediately goes on to question whether quantity is the measure of a cultured, well read person and argues that what really matters is that after reading a book we feel more alive.
The author trots out an array of statistics to bolster his arguments and calculates that 1 million books are published worldwide each year. He then proceeds to use this figure to muse that "the knowledge gained from reading several hundred of them is dwarfed by the ignorance of the several hundred thousand that we don't read". Marvellous stuff!
Zaid also debunks a few myths about books along the way - mistaken notions that books are a means of mass communication; that they are expensive; and that the book is dead (and isn't it ironic that people always WRITE about the death of the book?!).
Zaid feels deeply that today it is a luxury to read, not because books are expensive but because our time is scarce. As Baltasar Gracian wistfully says "there is so much to learn and so little time to live".
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars
16 reviews
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful meditations on the place and value of books
2 Jan 2004
By Andrew S. Rogers
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
It's largely coincidental that I read this at the turn of the old and new year, but I may just make re-reading this thoughtful little book an annual event. Both elegant and wise, "So Many Books" is not simply a defense of the book as a medium. It's also, on a larger scale, a defense of reading, of those who choose (and, as the author notes, really know *how*) to read, and of the place of reading in inter-cultural and inter-generational "conversations."
Gabriel Zaid looks at the economics of the publishing industry, and also the relative merits of books over both older (oral tradition, parchment) and newer (e-books, CD-ROMs) means of storing and exchanging information. He places reader, author, and individual book within a "constellation" of books in which ideas are exchanged. And he weaves "a hairshirt for masochistic authors" by showing how few books are read, preserved, or -- frankly -- even noticed by the reading public.
But most of all, Zaid shows that books are nothing less than the cornerstone of the effort to define, preserve, and expand culture. The fact that there are so many books to read shouldn't depress us but, instead, excite us and make those of us committed to reading a bit more secure in what some no doubt consider our eccentricity. This is a title I hope to return to again and again.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Purposes of reading and publishing rethought
30 Mar 2004
By Paul Laub
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Gabriel Zaid's "So Many Books" is a stimulating and
provocative book for anyone interested in book
publishing. His brief, inexpensive book can be read in
a single sitting, yet its ideas will, I suspect,
percolate for a long time afterwards.
provocative book for anyone interested in book
publishing. His brief, inexpensive book can be read in
a single sitting, yet its ideas will, I suspect,
percolate for a long time afterwards.
Books need to address small and specific readerships,
and computer digitization and internet communication
technologies are fostering that. Thus, a renaissance of
reading is now at hand. How we think about books, Zaid
argues, needs to be reoriented from emphasis on
publishing and best-sellers to emphasis on reading and
the conversation that books can stimulate. Books, Zaid
argues following Socrates, are a means to something
greater: private and public conversation enlivening and
sustaining civilization and culture.
Books of paper, ink, and glue will endure long into the
future, helped, not hindered, by new technology to
bypass their current commodification by big corporate
entities. (For more about that, read Jason Epstein's
"The Book Business" (2001).) Already, books are
relatively cheap to produce (compared, for example, to
films). One needs only a few thousand readers to break
even. (Think, for example, of the impact of samizdat
publications of Soviet dissidents, of Thomas Paine's
"Common Sense", and of contemporary zines.) These
advantageous economics, making possible publication of
niche works, should grow as print on demand technology
drives the costs lower. (The primary way this will
happen is by reducing the expense and risk assumed by
publishers and booksellers in maintaining inventory.)
Zaid's approach identifies new concerns. First, a
book's major cost is not the purchase price but the
time and attention required to read it. Brevity and
conciseness are important, as Zaid's book itself
demonstrates. Second, matchmaking becomes even more
important: books and readers must be able to find each
other.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
For Writers to Think About
12 July 2005
By Alan Venable
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
This is a short, worthwhile book. Zaid does a great job of separating romantic ideas of "immortal words" and how books and writers "ought" to be appreciated from what makes a book truly worthwhile. As a writer, I found this short book of essays relevant to my own ongoing questions about what publishing ought to do. It helped me better understand that the success of a book isn't so much about numbers of copies sold as about whether the book participates in a real conversation. Take Me With You When You Go
›
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4.6 out of 5 stars
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