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It is made of wood pulp. We mark it with
a coloured liquid, using agreed signs we are all taught from an
early age. These patterns of marks enable us to communicate with
one another without having to be in the same room. The system
has worked quite well for a number of centuries. If you like,
I can show you how it works.
Gregory Woods
 Books
have had several centuries to evolve and we, as book-readers,
have reached a place of great sophistication. We no longer ‘see’
the technology involved in book production and, in many cases,
we no longer ‘see’ the printed word on the page, but
a continuous stream of images and scenes conjured by the writer.
The way books feel and smell plays a role in our reading experience,
whether we’ve bought a brand-new hardcover, or borrowed
a dog-eared paperback from the library.
When reading a novel we can easily assess where, exactly, we
are in the text overall. You know when you’ve just begun,
you know when you’re half-way through. If the book is really
good, you are filled with dread as you approach the ending –
you don’t want it to end, but you can’t help yourself
from continuing to turn the pages; you may speed up, or you may
slow down. But years of practice have made you able to ‘read’
where you are in a book whilst reading the words on the page.
But even before that, there is the cover. Books are marketed
to readers in subtle and persuasive ways and readers can assess
a book’s place within that market at a glance. When you
stand in front of a bookshop display, you know what kinds of books
you are looking at almost immediately. Without actually reading
any of the text – including the title and the name of the
author – you are given a large amount of information by
the size of the book, the colours on the cover, the cover images,
the type-face, etc: in most cases, the book cover shouts out,
for example, ‘thriller’, or ‘chick-lit’,
or ‘serious high-brow fiction’. So, to a certain degree,
the reading experience is predicted and augmented by the expectations
aroused by the object of the book itself. The design of the pages
- the font used, the number of words per page, etc – all
have a bearing on the physicality, the body language, of the artefact
of a book.
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