Bound to Last: 30 Writers on Their Most Cherished Book Book

This is a collection of thirty articles written by as many authors on the subject of their most cherished book. All the articles are, of course, unique, in that they reflect their author's style and subject concerns.

The interesting bit is that while the range is wide, and some of the concerns relate to literary qualifications, most of the authors deal with the book as an object; a printed and bound thing; something one can hold and own personally; something which can be more meaningful as a kind of memorabilia that, for one reason or another, has come to mean something very special for the particular author involved. And it does not seem to matter as to the quality or condition of the book involved, either. Each specific book mentioned is something truly personal to the author. This special quality of specific editions of printed books is something that is not possible to have or reproduce with e-books!

Further, specialist books such as Ripley's Believe it or Not!, the Dungeon Masters Guide, The New Professional Chef, Fifth Edition, and The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, Eighth Edition, for example, make it into the list. These texts often hold different kinds of private significance (as opposed to any literary qualities) for that particular person's approach to life and even society ' and note that they often are specific editions of a book (i.e. not even the latest edition).

The overall implication is that for these reasons, the printed book will survive the digital threat. I am not sure whether this will be so; but there is no harm in expressing wishful thinking, if only to provide some resistance to the economic rationalist mindset which will insist that all new "books" will be "published" only in digital form. There really is something special about printed and bound books in varying editions that deserves defending in their traditional form.