Book Club

Enjoy Inexpensive Entertainment

Books can be expensive, but there are ways to read on the cheap. Libraries, thrift stores, yard sales, Little Free Libraries, swapping with friends, watching for Kindle deals, and Amazon gift cards for birthdays are all ways to cut down on book buying expenses. Last year I read 131 books: over 50% were from the library. I bought only a small percentage of books last year and those were almost all on sale. A night at the movies or dinner in a restaurant will likely cost more than a book purchase.

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History of books

The history of books became an acknowledged academic discipline in the 1980s. Contributors to the discipline include specialists from the fields of textual scholarship, codicology, bibliography, philology, palaeography, art history, social history and cultural history. Its key purpose is to demonstrate that the book as an object, not just the text contained within it, is a conduit of interaction between readers and words.

The history of the book starts with the development of writing, and various other inventions such as paper and printing, and continues through to the modern-day business of book printing. The earliest knowledge society has on the history of books actually predates what would conventionally be called "books" today and begins with tablets, scrolls, and sheets of papyrus. (The current format that we consider to be books, with separate sheets fastened together rather than a scroll, is called a codex (plural codices)). Then hand-bound, expensive, and elaborate manuscripts appeared in codex form. These gave way to press-printed volumes and eventually led to the mass-printed volumes prevalent today. Contemporary books may even have no physical presence with the advent of the e-book.

Book culture
The authors of antiquity had no rights concerning their published works; there were neither authors' nor publishing rights. Anyone could have a text recopied, and even alter its contents. Scribes earned money and authors earned mostly glory unless a patron provided cash; a book made its author famous. This followed the traditional concept of the culture: an author stuck to several models, which he imitated and attempted to improve. The status of the author was not regarded as absolutely personal.
From a political and religious point of view, books were censored very early: the works of Protagoras were burned because he was a proponent of agnosticism and argued that one could not know whether or not the gods existed. Generally, cultural conflicts led to important periods of book destruction: in 303, the emperor Diocletian ordered the burning of Christian texts. Some Christians later burned libraries and especially heretical or non-canonical Christian texts. These practices are found throughout human history but have ended in many nations today. A few nations today still greatly censor and even burn books.
But there also exists a less visible but nonetheless effective form of censorship when books are reserved for the elite; the book was not originally a medium for expressive liberty. It may serve to confirm the values of a political system, as during the reign of the emperor Augustus, who skillfully surrounded himself with great authors. This is a good ancient example of the control of the media by political power. However, private and public censorship has continued into the modern era, albeit in various forms.

The scriptorium

The scriptorium was the workroom of monk copyists; here, books were copied, decorated, rebound, and conserved. The armarius directed the work and played the role of the librarian.
The role of the copyist was multifaceted: for example, thanks to their work, texts circulated from one monastery to another. Copies also allowed monks to learn texts and to perfect their religious education. The relationship with the book thus defined itself according to an intellectual relationship with God. But if these copies were sometimes made for the monks themselves, there were also copies made on-demand.
The task of copying itself had several phases: the preparation of the manuscript in the form of notebooks once the work was complete, the presentation of pages, the copying itself, revision, correction of errors, decoration, and binding. The book, therefore, required a variety of competencies, which often made a manuscript a collective effort.

In ancient times, stone slabs had been used for writing. The oldest surviving books come from the 10th century CE, the earliest belonging to the Buddhist manuscript tradition. Prior to the adoption of paper, these were written on palm leaves, a naturally abundant resource in the southern part of the subcontinent. The pages were usually three feet wide and two inches tall. The process of preparing the palm leaves consisted of drying, polishing, and treating with starch to form a surface suitable for writing. The pages were bound together by a single piece of string on the shorter edge, and held with the longer edge of the manuscript running alongside the user's chest.