{"id":464,"date":"2023-02-06T14:57:02","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T13:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nyheter.ntnu.no\/?p=464"},"modified":"2026-09-03T12:15:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T10:15:28","slug":"books-that-arent-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nyheter.ntnu.no\/en\/books-that-arent-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Books That Aren\u2019t Books"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What <em>is<\/em> a book? Unesco (in 2021) described \u201cthe book\u201d as an object that is capable of all kinds of transformations and iterations.<a name=\"ref-note-1\" href=\"#_edn1\">[i]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From the perspective of those of us who study the history of books, it is hard to come up with a satisfying definition of what a book as an object actually is, because it can take many different forms. Recent numbers of <em>Book History<\/em>, the annual (and now, due to the growth of the field, biannual) journal of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, have included articles discussing many non-codex formats, including papyrus; manuscript; newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets; board and card games; and of course digital texts. And yet it is still most often the iconic codex form, with its bound gatherings of leaves, that readers (and probably UNESCO) think of immediately when we think of \u201ca book.\u201d<a name=\"ref-note-2\" href=\"#_edn2\">[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Books That Aren\u2019t Codices<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The codex form is not dying any time soon. It has the advantages of being more portable than a clay tablet; of being indexable and easily navigable (any section can be turned to at once, unlike, for example, a scroll); of being more durable and less dependant upon external power sources than a computer; and of having a tidy oblong shape that despite wide variations in size can be stacked into neat piles, tidily shelved, or even made into furniture.<a name=\"ref-note-3\" href=\"#_edn3\">[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But in the past, present, and future, there always were, are, and will have been methods of inscription that don\u2019t fit our mental image of \u201cthe book\u201d at all. The cuneiform and hieroglyphic writings from ancient Sumer and Egypt, for instance, are well known to anyone who has visited the British Museum. At Kuthodaw Temple in Mandalay, Myanmar, there are 729 caves, each containing a marble slab with a text from the Therevada Buddhist Tripitaka on each side, so that a walk through those caves offers a reader the whole of the Pali Canon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Although Indigenous peoples are sometimes dismissed in the settler imaginary for their lack of a \u201cliterature,\u201d they have on the contrary had many different methods of inscription, which complement their already powerful traditions of oral preservation and telling.<a name=\"ref-note-4\" href=\"#_edn4\">[iv]<\/a> The Wampum Trail research project at the University of Pennsylvania, for example, works to recover the symbolic, cultural, and historical meanings of wampum belts and collars made of woven shell beads, told in the community by Indigenous knowledge-bearers as maintaining records of peace treaties and other important events\u2014knowledge held in the wampum itself which settler museums have often obscured or misunderstood when displaying it.<a name=\"ref-note-5\" href=\"#_edn5\">[v]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Andean South America, cotton or wool strings were knotted and colour-coded into quipu in order to maintain numeric and non-numeric records. Mesoamerican scripts arose independently long before contact and they are preserved on statuettes, monuments, tablets, and cylinder seals.<a name=\"ref-note-6\" href=\"#_edn6\">[vi]<\/a> And one of our even more remote ancestors worked half a million years ago to communicate something to us\u2014we don\u2019t yet know what\u2014by carving a shell that we can read even today.<a name=\"ref-note-7\" href=\"#_edn7\">[vii]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>But Books Aren\u2019t Books, Either<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe book,\u201d then, has not always been a book. But as Johanna Drucker argues, we might think of a book less as a physical object than as an \u201cevent space,\u201d manifesting as a \u201cdistributed condition of literacy and\/or semiotic communication across physical traces.\u201d<a name=\"ref-note-8\" href=\"#_edn8\">[viii]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The \u201cbook\u201d itself could be reels of metallic tape, or an alphabet created through artificial pheromones, or metal plates buried and dug up and badly misinterpreted centuries later, or glowing words formed from lichen, or the very screen you\u2019re reading this on.<a name=\"ref-note-9\" href=\"#_edn9\">[ix]<\/a> It could be in the almost-codex accordion format, or take the shape of a wooden puzzle, or be performed and re-performed as \u201cshuffle literature.\u201d<a name=\"ref-note-10\" href=\"#_edn10\">[x]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whatever uniform appearance \u201cthe book\u201d might have in the popular imagination, it turns out that in practice it is a shapeshifter, and that one of our joys as readers is to adapt to its conditions anew each time we pick up first one book, then another, and then another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>References<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a name=\"_edn1\" href=\"#ref-note-1\">[i]<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/en\/observances\/book-and-copyright-day\">https:\/\/www.un.org\/en\/observances\/book-and-copyright-day<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a name=\"_edn2\" href=\"#ref-note-2\">[ii]<\/a> Interestingly, it\u2019s also often <em>fiction<\/em> that seems implicitly to be thought of during events like UNESCO\u2019s, suggesting that perhaps this question of getting young people to read is genre-bound, caught up in thinking of the reading of fiction as the yardstick of achievement (or, more cynically, as a gateway to \u201cmore important\u201d kinds of reading). It may also overlook the fact that the greater part of the global population can be found reading constantly anyhow; even the most aliterate of us can hardly avoid engaging on a daily basis with street signs, menus, food packaging, official government correspondence, and general spam. For discussions of what ordinary people \u201creally\u201d read, have read, and have had read to them, see the work of DeNel Rehberg Sedo, Shelley Trower, Richard Altick, Martin Lyons, and Jonathan Rose, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a name=\"_edn3\" href=\"#ref-note-3\">[iii]<\/a> Knight, Jeffrey Todd. &#8220;\u2018Furnished\u2019 for Action: Renaissance Books as Furniture.&#8221; <em>Book History<\/em> 12 (2009): 37-73.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Baker, Nicholson, \u201cBooks as Furniture.\u201d <em>The New Yorker<\/em> 12 June 1995: 84-92.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a name=\"_edn4\" href=\"#ref-note-4\">[iv]<\/a> One of the foundational works in our field is D. F. McKenzie\u2019s 1985 study of the relationship between orality and literacy with regard to the signing of the Waitangi Treaty. See \u201cThe Sociology of a Text: Oral Culture, Literacy, and Print in Early New Zealand.\u201d In <em>Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts<\/em>, 77\u2013128. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a name=\"_edn5\" href=\"#ref-note-5\">[v]<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/wampumtrail.wordpress.com\/\">https:\/\/wampumtrail.wordpress.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a name=\"_edn6\" href=\"#ref-note-6\">[vi]<\/a> See, for example, John S. Justeson, \u201cThe Origin of Writing Systems: Preclassic Mesoamerica.\u201d <em>World Archaeology<\/em> 17.3 (Feb. 1986): 437-458.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a name=\"_edn7\" href=\"#ref-note-7\">[vii]<\/a> Josephine Joordens et al. \u201c<em>Homo erectus<\/em> at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving.\u201d <em>Nature<\/em> 518 (2015): 228-231. https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/nature13962<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a name=\"_edn8\" href=\"#ref-note-8\">[viii]<\/a> Johanna Drucker, \u201cDistributed and Conditional Documents: Conceptualizing Bibliographical Alterities.\u201d <em>MATLIT<\/em> 2.1(2014): 11-29. <a href=\"https:\/\/digitalis-dsp.uc.pt\/bitstream\/10316.2\/34680\/1\/MT2-1_artigo1.pdf\">https:\/\/digitalis-dsp.uc.pt\/bitstream\/10316.2\/34680\/1\/MT2-1_artigo1.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a name=\"_edn9\" href=\"#ref-note-9\">[ix]<\/a> In, respectively, Homer Eon Flint, <em>The Lord of Death<\/em> (1919); Kathleen Goonan, The Nanotech Quartet (1994-2002); Will Self, <em>The Book of Dave<\/em> (2006); and Jeff Vandermeer, The Southern Reach trilogy (2014).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a name=\"_edn10\" href=\"#ref-note-10\">[x]<\/a> \u201cSpec.\u201d \u201cFrom the Stacks: <em>Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions<\/em> by Edwin Abbott Abbott, the Arion Press edition.\u201d (9 March 2012). <a href=\"https:\/\/spec.lib.miamioh.edu\/home\/from-the-stacks-flatland-a-romance-of-many-dimensions-by-edwin-abbott-abbott-the-arion-press-edition\/\">https:\/\/spec.lib.miamioh.edu\/home\/from-the-stacks-flatland-a-romance-of-many-dimensions-by-edwin-abbott-abbott-the-arion-press-edition\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hohenadel, Kristin. \u201cTo Read this Book, You Have to Solve a Mechanical Puzzle on Each Page.\u201d <em>Slate<\/em> (18 August 2016), <a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/human-interest\/2016\/08\/codex-silenda-is-a-wooden-book-whose-story-you-unlock-by-solving-five-mechanical-puzzles.html\">https:\/\/slate.com\/human-interest\/2016\/08\/codex-silenda-is-a-wooden-book-whose-story-you-unlock-by-solving-five-mechanical-puzzles.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hus\u00e1rov\u00e1, Zuzana and Nick Montfort. \u201cShuffle Literature and the Hand of Fate.\u201d <em>Electronic Book Review<\/em> (5 August, 2012). <a href=\"https:\/\/electronicbookreview.com\/essay\/shuffle-literature-and-the-hand-of-fate\/\">https:\/\/electronicbookreview.com\/essay\/shuffle-literature-and-the-hand-of-fate\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is a book? Unesco (in 2021) described \u201cthe book\u201d as an object that is capable of all kinds of transformations and iterations.[i] From the perspective of those of us who study the history of books, it is hard to come up with a satisfying definition of what a book as an object actually is, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":468,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[103,47,104],"theme":[647],"class_list":["post-464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-books","tag-faculty-of-humanities","tag-litterature","theme-humanities"],"acf":{"exclude_from_frontpage":false,"frontpage_image":"","frontpage_title":"","force_single_display":false,"authors":"","external_authors":[{"image":4815,"name":"Yuri Cowan","position_title":"Professor","url":"https:\/\/www.ntnu.edu\/employees\/yuri.cowan"}],"contact_persons":"","external_contact_persons":null,"lang_malform":"nynorsk"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Books That Aren\u2019t Books - NTNU Nyheter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nyheter.ntnu.no\/en\/books-that-arent-books\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Books That Aren\u2019t Books - NTNU Nyheter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What is a book? Unesco (in 2021) described \u201cthe book\u201d as an object that is capable of all kinds of transformations and iterations.[i] From the perspective of those of us who study the history of books, it is hard to come up with a satisfying definition of what a book as an object actually is, [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/nyheter.ntnu.no\/en\/books-that-arent-books\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"NTNU Nyheter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-02-06T13:57:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-09-03T10:15:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/nyheter.ntnu.no\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Inca_Quipu.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"625\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"380\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"marieaue@ntnu.no\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"marieaue@ntnu.no\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/en\\\/books-that-arent-books\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/en\\\/books-that-arent-books\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"marieaue@ntnu.no\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/en\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/a135b88edbf30e2e10435b3fe635c113\"},\"headline\":\"Books That Aren\u2019t Books\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-02-06T13:57:02+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-09-03T10:15:28+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/en\\\/books-that-arent-books\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1082,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/en\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/en\\\/books-that-arent-books\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2023\\\/02\\\/Inca_Quipu.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"books\",\"Faculty of Humanities\",\"litterature\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Blog\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/en\\\/books-that-arent-books\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/en\\\/books-that-arent-books\\\/\",\"name\":\"Books That Aren\u2019t Books - NTNU Nyheter\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/en\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/en\\\/books-that-arent-books\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/en\\\/books-that-arent-books\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2023\\\/02\\\/Inca_Quipu.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-02-06T13:57:02+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-09-03T10:15:28+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/en\\\/books-that-arent-books\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/en\\\/books-that-arent-books\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/en\\\/books-that-arent-books\\\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2023\\\/02\\\/Inca_Quipu.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nyheter.ntnu.no\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2023\\\/02\\\/Inca_Quipu.jpg\",\"width\":625,\"height\":380,\"caption\":\"Quipu are recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the region of Andean South America. 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