The Gestures of Reading

There's an intimacy inherent to touching and manipulating a book. I don't know that it's like that, visibly at least, for any other medium. (In particular I'm thinking about the intimacy associated with navigating your own phone or computer, but you can't see any of those familiar gestures taking place. Most of it happens with slight finger-twitches of a cursor, and rapid eye movement.)

Part of João Machado's The Effect of a Book, Extending Beyond The Form. Via Swiss Miss.

Fuck-You Bookshelf

I was sitting around adding things to Shelfari when it occurred to me, like it often does, how funny it is I still use it. The moment when Shelfari was a promising phenomenon is past; it's doing very little now. And while speed and searches for foreign titles have improved a lot, something about it still rings hilariously low-fi, like being in a town where the pop music is from two years ago.

But I like being able to chart the progression of my life with digital spines, watching the pixel-wood shelf fill with colours, ideas and gifts that finally got read. It's the cartography of a mind that zigzags, occasionally descending upon long-forgotten threads of obsession: a miracle of human consistency.

Someday when Shelfari is able to manipulate data in ways that tell you interesting stories about yourself, your loves and your subconscious thoughts, I'll be happy I packed all this work into it, and in proper order, too.

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