Looking at Books by John Sutherland – essay

The sexy thing this summer, as the TV ads tell us, is the e-book. Forget those old 1,000-page blockbusters, two of which would put you over Mr Ryan’s weight limit. Sand, sun, surf — and Kindle. The traditional ‘beach book’ is as obsolete as the Victorian bathing machine.

The printed codex has had a long run — it is half a millennium since William Caxton set up his stall around St Paul’s. Few inventions have lasted as long, or done as much good for humanity. But a tipping point has been reached for the ink, paper and board product. More precisely, it will be tipped into the waste-bin of history. Goodbye Gutenberg.

I love mooching round the shelves of the London Library, which proudly refuses to ‘deaccession’ any book it has acquired over the last 150 years. I have run up a quite sizeable bill in canine damage with them since my schnauzer insists on chewing volumes I’ve borrowed (always an embarrassing moment at the counter — ‘the dog ate my book’).