A book is a set of pages printed with words or illustrations and fastened together and fixed inside covers of stronger paper or cardboard. Books can contain information, stories, poetry or novels. Someone who writes a book is called an author or an illustrator. Books may be in physical form or in electronic format, such as e-books.
A library can have thousands of books in a variety of different languages and styles. These books are used to educate children and adults in a wide range of subjects. Books are also an important source of entertainment for people from all backgrounds and interests. They provide a way for people to pass on knowledge and learn new skills.
The history of the book is a multidisciplinary field that draws upon textual scholarship, codicology, palaeography, bibliography, art history, anthropology and sociology. It investigates the nature of books and their materiality, as well as the ways in which they function as conduits for interaction between readers and texts within a given culture or political economy.
Book historians also study the materials of books, which include tortoise shells, deer bones and lengthy scrolls in the ancient world, concertina codex manuscripts in Central America, bamboo and silk books in East Asia and palm leaf manuscripts in South Asia. A book’s materiality and construction reveals a great deal about its author, its readership, and the ideological and religious beliefs of its time.
Books are often described in terms of their size, such as folio (the largest), quarto (a little smaller) and octavo (even smaller). A book’s size also indicates its intended audience and purpose, for example a law textbook for legal practitioners or a novel for the general public.
An octavo book contains eighty-four pages, while a quarto book has fifty-two pages. A modern book is usually printed on heavy paper stock with a glossy finish, although earlier books were often handwritten on parchment.
Despite the move toward shorter and more visual forms of storytelling, books remain a vital literary platform. They continue to be widely read, used for teaching and research, and are an essential part of the cultural landscape.
Despite being such an integral part of our daily lives, the definition of “book” remains somewhat fuzzy and subjective. The question of what makes a book is one that has been debated by scholars from multiple disciplines for centuries. To make matters more complicated, some scholars have even gone so far as to classify comics and periodicals as books – even though they contain no text, but images and design elements. This article is aimed at reaching a level of conceptual clarity on the nature of the book, and will not attempt to chart every evolution in its development.