Reading and the book …

… Review of Andrew Piper, "Book Was There" | Inside Higher Ed. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

His intent is not -- as the subtitle “Reading in Electronic Times” might suggest -- a screed against the e-text flood. Book Was There shows a wide knowledge of contemporary digital art and literature, and Piper makes a brief mention of his role in a collaborative project to create a computer model of the impact of The Sorrows of Young Werther on subsequent literature. Like anyone who has given the matter more than a soundbite’s worth of thought, he recognizes that the relationship between the cultural system now emerging and the previous thousand years of human civilization involves both continuities and disruptions, for both better and worse.