Sublime

but there was also a selection of the books the store’s staff decided were worth a closer look, a collective act of curation.

Nancy Drew taught me that a book wasn’t merely about the words within, it was everything—the quality of paper, the intoxicating smell of the binding glue, an older formulation that you didn’t get in newer volumes, the decorative end pages. It was the book as object, the vase as much a pleasure as the flowers.

The social quality of literature is still visible in the popularity of bestsellers. Publishers get away with making boring, baloney-mill novels into bestsellers via mere PR, because people need bestsellers. It is not a literary need. It is a social need. We want books everybody is reading (and nobody finishes) so we can talk about them.

bathos