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Readers' Guide to Book Action

Few readers ever pause to consider the action of the book in hand. Perhaps this disregard can be overcome. Perhaps the reader can enjoy a book’s different meaning. Here is a brief guide to qualities of mechanical mobility of types of book bindings.

Introduction

Qualities of book action cut across genres of content. Although these qualities can enhance or suppress meaning, they are usually never consciously considered as we read. Their relevance derives almost entirely from a haptic process in which the hands prompt the mind to provide an ergonomic relation to the content. This strange and overlooked interaction involves real qualities of the physical book. These qualities include tactile features of the paper, printing, binding and the composite physical book. The qualities also include the action of the book, the mechanical motions and responses to manipulation during reading. For the moment, we will look at these latter qualities of book action.

Different binding types produce different book actions. In this brief “tasting” of book action qualities we will consider six types. These types will be considered in terms of their historical prototypes and in terms of their comparative actions on an abstract text block of the same size, weight and paper. The six types are (1) the “paperback” or uncased book, (2) the cased book or “hardback”, (3) the papyrus book prototype of later Antiquity, (4) the limp vellum binding of the Renaissance, (5) the Western wooden board binding in the era of early printing, (6) the leather covered book of the later industrial period.

Qualities of the Paperback

The paperback is a bare book. Its cover is only a wrapper of paper which acts like the first and last pages. It is light because it is coverless. When it is new it is stiff. This stiffness is overcome by reading. Usually the reading proceeds from front to back and the stiffness suddenly yields about half way through. This phenomenon occurs as progressively more leaves are gripped and leveraged together at the given opening. Once fully opened subsequent leaves are unconsciously flexed over to the left.

The influence on meaning results from the initial resistance of the text up to the sudden flat opening. This yielding permits an acceptance of the character of the content and a permission to proceed to the end. Some paperbacks are never read through, with interest lagging in the initial stiffen portion of the text. Fully read and reread paperbacks have creased wrappers at the positions of the full openings.

Paperbacks, un-augmented by cover to text attachments, cannot continuously influence the course of reading. They leave the reader more dependent on content and less prompted by the haptic interaction of book structure.

Qualities of the Hardback

The hardback or cased binding is a covered paperback. The influence of the cover on the course of reading is pronounced, managing the experience and physically opening and closing for access to any page position or to the pacing of continuous reading.

The case cover is attached at a position set back from the folds or gutter edge of the text. This set back on a flexible span of the joint permits the cover to open freely and enables each leaf to flex over onto the platform of the opened cover. The effect is an orderly management of a sorting action of considered leaves to the left and new leaves at the right which are resting on the lower cover.

The action of the cased text block in its cover accentuates the left and right sorting as the back of the text flexes up freely from the spine of the cover. Here again, the set back position of the attachment of the cover provides the releasing pleat, freeing the book for more docile, yet evenly paced action. The experience is like a pleasurable walking through the varied content.

The Papyrus Book

The modern reader will not experience reading a papyrus book or experience the layered and demanding sequence of extracting meaning that was required in late Antiquity. But at least one aspect of book action from that remote time deserves mention since it will not otherwise be realized. And, this aspect is even more significant today.

The papyrus book with its flat pages and flat openings is as adaptable to display or flat scanning as it is to handheld reading. In other words it can be displayed equally well opened either toward or away from the reader. Machine reading, or reverse opening, has actually been with us from the times of the advent of imaging and duplication technologies. Liturgical display of the opened out book goes back even further to the advent of the codex itself.

So the papyrus book prototype is mentioned here, both to remind us how modern it is in terms of structure and action, but also to indicate that mobility that facilitates flatbed scanning is an important action of the modern book.

The Limp Vellum Binding

The limp vellum binding provides a book with a case cover folded from a single sheet. The attachment is provided with sewing supports laced through the cover at the position of the folds of the endpapers producing a “laced case” structure. The flexing spring of the vellum spine on opening is directly transmitted via the lacings to spring closed the leaves of the text. The reader is continuously springing opened the sprung closed text.

The limp vellum binding has a very active reading action. Continuous attention and two handed manipulation are required. The covers are anything but “limp”. These audibly flex and spring with foredge ties whipping. These bindings, associated with popular reading genres or student classics, were read in the opened country and during travel, and they have youthful actions and rapidly changing page landscapes. There is nothing quite as exciting as this book action in contemporary books except, perhaps, in the specialty of artists books.

Would a return of the lively book action of the Renaissance vellum binding be acceptable today? Resistance to software embedded manipulation of the reading and writing experience suggests that we are not looking for distractions. But the features of manipulatory control of content, as in computer games or options of mouse control, also suggest that we enjoy some active, physical interaction with content.

The Wooden Board Binding

Reading from the anatomy of the wooden board binding is an elegant experience. No other binding structure is so anatomically integrated and no other has such a live feel as the reader transmits leverage on opening and on closing of the wooden boards. The reader awakens the book with a promising yawn of the pages and closes it with a satisfying synch and the conclusive lock of the foredge clasps. In between, the reader follows the action with graceful sweeps of the draped leaves. The reading is across an always changing arch of the page and from left to right across the contours of the two page spread.

The best aspect of the book action of the 16th century wooden board prototype is its exemplary capacity to interplay with the reading experience. Either on first opening or following life long usage the wooden board binding takes a physical part in each conceptual transaction. The mind is physically positioned in the content and memory and insight both are augmented by the physical location of concepts. Fingering to initiate and complete page turnings points to the particular expressions or precepts that are read. Manual transmission of leverage from the board covers to the text is so responsive that it embodies comprehension and conclusive acts.

Later Leather Covered Binding

Later leather covered, laced construction binding tries to assume the status of the wooden board exemplar, but fails in the weirdest way. It has all the features of the exemplar but none of the qualities of its book action. The covers fall away from the text like withered appendages and the text block is a real block that can only be broken opened. This is a sad story.

If the reading experience is to be considered as such, both in the paper book as well as on-screen, the interplay of book action and comprehension must be considered. Again, this is a haptic science, a haptic art and a haptic craft that has been wonderfully considered in the past, but also needs wonderful renewal in the future.

A renewal of the physical experience of reading is a special focus of the Future of the Book website. We hope that you have enjoyed this sampler of the arrays of book action.