A Most Perfect Invention

As newspapers, television and periodicals are under continued assault by the digitization of almost everything, I sometimes wonder about the future of one of mankind’s most perfect inventions: the book.

While devices like the Kindle are useful but niched riffs on the real thing the book (whether hardback, paper or pocket) has a great future.

I’m biased. I generally adore them and enjoy their company.

For a recent birthday I received a copy of William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill, The Last Lion. An excellent read that spills over with gems.

Here’s Churchill on books:

“If you cannot read all of your books, at any rate handle, or, as it were, fondle them – peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on their shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, your will at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances.”