The Art of Book-Making

Didn't get a lot of book reading done this week, but I continue to enjoy Washington Irving's Sketch Book.

The short, stand-alone articles are like reading blog posts, so I can pick it up, read a "sketch," and be done, as opposed to plowing through some novel. Fits my reading schedule lately.

Especially recommended to book threaders, readers and book-lovers, yes, but especially writers, is "The Art of Book-Making" (1819) - which has neither to do with the creation (printing) of volumes, nor the modern usage as of gambling, but with the art of writing, at least as Irving discovered it going on in the great library of the British Museum. Most amusing.

...I found that these mysterious personages, whom I had mistaken for magi, were principally authors, and were in the very act of manufacturing books....

Found a copy online here (scroll down a ways):
http://bit.ly/irving-book-making