So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

"The human race publishes a book every thirty seconds," observes Mexico City-based poet and essayist Zaid, and therefore "how is a single book among the millions to find its readers?" This is the conundrum upon which Zaid builds his incisive, wry, ultimately celebratory meditation on the chaotic and wasteful, yet exciting and felicitous world of books. Believing that culture is a conversation conducted on many levels around various foci, of which books constitute a vital and crucial number, Zaid reminds readers that books don't have to reach a huge audience to have impact but, rather, must be read by the right readers. Zaid also considers our ambivalence regarding books: we want them to be readily available--that is, produced and sold as commodities--but we also hold them sacred. He then parses the absurdities inherent in the economics of publishing, notes with stinging wit the frustrating fact that more people want to write than to read, and delights in the fecundity and diversity of book ecology. Lively, cosmopolitan, and piquant, Zaid's treatise will engage every serious reader. Donna Seaman
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"So Many Books" is not so much a book as a conversation: about books, about reading, about the mad business of how a book is born every 30 seconds. It is a book of proposals and arguments and debate about books, from the age of Socrates to our own. It lets you join the conversation.

In So Many Books , author Gabriel Zaid offers his observations on the literary condition: a highly original analysis of the predicament that readers, authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians and teachers find themselves in today where there are simply more books than any of us can contemplate.

GABRIEL ZAID lives in Mexico City with the artist Basia Batorska, her paintings, three cats, and ten thousand books.