Herbie's blog

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE

Written text has been conveyed through many different means over the course of civilization, no matter the era or region.  Stone tablets such as the Rosetta stone or on a stele, a tall column-like object, in the case of Hammurabi’s Code.  Due to their weight and bulk, however, stone was replaced with paper scrolls.  Books in Western Civilization were invention of the medieval period, out of necessity for Roman Catholic Christian scripture (Truitt). Prior to the widespread practice of Christianity, scrolls served the same function, allowing readers to start at the beginning, save their place mid-text, and read through to the end. For instance, in Judaism, practitioners read the religious text from beginning to end, and when they finished, they would start again. However, in Christianity, the services place the liturgy thematically rather than spatially, and it required a new method of storing that information so that priests could read scripture out of order. This new method, as previously stated, was the book.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ

Books in Western Civilization were invention of the medieval period, out of necessity for Roman Catholic Christian scripture (Truitt). Prior to the widespread practice of Christianity, scrolls served the same function, allowing readers to start at the beginning, save their place mid-text, and read through to the end. For instance, in Judaism, practitioners read the religious text from beginning to end, and when they finished, they would start again. However, in Christianity, the services place the liturgy thematically rather than spatially, and it required a new method of storing that information so that priests could read scripture out of order. This new method, as previously stated, was the book.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ

Due to an unfortunate mishap with grammar, I felt I could order only a very specific edition of Alice's adventures, but that edition was unfortunately sold out (possibly purchased by all of us?) until yesterday when Amazon finally shipped it.  However, the late shipping meant it would not arrive in time for me to read it for class tomorrow.  Alas, the only copies still available at the library were at Swarthmore, which again would not have arrived on time.  Fortunately, Lewis Carroll wrote his books so long ago that they're all in the public domain and available on Google Books.

Genre presents an interesting problem in categorization, but at the same time, genre is perhaps a bookstore's most useful marketing tool.

Genre allows publishers and bookstores to market books to target audiences: children, girls, boys, teenagers, men, women, and all of these categories subdivided by age, race, sexuality, and undoubtedly a host of other categories.