Bookishness and the Body of the Book/the Body of the Reader. On the Usages of Books

The concept of ‘bookishness’ is relatively unknown, and lacks a single, unified definition. It could be specified as the entirety of characteristics or qualities related to books and their usages (in-cluding, but not limited to, reading). However, the question of what books are remains as open as what can be done with them. Book and media studies research has neglected to comparatively examine the connections between mobility, book formats and weights, and the bodily practices of readers from the early printing period to the present day. This chapter aims to make up for this, by analysing the relationship between new electronic reading devices and traditional print media in terms of their specific bookish-ness, as well as looking at the (im)mobilisations of media and readers during four different periods (around 1500, around 1800, around 1900 and post- 2000)