Author: Abdelardo Morell, photos. Nicholson Baker, preface

Publisher/Date: Bulfinch, 2002, stated First Ed, NAP.

Format/Condition: NEW large hardcover book with dust jacket is in fine condition. 108 pages, measures 12×12 inches.

Description: Perhaps you’ve imagined, as Jorge Luis Borges has, that “Paradise will be a kind of library.” This handsome album is all about the love of books as physical objects, a tribute to the printing of the word as much as the word itself. Abelardo Morell’s elegant black and white photographs of unusual books—and books looked at in unusual ways—are complemented by quotations from Hawthorne, Cocteau, Neruda, and other bookish commentators, with an introduction by Nicholson Baker. Audubon’s elephant folio, as large as a tabletop, is followed by a book smaller than a paperclip; old books show their rumpled edges like the bark on a stand of trees; old engraved illustrations take on a curious depth as their pages fall open in a curl.