Without looking in the dictionary or searching online, write your own definition of the term ‘book’:
My working definition of a book is “a written, printed or illustrated body of work; traditionally composed of bound pages and often includes chapters and/or sections that meaningfully organises the entire text. A book may be physical, virtual or electronic. The purpose of books is manifold including imparting knowledge, educating/instructing, telling stories or containing historical records.”
Considering the qualities of bookness:
After contemplating the concept of ‘bookness’ and in thinking about what qualities and qualifiers are given to ‘books’, it becomes much harder to define what a book is. Although we seem to easily distinguish ‘books’ from pre-codex texts (such as scrolls and clay tablets), what makes a book a book is abstracted by today’s range of formats that include digital and audiovisual books. In the digital era, it’s apparent that qualities of bookness must extend beyond physical and structural criteria to account for evolving technologies and the way it is shaping how books are made and experienced such as ‘hypertext fiction’ or other tech-based interactive formats such as Augmented/Virtual reality.
Considering form and function of bookness allows us to narrow down the essential components of bookness, but the vast and growing range of forms and formats adds complexity and presents challenges to notions of bookness. We recognize books which solely contain images such as picture books or emphasise the role of image/illustration such as in graphic novels and we unequivocally classify these forms as books, perhaps because they meet certain physical criteria (e.g. pages bound to a spine). Magazines share these physical attributes and yet we do not regard them as books but rather as periodicals or serials. Does this mean that a book must be a completed work or have a definitive end? Magazines do not however fit with the primary function/purpose of books, that is, conveying information of some kind or imparting narratives. Audiobooks and other virtual/electronic mediums defy traditional concepts of books needing to be bound by a spine however they are often also available in their physical forms.
In dissecting the challenges of coming up with a concrete and all-encompassing definition of ‘book’, it reveals how defining a book is culturally specific and is susceptible to change overtime. Certain conventions such as reading from left to right and top to bottom are specific to western cultures. As a child, I learned to read and write in Arabic, which is written and read from right to left.