Just finished reading Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière’s book-length series of dialogues This Is Not The End Of The Book. It’s an interesting, engaging and sometimes annoyingly showy discussion, ranging widely across book-related topics such as libraries, editing, publishing, private collections, printing processes, bad books, excessive details, and the digital challenge. One of the discussions concerned the obsolesence of digital formats, and the problem of being able to read e-books even just a few years into the future. But overall what came across most clearly was the fascination with the printed page. You don’t have to keep up with all the recondite references to enjoy the conversation.