“Books reveal themselves. Whether they exist as print or pixels, they can be read and examined and made to spill their secrets. Readers are far more elusive. They leave traces—a note in the margin, a stain on the binding—but those hints of human handling tell us only so much. The experience of reading vanishes with the reader. How do we recover the reading experiences of the past?”

— The Chronicle of Higher Education investigates the secret lives of readers.

5:45 pm  •  2 January 2013  •  251 notes