It was originally published in French in 2012, translated and published by Pushkin in 2014 so is fairly contemporary but perhaps because it deals so specifically with a moment in publishing history it already feels like, well, like history. Robert Dubois has spent his career refining, amongst other things, how he reads a paper manuscript. The advent of his reader is discombobulating but eventually they become used to each other. At which point it's replaced with an upgrade.
I read this book at the same time as a clutch of media articles about how well Waterstones is doing selling books on the high street and how ebook sales have plateaued which added to the sense of reading about a moment that had already passed - 'Dear Reader' has plenty of young people getting very excited about the possibilities of various apps and a corresponding number of middle aged people who range from baffled to entranced by the new technology.
My own feeling about e readers is that they're not for me, partly because it feels like technology destined to go the way if the mini disk and I resent the pressure to upgrade an expensive device every few years and mostly because I like books. I like them as objects, I like looking at a shelf of them, I love going out to shop for them, and all of that is before I even get to content.
Like Dubois in this book I have come to see the point of e readers even if I will never own one. This is an engaging snapshot of the publishing industry as it catches up with the possibilities of new technologies, it's also a book that gently nudges it's reader to consider their own relationship with books both for their contents and as possessions.
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