海角大神

鈥淪croll codex e-book.鈥澛�

It sounds like the thinking man鈥檚 version of rock-paper-scissors, doesn鈥檛 it?

Those words popped up together as I was doing some follow-up research on the word code, explored here last week.

The Latin word codex, I鈥檇 found out, gave rise to our English word code, as in a legal code. But codex also found its way into English, as a word meaning 鈥渂ook鈥� 鈥� specifically, a book made up of pages stitched together. Codices (plural of codex) were what replaced scrolls.

When did that transition occur? In the 1st century: Early 海角大神s found codices a kind of market differentiator from the Jews, who used scrolls for their important writings, including the Torah. Codices have separate pages, so both sides can be written upon. This makes codices more compact. The shift to papyrus might also have been a factor: It doesn鈥檛 roll as easily as parchment, made from animal skins.聽

That rolling action is what鈥檚 most essential to a scroll. Our word volume, which originally meant a roll of parchment containing writing, according to the , comes from the Latin volvere, meaning to turn or to roll.聽

(, the name of the Swedish automaker, means literally 鈥淚 roll.鈥�)聽

Now back to rock-paper-scissors: It can be useful to pay attention to Google鈥檚 suggestions when you鈥檙e entering search terms. That鈥檚 how I got to the above-mentioned 鈥渟croll codex e-book.鈥� When I entered the first two terms, Google suggested the third.

And so I found a by Lev Grossman, headed simply 鈥淔rom Scroll to Screen,鈥� published nearly three years ago but still a top hit for people exploring the 眉bertheme of book format.聽

Mr. Grossman鈥檚 point is that the shift from paper book to electronic book is not just like the shift from manuscripts (handwritten books) to books printed with movable type, but more profoundly, like the shift from scroll to codex. And then he points out just how important that shift was:

鈥淚t created a very different reading experience. With a codex, for the first time, you could jump to any point in a text instantly, nonlinearly. You could flip back and forth between two pages and even study them both at once. You could cross-check passages and compare them and bookmark them. You could skim if you were bored, and jump back to reread your favorite parts. It was the paper equivalent of random-access memory, and it must have been almost supernaturally empowering.鈥�

Note that nonlinear reading is different from a search function 鈥� which is where e-books have an edge. But it鈥檚 clear that even by the standards of digital information technology, the book 鈥� what I suppose we now have to call 鈥渢he paper book鈥� 鈥� holds its own pretty well. It鈥檚 compact, portable, and relatively inexpensive. There鈥檚 no proprietary software to buy or update. There鈥檚 no license fee. You buy a book, and it鈥檚 yours. Or you can borrow it from the public library, and return it when you鈥檝e read it. Or you can borrow it from a friend 鈥� well, OK, that鈥檚 when it actually can get complicated.

But the paradox of the book still stands: It is by making it possible to read in 鈥渘onlinear鈥� fashion 鈥� dipping into a text here and there, apparently at random 鈥� that the book encourages the careful reading that most fully engages with a text. By allowing for a kind of shallowness, the book makes it possible to achieve a kind of depth.