Peter Stoicheff

Like many books derived from conferences and seminars, the contents of 'The Future of the Page' are mixed in nature. Given the mutual need of academics to present and conference organisers to take their fees, any heterogenity of topic is a bonus. For my interests, the early chapters were of most interest, because they were concerned with differing views of the nature of the page through history. Also interesting, although it feels a little as if it has been overtaken by events, was the penultimate chapter addressing in great depth questions around the physical reality of the page and our discomfort with its transformation into bits and bytes. Most of the rest were very tangentially concerned with the page, virtual or physical, and my enjoyment was dependent on whether the topic (for example, cultural imperialism, digital archives or James Joyce's Ulysses) was of interest to me or presented in such a way to catch my imagination. I did enjoy this book, and the middling nature of my score is based more on the idea that its strays so far from what this reader thinks the theme should have been.… (lisätietoja)