Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The remains of the book

September 30, 2011 One of the essential characteristics of the printed book, as of the scribal codex that preceded it, is its edges. Those edges, as John Updike pointed out not long before he died, manifest themselves in the physical form of bound books - "some are rough-cut, some are smooth-cut, and a few, at least at my extravagant publishing house, are even top-stained" - but they are also ther