But Pyne has not been alone in focusing her attention to the bookshelf as a material phenomenon structuring the book’s materiality. This seemingly inconspicuous book touches on some of what I deem the most important aspects in the study of the book, namely issues of access, of fixity and fluidity, and of the material conditioning of knowledge. For example, Lydia Pyne’s incredibly readable ‘Bookshelf’ has recently been published in Ian Bogost’s and Christopher Schaberg’s new, beautifully designed, Object Lessons series for Bloomsbury. One subject (or rather object) has in specific caught my eye lately within this context: the humble bookshelf-which has been gathering some (deserved) academic appreciation. In this context of overlapping fields and attention to materiality-in which I would also situate my own work-it then doesn’t surprise that the material relations and objects that scaffold the book, be it publishers’ distribution practices or the architecture of the page, also receive increased recognition. This ‘(re)turn’ is characterised by the growing popularity of theories such as new materialism and media archaeology.

This coming together of previously rather disconnected subject areas has been taking place alongside a what has been called ‘(re)turn’ to a focus on the materiality of media (which rather underestimates the continuous tradition of attention to the material (i.e.

These scholars all combine insights from a variety of humanities’ disciplines-but mainly also media theory and book history-to study the book as a material medium in and through its myriad forms, relations and contexts. Katherine Hayles’s work has been incremental in paving the way-as has been Johanna Drucker’s research for example-but lately some very interesting new work has emerged that positions itself at the intersection of book history, media studies, and the digital humanities, sparked on by people such as Lisa Gitelman, Jessica Pressman, Whitney Trettien, Lori Emerson and Matthew Kirschenbaum. Yet recently media theorists have shown a growing interest in the book as a medium and hence an object of study. However, the latter-media studies-has been quite slow in its uptake of the book as an object of study, where as a field it has predominantly focused on audio-visual media. The book has always been studied within a wide variety of fields, from (book) history, bibliography and literature, to library and information science, publishing, and media studies.

Bookshelf by Lydia Pyne