So Many Books

A charming new edition of a much-loved book about books

“A playful celebrant of literary proliferation.”—New Yorker 

In So Many Books, Gabriel Zaid offers his observations on the literary condition: a highly original analysis of the predicament that readers, authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, and teachers find themselves in today—when there are simply more books than any of us can contemplate.

Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer, this second edition includes a new introduction by Robin Sloan and delightful illustrations by Grant Silverstein. Robin Sloan writes in his introduction, “This slim volume is above all a book about vastness; about oceanic tides of language, about the feelings they produce, for writer and reader alike. About how words work in the marketplace, and how they fail to work, too. About books and the internet and culture itself.”