Emma Smith: Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers: Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York, 2022, 340 pp, $28.00, Hardcover, ISBN: 9781524749095.

This is, Smith continues in her introduction, "a book about books, rather than words." "A book becomes a book in the hands of its readers", Smith concludes, after considerable deliberation. The first thing to note about Emma Smith's I Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers i is that like Keats's thing of beauty, this book will be a joy for as long as there are books and people who appreciate them - that is, readers. [Extracted from the article]