Week 3: Library Thing

Des Esseintes also derived a perverse pleasure from handling this minute volume, whose covers, made of Japanese felt white as curdled milk, were fastened with two silk cords, one China pink, the other black. Concealed behind the covers, the black ribbon met the pink ribbon, which was busy adding a note of silken luxury, a suggestion of modern Japanese rogue, a hint of eroticism, to the antique whiteness, the virginal pallor of the book... The 'soul' of a book is lost in the simulacral texts of Library Thing. Of course most books lack the opulence of Des Esseintes', but worn down, aged books possess a sort of decayed beauty to the connoisseur of dilapidation. So while unlikely to endear itself to the discerning bibliophile, Library Thing probably had some kind of disgusting appeal to obsessive cataloguers.