Harvard literary scholar Leah Price "argues that literary critics should stop assuming that reading is the most important thing people do with books. (...) We tend to think of literature as something that ties individuals and cultures together, but as books proliferated in the Victorian era they often drove people apart. (...) With so many new books, and so many new readers, a few Victorians began investing books themselves with symbolic power. For the first time, Price suggests, these people turned books into something special—into something you shouldn’t write in or treat like a decoration. Up to this point, reading books was rare enough that the act itself made you stand out. “People took for granted that you could use a book for all kinds of things,” Price says. But for all of these reasons, that began to change with the Victorians. “This was the moment where you start to become embarrassed about these nontextual uses,” she says, “where you start to say, ‘Other people do these things with books. But I don’t—I’m a reader.’” (...) “In the 18th century,” she notes, “the ability to concentrate on a book was actually proof you’re an idle daydreaming loafer.” (...) Price points out that, when the first bulky e-readers came out, people complained that you couldn’t read them in bed: “Well, for most of the book’s history you couldn’t read it in bed, either, or the curtains would catch on fire.” " - Amira