BOOKS are like spoons; once invented, they cannot be bettered, said the Italian polymath, Umberto Eco. Some may think that Eco's words are no longer true because of the internet. However, an everlasting medium for storing information has not been invented, which is why nothing has yet exceeded the capacity of the book to store information for centuries. Try to open a floppy disk from three decades ago, and you will surely fail to secure the information stored there. Now, try to open a book printed 300 years ago; in an instant, you are given access to the information it contains, provided you understand the language.

Books are depositories not only of words but of human knowledge. Words unrecorded dissolve: the internet may turn out to be fickle, the cloud an unreliable custodian of human memory.