Book Essay is a series of narrative/descriptive essays on the parts of a book. From the spine to the back cover, each essay will convey my thoughts (largely subjective) on the components of each part of a book—one essay for a book part. These essays will create the awareness that a book is made of many parts, and show how these parts, put together, make the beauty that a book is. I hope that these musings get us into a conversation in the comments. For me, it is a setup that makes me dig deeper to understand the parts of a book. Therefore, these essays will not be preceded by extensive research on the book part. You can be sure to find errors in factual details. But let me be wrong, this one time, since I would do research afterwards. (But flag down my errors, please!) Worry not, the essays are numbered!
Dear Fellow,
Imagine. You walked into a library or a bookstore. You browsed the shelves. Dozens of book spines called out to you. You drew half a dozen books from the shelves in search of one book—two, three or more—that matched your interest. You read the front cover of each book you pulled off the shelf. You returned some of the books on the shelf after reading their subtitles and blurb notes on their front covers. You read the preliminary pages of the remaining books to determine which book should—or not—go home with you.
You left with a copy of Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear. The book’s content (prelims) is grouped under these headings:
Introduction: My Story (prelims)
The Fundamentals
The First Law
The Second Law
The Third Law
The Fourth Law
Advanced Tactics
Conclusion: The Secret to Results that Last
Appendix1
Here, “Introduction” is a part of the text—and not the prelims—because there is no “List of Abbreviations or Chronology” after that part or chapter. The main gist of this book starts from “The Fundamentals”, and the story runs until “Conclusion: The Secret to Results that Last”. Anything after that point is outside of the text.
Text is the second part of a book. A book has three main parts, namely: (1) Front Matter, (2) Text, and (3) End Matter. The substance of a book is in the text. If a book is a piece of cake, the front matter is the icing over it, the end matter is the base of it, and the text is everything else in between.
The text in substance and layout both matter in a book. The substance of the text refers to the information the book provides. The layout refers to how it is presented to you on each page. Both of these aspects are very important, and that is why there are specific editors in the bookmaking process who especially cater to each of these aspects to produce a good book.
With this note, I hope you enjoy your book for the weekend. Cheers!
Your LetterMan,
Tongjal, W. N.
James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones (London: Random House Business Books, 2018).
This part of the series is less strange to me, albeit, wonderful. It reminds me of the Book Publishing course I took in my university days.. Still beautiful to talk about.