A Book Can Be

badge of allegiance

balancing act of form and content

bearer of significance

big enterprise

A blueprint

A book-like object

A brilliant ergonomic unit

A business card

A calling card

A challenge to write

A change agent

A circular letter to friends of the writer

A coat

A codex

A collaboration between the one who reads and what is read

A collaborative effort

A collection

A comfort

A commodity

A companion

A company by the way

A compilation

A composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and is considered an investment of time to read

A concept

A confidence and credibility improver

A connection with other minds, viewpoints

A connector

A container

A container for worlds, characters and ideas

A contribution to the world

A conversation starter

A conversation with someone from the past never met

A copy

A counsellor

A credibility booster

A curated work

A device for delivering narrative

A dialogue with other readers and other books

A distillation, a compression of what is essential

A distinctive manufactured object conveying its own meaning which shapes, and is shaped by, its reader

A door

A door into another place and another heart and another world

A dream that we hold in our hands

A flyswatter

A form in which some of the greatest masterpieces that mankind has ever achieved are expressed

A found object

A fragile creature

A friend

A furnishing

A gap filler

A gateway into another world and another mind into which you cannot otherwise travel

A gateway to other products and services

A gift

A gift we can open

A great action

A great work

A guide

A guide for how to live

A helper to feeling understood

A house

A journey

A key to unknown chambers within the castle of our own self

A kind of experiment in doing something that feels impossible

A kind of filing system

A knowledge sharer

A law giver

A legacy leaver

A legacy that a great genius leaves to mankind, delivered down from generation to generation as a present to the posterity of those who are not yet born

A liberator

A linear, long-form text that can be read on paper or screen and evokes deep or immersive reading

A little thing

A loaded gun

A loyal friend

A magnificent achievement

A magnum opus

A manipulation resister

A marketing tool

A marketing tool for your brand

A meaning discoverer

A means of democratising art outside the confines of gallery walls

A medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover

A medium in which to investigate an art practice

A medium of artistic expression that uses the form or function of “book” as inspiration

A merging of handwritten texts and images

A message giver

A metaphor

A mirror

A mixed-media assemblage

A money maker

A money saver

A monograph

A most delightful companion - it gives and does not take

A multiple

A multitude of counsellors

A necessity

A need meeter

A new way to interpret your past experiences

A passion reigniter

A passive income creator

A permanent document of hard work, determination and creativity that you’ll have for the rest of your life

A person who has managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers

A personal possession

A piece of art

A place for pouring out the heart

A pleasure giver

A portal to a new world

A portfolio to display your personal work

A prism

A prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers with a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice

A private space

A prize

A producer of thought and imagination

A product of materially artisanal, rather than verbally creative labour

A professional reputation builder

A promotional item

A proof of earnestness

A reading habit maker

A record

A record of our communal experience

A relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships

A remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain

A remedy

A safety deposit box

A savings bank

A sculptural object

A sculpture

A sculpture

A self-helper

A self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition

A set of pages that have been fastened together inside a cover to be read or written in

A set of written sheets of skin or paper or tablets of wood or ivory

A shining light

A sliding door

A snapshot of the full story

A souvenir of an idea

A status symbol

A storehouse

A story sharer

A submission to form

A symbol

A teacher

A team effort involving many people

A thing among things

A thing that makes us change our life

A thing to behold

A token shaping relationship

A tool for reading

A tool for study

A tool of self-discovery

A tool to talk to a large number of people

A training weight of the mind

A travel companion

A treasure of life

A treasured possession

A tv alternative

A unique experience

A vehicle

A victory in the battlefields of human thought

A volume

A volume lost among the volumes that populate the indifferent universe, until it meets its reader, the person destined for its symbols

A volume,

A way to hear

A way to lift our thoughts above the ordinary, the domestic, the seen and felt and heard

A way to make good ideas available to the public

A way to see the world differently

A way to share a message

A way to speak

A whole

A wisdom container

A wonderful present - though it may grow worn it will never grow old

A word container then a world container

A work or labour or exertion

A world

A written object

A written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers

A written text that can be published in printed or electronic form

Altered

Ammunition

An absent teacher

An act of generosity toward other people

An addition to life

An advancer of science

An aid for sleep

An alma mater

An art form

An artifact of the human mind and hand

An artistic artifact

An astonishing thing

An attempt to serve and elevate readers

An autonomous form that is not reduced only to text

An edition

An education of the heart

An emergence above everyday life

An essential tool

An expert establisher

An explainer of the now

An expression of creativity

An expression or a series of expressions

An icon

An imagination absorber

An impossible question answerer

An income earner

An Information carrier

An information container

An information delivery system

An insignia of class

An instructor

An island of democracy

An object

An object of associations and history, cultural meanings and productions values, spiritual possibilities and poetic spaces

An object that brings people together

An office furnisher

An opportunity to meet new people

An opus

An orchard

An ordinary thing that becomes special in the unpredictable and unique human connections it embodies and extends

An understanding aid

An unfathomable large single concept which can itself be understood as a metaphor for the boundlessness of the imagination

Anonymous

Art

As important as almost anything else on earth

Authored

Big

Big with long words

Blank

Borrowed for free

Bought

Chained

Chaptered

Closed

Completed only when it is finished by a reader

Contraband

Corralled with other books

Covered

Created using online self-publishing companies

Decoration

Designed

Detailed

Dewey decimalled

Diversity of form

Drawn

Dust jacketed

Edited

Encyclopedic

Experimental

Fruitful of other books

Full of conversation without loquacity

Full of pictures with no words

Funny, exciting and wonderful

Genrefied

Given to you

Good company - in sad times and happy times

Hand crafted

Handmade

Hard covered

Hard to write

Heavy

Idea and form

Indexed

Inexhaustible

Inspiration

Intended as a work of art

Interactive, portable, movable and easily shared

Kept

Labelled

Left in a public place

Life

Light

Light enough to carry, yet heavy with worlds and ideas

Like a child - easier to bring it into the world than to control it when it is launched there

Like a key to unknown chambers in the castle of one's own self

Like a piece of rope - it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds together

Like a river

Like a single tree in a forest - it exists in conjunction with and because of a great many others around it

Like a single tree in a forest - it exists in conjunction with and because of a great many others around it

Like food

Little

Loaned

Loud

Made by an artist and intended as a work of art

Mass produced

Mimeographed

More than the sum of its materials

Nature

Never finished, but abandoned

Not an isolated being

Not completed until its read

Not made of sentences laid end to end, but of sentences built into arcades or domes

Numbered

One of the parts that a very long book, such as the Bible, is divided into

Open

Outlined

Page numbered

Paperback

Part of a boxed set

Part of a library

Part of a series

Perpetuated in fame from age to age

Photocopied

Placed in a category

Political

Printed

Printed offset

Printed on demand

Proof that humans are capable of big things

Published

Read

Read as though you’ve never read it before

Read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight

Read out loud

Readable

Reborrowed

Reproduced

Reread

Revised

Saved

Savoured like a gourmet meal

Scanned

Sculptural

Self-published

Sent out like a ship on the sea

Shelved

Silent

Sincerely from the author’s soul

Skimmed

Slip cased

Small with short words

Small, flat, rigid squares of paper that unfold world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you

Sold

Something sent out into the world

Something that breaks the shackles of time

Something that can be read ten years after publication

Something that can get through to us

Something that changes every time you read it

Something that fears rodents, the elements, and clumsy hands

Something that helps us understand who we are and how to behave

Something that improves other people’s lives by informing, amusing, or inspiring them

Something that lets you travel to faraway places without ever leaving your chair

Something that makes you a better person

Something that shows us what community and friendship mean

Something that suffers the wear of time

Something to look forward to reading

Something with a fashionable air

Something you own multiple copies of

Something you’re trying desperately to write

Stacked

Tagged

Taken to the beach

Tasted, swallowed, chewed on or digested

Text

The best of friends, the same today and forever

The best way to really learn something

The best way to share a story or an idea that matters

The breathings of the great souls of past times

The compositional whole of which such sections, whether called books or chapters or parts, are parts

The container of an idea - what is inside the book is what matters

The delivery system of story and talent

The destination, and the journey

The dominant symbol of our intellectual endeavours

The essence and quintessence of our lives

The focal point for social ritual

The focus of ritual and celebration

The link between parents and children

The most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper

The pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer

The plane, and the train, and the road

The precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life

The product of hard work and planning and patience and hunching over a desk a lot

The quietest and most constant of friends

The reason why some lived and worked and died

The result of study and wisdom

The string that ties a bunch of the flowers of others together

The world's most patient medium

The wreck of a perfect idea

The writer’s exhibition space

Thick

Thin

Titled

Unfinished

Unique

Unputdownable

Unread

Unreadable

Unreturned

Untitled

Victory

Words put together

Written

Written by anyone

Written by hand

Written in clear words for people in another century

A life changer (then) a world changer

A world changer

A box of ideas

An idea generator

An idea grower

A tiredness resister

Something we fall asleep to at night

A cheerfulness giver

A cloud banisher

A giver of sweet serenity

A gloomy thought remover

A restorer of quiet to the troubled mind

What makes us feel like everything is going to be ok

A conversation with the finest minds of past centuries

An expertise sharer

A bath companion

A beacon to new readers

A block of paper, if unread

A brain software updater

A bunch of pages bound together

A carrier of civilization

A collaboration between writer and reader

A comfort provider

A commitment requirer

A computer heightener

A crying producer

A deportment aid

A door to a new world

A doorstop

A dream maker

A flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are printed lots of funny dark squiggles

A flower press

A friend maker

A funny little portable piece of thought

A future improver

A garden

A guide in the wilderness

A haven for the questing mind

A healing aid

A heart that beats only in the chest of another

A hope giver

A house furnisher

A journey we agree to go on with someone

A knowledge hunger satisfier

A ladder to new knowledge

A laughter producer after crying producer

A life saver

A loneliness remover

A machine to think with

A map of the future

A mind waterer

A mirror that reflects what we see inside us

A most delightful companion

A museum without walls

A paperweight

A pass to personal freedom

A path of words which takes the heart in new directions

A peace giver

A perspective giver

A profound thought delivery system

A prompt to think about things we’ve never thought about

A question answerer

A quiet corner

A racing mind soother

A sandcastle built on the beach of usefulness

A sedative

A self-improvement prompter

A ship to take us lands away

A silent conversation between two friends

A solitude enhancer

A space of tolerance

A space taker-upper

A springboard

A stepping stone

A sustenance yielder

A tear recorder

A teller of history

A time hastener

A tool

A version of the world

A voice speaking clearly and silently inside our head, directly to us

A warm blanket

A way of holding ourselves apart from the crush of the outer world

A way to find out what we're thinking

A weight to strengthen our brain muscle

A window

An anchor

An encourager

An endurance tester

An escape hatch

An ideal travel companion

An imagination igniter

An investment

An ornament

An unsilencer of history

Expressed life

Free therapy

Full of majestic potentiality

Full of words

Home

Light in the hand

Part of the soul of a room

Resilient technology

Revealed thought

The heart and core of ages past

The hearts portrait - every page a pulse

The highest delight

The most accessible and wisest of counsellors

The most patient of teachers

The only place in which we can examine a fragile thought without breaking it

The plectrum with which our else silent lyres are struck

The purest essence of a human soul

a provision for life and for the best part of us

Healing Balm

inexhaustible mind food

kind heaven's white decoys?

material object

Message in a bottle

paths traced by ink

perspective to our weak sight

Portable Knowledge

Sea of letters

Silent prophet

string of text

the best of good comrades in loneliest b=nooks

the eloquence and silent presager of my speaking heart

the motionless journey

the track of fled souls and their milkyway

trusted companion

A New View To Life

A Place To Breathe More Slowly

A Precious Treasure

A Provision For Life

A Song Sung In The Mind

Burning And Shining Thoughts

Cheerful Companion

Idle Hour Occupation

Island

Isle Of Peace

Little Portal

One Of A Number Of Similar Objects

One Tolerably Harmonious Whole

Path

Prodigious Trap?

Repository Of Time

Someones Silent Thoughts

Unexpiring Passport

Voice Box