{"id":586665,"date":"2026-07-15T09:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T09:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/586665\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T09:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T09:26:12","slug":"want-books-to-look-well-read-now-theres-a-service-for-that-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/586665\/","title":{"rendered":"Want books to look well-read? Now there\u2019s a service for that \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s 85 years since Brian O\u2019Nolan, better known as Flann O\u2019Brien<\/a> and Myles na gCopaleen, proposed a Book Handling Agency in The Irish Times.<\/p>\n

On Sunday evening, Flann\u2019s idea became reality. In a Berlin<\/a> bar\u2019s back room, Cabinet Magazine, a literary quarterly, assembled a crack team of white-coated literary experts to make your unread books look well-read \u2013 at moderate prices.<\/p>\n

For \u20ac5 you could get an \u201cessential\u201d handling package including a \u201cprofessional\u201d spine-break for your book, \u201ctwo commonplace page markers, 2 scholastic dog-ears; 4 underlined passages; 1 arbitrary yet discerning piece of marginalia; and 1 contextually appropriate piece of marginalia\u201d.<\/p>\n

The premier package added \u201cmauling the edges\u201d of the book with a drill and sand paper, thanks to the \u201cvice-chiefs of abrasion (light, heavy)\u201d as well as \u201cone stain using cheap wine, coffee etc\u201d, hand-applied by a \u201cfluid dynamics specialist\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"AmongAmong the 40 books handled one Sunday evening was an unread volume gifted to a woman by her mother a year go. Photograph: Cabinet magazine <\/p>\n

\u201cWe learned that, to look authentic, coffee needs to be dropped at a different height than wine,\u201d said Sina Najafi, editor-in-chief of Cabinet magazine, who organised the evening and took on the professional spine-breaking.<\/p>\n

He got the idea during a conversation with his friend Michel Chaouli, a US academic, who is working on an essay about underlining in books.<\/p>\n

That made Chaouli recall reading, decades earlier, the literary handling agency column in a Flann O\u2019Brien collection.<\/p>\n

Chaouli, on Sunday the underlinings and marginalia expert, found it more time-consuming than he expected to give his additions some logic.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it was great fun,\u201d he said, \u201ca mix of Flann O\u2019Brien and Monty Python to have normally serious scholars doing this absurd work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the 40 books handled on Sunday evening were an unread volume gifted to a woman by her mother a year ago \u2013 three days before the mother\u2019s next visit.<\/p>\n

Another visitor wanted their new copy of the 1,000-page Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin to look as well-read as the lost copy it was replacing.<\/p>\n

The book handling agency will pop up again for an autumn fundraiser in New York.<\/p>\n

For Najafi, the agency\u2019s Berlin debut was an exhilarating and moving experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all have unread books,\u201d he said, \u201cbut the history of why those books are unread is more fascinating than any of us knew.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s 85 years since Brian O\u2019Nolan, better known as Flann O\u2019Brien and Myles na gCopaleen, proposed a Book…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[25123,18,117,42978,6621,19,17],"class_list":["post-586665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-berlin","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-flann-o-brien","tag-germany","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116923282065831787","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}