Using diverse formal approaches, each of these book sculptures works against the basic usage of the typical codex. Judith Barry’s angular book-object, Peter Barnett’s boxes and scrolls, Joyce Cutler Shaw’s tunnel books and the internal flaps and gates of Margot Lovejoy’s publications each forestall the usual habits of the workaday page-turner. In their rejection of conventional usage, these mutant forms tend to shun life on the standard bookshelf. Instead demanding isolated display, or at least some measure of sustained contemplation. Provocative constructions such as David Stairs’ Boundless—an impenetrable stack of circular paper—can bring their viewers to a renewed mindfulness of the page, bindings, as well as the typical modes of reading and using books, which we often take for granted. Such renewed attention to the formal properties of the physical book could only be salutary for this object, at whose bedside theorists, historians, and even readers themselves, are all too often delivering their last rites.