A turn of the page

In a world full of e-books, print still preserves finer points of reading that the electronic format can never hope to duplicate. Here are three texts worth having in hand.

It has been called the world`s strangest book. In 1981, architect, artist and industrial designer Luigi Serafini launched the first edition of Codex Seraphinianus, a sort of encyclopedia of the surreal and fantastic, with an oddly familiar feel even though the images are accompanied by text written in an unintelligible language. Over the years, the publication has developed a cult following, and now - thanks for the internet - more and more people are discovering this genuine artistic treasure. One fan even claims to have decoded the language that Serafini used in this almanac of an unknown world, but does is realy matter what the text say ? The book aims to present something beautiful, "to convey to the reader (...) the sensation that children feel in front of books they cannot yes understand", or so said the artist in an enterview published in Wired magazine in 2013. 

The latest edition, launched last October by publisher Rizzoli, alredy had 3,000 copies pre-ordered before its release, it`s longer, and included new illustrations. In the introduction, Sefarini also makes a curious atatement; he says that the real author of the book is a stray white cat found on the streets on Rome in the 1970s.