Codex
{4.5/5} “But there was something magnetic about them, something that compelled respect, even the silly ones, like the Enlightenment treatise about how lightning was caused by bees. They were information, data, but not in the form he was used to dealing with it. They were non-digital, nonelectrical chunks of wood pulp and ink, leather and glue. Somebody had cared enough to buy them, possibly even read them, at the very least keep them safe for 150 years, sometimes longer, when they could have vanished at the touch of a spark.”
Edward is an investment banker who is moving from New York to London for a new job. He has two weeks to pack things up and have a bit of a vacation. And he has to visit one very wealthy client, the Went family. It turns out they want him to unpack and catalogue a library of old books. Initially he scoffs at the idea of doing this work, but he gets caught up in the idea that among those books might be a book that’s so rare no copies exist — and some people think it never existed.
Codex by Lev Grossman was published in 2004.
Edward is doing something different than what he usually does — he’s sucked into the world of rare books. At the same time, he’s sucked into the world of an addictive video game that his friend gives him — it’s unlike any game he’s played before.
A codex is a hand-written book.
This is a book for people who like books. It’s a mystery about a book — does it exist, if it does exist what’s in it, and what will the Went family do when they find it?
I enjoyed it a lot — I was sucked in along with the main character and wanted to find out the answer to the mystery.