I found this good-condition hardcover in the swap shop of Nashua's Four Hills landfill/recycle center. It's a novel based on the life of Gutenberg - rather loosely, I gather, as not that much is known about him for sure. Looks to be an interesting look at medieval life, from the viewpoint of the inventor of movable type - and thus the father of the printed book... [Would he appreciate the irony?]

Later: interesting indeed, though not as involving as I might have hoped. It did present many of the difficulties of just getting along in that place and time, never mind attempting to create something new and so potentially controversial. Whether he's being courted by the Church or condemned by it, being run out of town by jealous rivals or betrayed by former apprentices, or just trying to sell his new product/service/art, it seems he never has an easy time of it. Since the book's told by him in the form of memoirs dictated in his old age, some suspense is lost - we know he isn't going to be murdered out of hand, for example - but it does lend poignance to some of his reflections. All the more so since he seems to have a crush on the young man who's taking down his words, and occasionally notes that his comments have made the youth blush!

While romance and/or sex plays a fairly small part in the story, I was interested to find this passage:

Love between men is in our age a matter not much broached. There is some unnatural fear of it, which the Ancients never had. For why should love of one man for another be sinful? And why should men not innocently touch?.... But in the meanwhile, he is here with me, whose ancient heart leaps highest at the sight of a pretty woman yet beats smoothest with a handsome young man. Fellows who rub along together: there are many among us like this, yet the priests cannot see it and imagine something dark, and condemn it, and lay penances. It is some narrowness, a part of that more general ignorance which I hoped my invention would cure.

Controlled release:

I gave this to a friend who enjoys historical fiction.

And the book's back!

RELEASE NOTES:

I left the book on a table outside Frederick's Pastries at about 3.