Bibliophagy, or People Who Eat Books

[workerbee]

Yes, apparently it's a thing according to a New York Times article "Books to Chew On" (26 March 2006).  The author, Blake Eskin, provides a number of fascinating historical examples, including this:

There are two instances of bibliophagy in the Bible. The first comes in Ezekiel [3:1-3], when a heavenly hand offers the prophet a scroll covered on both sides with "lamentations, and moaning and woe." God commands Ezekiel to eat the scroll, and he reports that "it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness." Revelation, Chapter 10, has a variation on this theme: an angel hands John a scroll to eat, telling him it will taste like honey but also "turn your stomach sour." According to the theologian Eugene H. Peterson, the author of . . . Eat This Book (2006), the scroll became the source of John's apocalyptic vision: "The book he ate was metabolized into the book he wrote."

Not sure where I want this thread to go (Books That Give You Indigestion?) but I thought I'd post it anyway.

[Arzoo]

I think Borges  in a certain short story - The Book of Sand, I think mentions an infinite book. Literally, an infinite book. Apparently, the owner of the book was going mad with it and as a last resort - decided to burn it. But then - he reasoned or feared that since there are infinite no. of pages, burning it - would suffocate the entire planet. So, he decided to hide it in the library where the J.L. Borges was the head librarian or something.

Would you like to feast on an infinite book?

[Sid]

I like a book I can get my teeth into...but not literally.

[joew771]

I wouldn't consider it bibliophagy when god commands you to eat a scroll. I would eat 'green eggs and ham' though.

[blimey23]

I wouldn't consider people eating cake-shaped books (or any of the other edible books they eat at the festival) to be a case of bibliophagy, but I wonder if people who do genuinely consume books/scrolls, do so because they believe it will give them knowledge, and if they do, are they mentally ill?