William Gibson talked to Alberto Manguel about books:
I was in a bar in Barcelona, on the Rambla, with Alberto Manguel, just before Christmas, talking, as it happened, about why books, the paper kind, are such a good thing. Neither of us suggested building beds from them, but Alberto did say that he thought the book, like the wheel and the knife, was one of those perfectly and completely evolved inventions, an idea that wasn’t really going to be improved upon.”
Manguel’s own books are pretty highly evolved. His A History of Reading is wonderful.