'The book is like the spoon: once invented, it cannot be bettered' - Umberto Eco.

These days it is impossible to get away from discussions of whether the book will survive the digital revolution. Blogs, tweets and newspaper articles on the subject appear daily, many of them repetitive, most of them admitting ignorance of the future. Amidst the twittering, the thoughts of Jean-Claude Carriere and Umberto Eco come as a breath of fresh air.

This thought-provoking book takes the form of a conversation in which Carriere and Eco discuss everything from how to define the first book to what is happening to knowledge now that infinite amounts of information are available at the click of a mouse.

En route there are delightful digressions into personal anecdote. We find out about Eco's first computer and the book Carriere is most sad to have sold. And while, as Carriere says, the one certain thing about the future is that it is unpredictable, it is clear from this conversation that, in some form or other, the book will survive.