In the ages of exploration, when travellers returned from exotic expeditions, they would bring back weird and wonderful oddities, astonishing those at home. The 2010 Cambridge Book Fair had something of the same atmosphere. Transforming The Guildhall into an old curiosity shop, the book sellers exhibited an array of antiquities brought back from a travel in time. This meant books like they just don’t make anymore: ivory covers, marbled pages, gold clasps, and a collection of books so small they came stacked along their own miniature wooden shelf. These books spanned a considerable chunk of publishing history, from a first edition of Birthday Letters (circa 1998), to a first edition four volume, leather bound Middlemarch (circa 1874). But this was by no means the oldest offering. Or the most expensive; a copy of Isaac Newton’s writings was up for grabs at a cool £2,600.

Perhaps for a serious book collector such prices would have seemed reasonable or appropriate. This wasn’t the case for the student who could hear only spare change jingling in her pocket. But, really, buying books wasn’t the main appeal here. The Fair was a chance to appreciate the book through time and a reminder that, as bibliophiles panic over the rise of the e-book, the regeneration of books has been happening as long as the book has existed; we are over-sentimental in assuming that the book has never changed its form, and won’t continue to do so. If you missed the Fair, don’t panic. Cambridge boasts its own collection of even greater treasures in the UL and its college libraries. Go out and do some exploring for yourself; deep in the bowels of St Catharine’s College, I discovered a book so big, you could sleep in its pages...