In our word of digital publishing, it's sometimes heartening for a writer to remember that there are folks out there who revere books as physical objects and adore the slow and finicky hand-work of making them.

In that vein, click on the link here and spend a few moments watching this little documentary (a documentaryette, we might say if this was 1950) about letterpress printing, brought to you courtesy of my friend and colleague cj Madigan's book thinking blog and, before that, of YouTube. I've given you the link via cj's blog both because her thoughts on images, book design, and information management are always interesting, and also because her post offers a handful of little videos on related processes and crafts.

The letterpress one is my favorite: wry, amusingly voiced, filled with lovely images, and even explaining the source of the curious phrase "out of sorts." Enjoy.