Are you used to reading from a computer screen, mobile phone, or electronic reader? Don't you go to bookstores and even less so to libraries? Are you hoping to get rid of books? “Don’t get your hopes up!” - say two European intellectuals, participants in the friendly conversation offered to you: “A book is like a spoon, a hammer, a wheel or scissors. Once they were invented, you couldn’t imagine anything better.” Umberto Eco is a famous Italian writer, medievalist and semiotician. Jean-Claude Carrière is a famous French novelist, historian, screenwriter, actor, patriarch of French cinema, who collaborated with such directors as Buñuel, Godard, Wajda and Milos Forman. Both have a passion for books: old and new, popular and rare, smart and stupid . And they defend the object of their passion, using all their erudition and wit. The authors easily move from serious topics - ways of transmitting knowledge in culture, the role of papyrus and mnemonics, the Internet and e-books - to historical anecdotes and everyday curiosities. In the meantime, the reader learns why “we owe our knowledge of the past to cretins, imbeciles or enemies,” and “it took chickens a hundred years to learn not to cross the street.” And why Umberto Eco read “War and Peace” only at the age of forty. This book about the fate of books is a nostalgic declaration of love and a powerful defensive speech in favor of oneself.* * *French original: Jean-Claude Carrière & Umberto EcoN'ESPÉREZ PAS VOUS DÉBARRASSER DES LIVRESEntretiens menés par Jean-Philippe de TonnacBernard Grasset, Paris 2009* * *Interview and foreword by Jean-Philippe de TonnacTranslation from French and notes by Olga AkimovaArt design by Andrey Bondarenko