Books with power... how would you interpolate?

[Electric Bone Flute]

Last night I dreamt I was in a fantasy world where books had powers, and so they were glued onto the ends of various implements to leverage that.
I saw a hoe with no head but rather a book that ensured easier and better tilling, maybe even "blessing" the ground for better crop yield.
My instinctual reaction was "this means all farmers must be literate."
But this was a weird concern because I knew I was in the modern world; I had just been in some nameless amalgam of a Target and a Walmart. I later went to a dump that doubled as a food bank. Building was steel and glass and laid out like a department store. I even saw a saxophone busker playing with a digital backing track as my alarm woke me, so clearly this implied a tech level at which
I had two brothers(! [didn't know dreams could invent family members]) and they were studying for some trade. This involved these powerful books, but I wasn't sure to what end they were being used. Come to think of it, I wasn't sure how to use the books. I didn't know if they had to be read, and perhaps they bestowed the ability, or read and the act of reading did the deed of the tool, or if they literally could just be applied in the shoehorn manner that their placement implied (i.e. hoeing with a book instead of a hoe head, digging its binding into the dirt).

Question: If you were writing the dreamworld, how would you say the books be used?

 

[Luís Santana]

"digging its binding into the dirt"

 

[coeurdevrai]

Perhaps reading the book causes the thing to perform its function sort of like the mop in Fantasia.

 

[Finchbearer]

I read a book a couple of years ago called The Binding, where books are dangerous and not generally read. There are people who have skills enough to bind people’s memories into books, taking those traumatic or bad memories away - but book binders could also be paid and used by those who have abused people to wipe their memories so the abuse can carry on - and the books contain all of the memories. Hope that makes sense. It was a great book until the second half and then it wasn’t.

 

[Aleshe]

I was watching something where magic worked by reading incantations directly from books, but it wouldn't be necessary to tie one to the end of a hoe. If it's on the end, it must be doing some of the physical work. Maybe the book transforms into the tool, or projects an invisible solid form from itself.

Would there be a book for each job or are they all the same book? A book with the knowledge to unlock physical manipulation still wouldn't need to act as the head of a hoe directly. Maybe these people don't know what they're doing?

The last thing I could think of is that maybe the pages are used in the process, like each page becomes the tool head for a specific period of time, using up the magic within as it works.

 

[Julia]

I read a book a couple of years ago called The Binding, where books are dangerous and not generally read. There are people who have skills enough to bind people’s memories into books, taking those traumatic or bad memories away - but book binders could also be paid and used by those who have abused people to wipe their memories so the abuse can carry on - and the books contain all of the memories. Hope that makes sense. It was a great book until the second half and then it wasn’t.

I had a very similar thought process when I read about the dream. In this dreamscape, the books are too accessible. Thus, using books for their true function/giving into the temptation to read ends in disaster for the reader. As long as the farmers continue to use books as hoes, they are safe.

 

[CrystalD]

It sounds like the people are being instinctually drawn to the books, and they aren't being read as much as channeling magic. So I think they just know how to use the magic through the books, and they perform an action that the magic channeled into the books are told to do. Kind of like a robot that is programmed to do a certain function, and nothing else.