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So heavy and unwieldy that it shipped with a custom folding stand, Sumo is the kind of art object you either love, or hate. According to Taschen, the book's publisher, it was the most expensive book production of the 20th century.

Having escaped Germany in 1938, Helmut Newton forged a career in fashion photography that spanned over 30 years. (You can check out his biography on Vogue.com.) He was killed in 2004 when his car crashed into a wall of the famous Chateau Marmont in Beverly Hills, and his ashes are buried in Berlin, next to Marlene Dietrich.

As everyone knows, you can never be too thin or too rich. Though we have only one copy of the signed limited edition of Sumo, Powell's does stock the trade edition. It weighs in at a slim 15.7 pounds.

And many thanks to Matthew, Gary, and Michael Powell for helping me wrestle with the 66-pound copy of

"One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings; it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand."

—Graham Greene, Travels with My Aunt

I've been thinking about the great reading experiences I've enjoyed in the last few months. What makes a reader? Is it the ability to sit quietly and fall completely into a narrative? Is it the genuine enthusiasm that we feel when we hand a book to a friend and say, "You've got to read this!"?

What makes a book collector? Love of the reading experience, love of a particular author, love of a single title? A bit of madness can't hurt. Surely the answer has more to do with emotions — desire, yearning, delight — one usually associates with sex or food. It is not a surfeit of money or shelf space that compels us.

I've been thinking also of the generation growing up with eBooks, with the Kindle and iPhone and online gaming and the social network of Facebook. Most likely, most will grow to find real friends beyond the portal of computer screens and text messages; how many will discover the book?

There have been many memorable partings in history and in literature. Some were melodramatic, some overwrought, and a precious few that were perfect. This is my last bi-weekly posting on the subject of rare books for the "pages" of Powells.com. Thanks for reading.

Sir Aurel Stein was born in Hungary in 1862 and later became a British citizen. He was a linguist, explorer, archaeologist, and scholar. Many of the artifacts he collected are in the British Museum and the Bodleian Library at Oxford holds his papers. Stein traveled many thousands of miles through the Middle East and Asia along the ancient trade route known as the Silk Road. He "discovered" the caves at Dunhuang and he brought the Diamond Sutra, the oldest known complete printed text, out of Asia in 1907.

He died in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1943 at the age of 83.

To understand his place in the panorama of Asian studies, Buddhist literature, art history, and linguistics is not an easy task. He played a part in the "Great Game" of exploration and geopolitics, as did the famous explorers Francis Younghusband and Sven Hedin. He lived the kind of life of study and travel that was probably only possible during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was monumental.

It is only fitting that one of the most impressive sets we have right now is Stein's Detailed Report of Explorations in Westernmost China. Consisting of four folio volumes and a map portfolio bound in silk, the books are housed in a custom folding case that, when laid out flat, is a map of the Silk Road.

Whether or not this fabulous production of Stein's work appeals to you might depend upon whether you are Chinese or British. Or English-speaking: the text throughout is printed in Chinese.