Samuel Riba, a recently retired small-press publisher and recovering alcoholic, tries to keep his mind off wanting a drink, only to discover that his life has been the catalog of the books he published. Though he has a loving wife and good friends, he feels closest to the writers he worked with—Sebald, Auster, Vok, Magris—(and didn’t, the elusive genius he never discovered). As his thoughts flit from book to book and quote to quote, it seems natural that he plan a Bloomsday trip to Dublin where, in lieu of Joyce’s interment of Paddy Dignam, he’ll conduct a funeral for the Gutenberg era, done in by the digital age. Dublinesque (New Directions, $16.95), by the Spanish novelist Enrique Vila-Matas, is a delightful book of books. Riba’s literary name-dropping and impromptu critical commentary are by turns whimsical and profound; his own narrative is humorous, moving, and thoroughly endearing.