Jim sets the book back just how it was, and selects another, examining it just as carefully. Almost reverently, in fact. This one prompts a smile out of him too, as he recognizes the format as the kind used for pre-Reform poetry. Awesome.

"Universal translators are standard-issue, but Starfleet doesn't like relying on breakable tech with no backup," Jim says, closing the book and tucking it under one arm. He's definitely getting this one. "Especially when my crew's got probably two dozen native languages between everyone. I can get by in three other tongues besides English, and I've picked up little bits of others over the years. My communications chief speaks twenty-six fluently, because she's an overachiever." He says that in the fondest of manners, of course.

Before he steps away from the books, he takes another volume, one that he recognizes as the collected writings of Surak. Every Vulcan alive probably knows them by heart, but he has no idea how many physical copies remain, and it's worth preserving another copy of their culture's core tenets.