I started reading it a few months ago and keep dragging myself back every few weeks to read another 50 pages before I put it down in exhaustion and frustration. Still not finished.

It has its moments!

I’m hanging out on my building roof and people keep popping up here to check them out. So neighborly!

Calmed down again but 15 mins ago it was amazing

I'm not sure! The pdf in the link has a single page in Japanese introducing the facsimile, maybe it mentions binding style there?

In terms of studies of this work, because I know nothing about this field, I've referred to research by 赵江红 and Matthias Hayek to get a sense of what I was looking at here

And if you search Waseda University Library, www.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kotenseki/se... some of the results are other Japanese reprints of the work, and they are delightful!

Good news though! The book made its way to Japan in the early 17th century and there are tons of reprints there. For example, here is one that purports to be a reprint of a Song edition commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CN...

I haven't found the exact edition (will have to go to SOAS for that!) but starting on p365 of this facsimile reprint of another edition, hosted on @wikimediafoundation.org Commons, which really shows how badly woodblock prints can be done too
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GG...

Why yes, this does in fact entirely have to do with how cute this one cat is, you know me.