How the physical form of a book effects your reading of said book

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For instance, I'm reading Rabbit, Run by John Updike. I really just wanted to read Rabbit, Run to see if I liked it before I read any of the others, since I've never read any Updike before, but when I went to the used book store, they only had a volume that contained the first three Rabbit books together, which I ended up buying. For the first 100 pages or so, I found myself very disgruntled by the character of Rabbit, and after some self-examination (ha) I think this is because I was intimidated by essentially being forced to be with this unsympathetic character for three books, about 1200 pages. If I had just the first novel, a breezy 300 pages, I would be more inclined to forgive his faults, because I wouldn't have to become so intimate with his flaws. Plus, it's just a heavy, awkward paperback, so I'm less likely to pull it out on the train or lay with it in bed, so it's going slower than usual.
Others?

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 16:09 (twenty years ago)

Life of Pi.
I was struck, as soon as I started reading it, by the amount of white space on the page. The margins were set much wider than in any other book I've seen. Plus, although the book looks like its the standard paperback size, when you hold it up against other books you can see that its quite narrower.
The strong impression is that the publishers were trying to make a reasonably short book seem much longer than it really is. This reinforced my opinion that its a really average book pretending to be much more important than it really is.

― Ray (Ray), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 16:24 (twenty years ago)

Oh I hate that too, when the print on a book is really big or when there's lots of white space I'm automatically prejudiced against it.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 16:31 (twenty years ago)

Nick otm. smaller book much more user friendly: easier to carry around without danger of backache, allows for carrying of another book in case you feel like reading that instead or have desire/need to purchase one while you're out, light-at-end-of-tunnel closeness to sense of satisfaction upon completion and shelving, feels more like sophisticated lighthearted grownup fun than schoolboy drudgery, less likely to be derailed in middle of book by internal mood changes or external lifestyle changes rendering book part of "old you" not relevant to "new you."

― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 16:31 (twenty years ago)

Surefire recipe for book unfinishability: fat spine reading "The Collected Short Stories of Monsieur/Madame X."

― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 16:32 (twenty years ago)

Yep, slim volumes are good (but not too slim in case you take it out with you and finish it all in one sitting). Also any book that can be laid open flat on a surface adds to my reading pleasure. CRACK THOSE SPINES BWAHAHAHA.

― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 17:11 (twenty years ago)

I am heavily into 3-in-1 books these days - PG Wodehouse, Melvyn Bragg, William Golding. I also have an Orwell with about 7 novels in it. Sure, it gives you rickets*, but you look dead clever in the meantime.

Massive hardback biographies are a nicht nicht.

I can't fucking stand pop-up books.

The worst book ever was CENTURY, an enormous breeze block of photgraphs. Mine eventually went in the recycling bin. Most of the pictures were of people having their heads blown off and things like that.

*OK, tennis elbow.

― Puddin'Head Miller (PJ Miller), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 17:42 (twenty years ago)

pop-up books rock.

― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 17:45 (twenty years ago)

x^3 post:
slim volume less likely than fat tome to develop unsightly "Reader's Crack" on spine.

― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 18:19 (twenty years ago)

Anything published by Vintage books in the UK with that horrible cheap pulpy paper that makes the text bleed. I hate vintage! (US Vintage books are rather nice but i'm not sure it's the same company). Either that or text-too-small (the thing that just made me cast aside Powers' "The Time of our Singing" - also published by Vintage in the UK)

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 18:49 (twenty years ago)

Bulky, heavy books certainly make me read less carefully, and often with a more prejudiced view of the book. I'm skeptical of the need for so many pages, so they'd better be used well (Anna Karenina did well in this test). Also, if they start falling apart, I get nervous. With Weaveworld, I gave up on reading the final part because it fell completely out of the book.

My big thing (and I think I've posted about this before) is that I have a really hard time reading early- to mid-20th century fiction in modern paperback form. I flat out refuse to read Hemingway in any edition later than the 1950s if I can help it. It shouldn't be pricey, but it should be old. This all started when I read Breakfast at Tiffany's in its original c.1958 edition (not first edition: I'm not picky about those, and in fact I'd prefer not to have to be so careful with my books). It felt so romantic and so right, knowing that someone else must have read it at the time it was meant to be read. The feeling was multiplied when I read The Sun Also Rises in its 1926 Modern Library edition. It felt right in my hands (and cost half the price of a new paperback). Of course, it's difficult to find an inexpensive early edition of The Great Gatsby, so I had to fold. I still loved the book on my second reading of it, but it felt so tacky to be holding a paperback Fitzgerald. Give me a beat up cloth-and-carboard-bound browning version over that anyday.

― zan, Tuesday, 30 November 2004 19:19 (twenty years ago)

I don't really hate pop-up books, you know. I'm not that beastly.

― Puddin'Head Miller (PJ Miller), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 20:52 (twenty years ago)

"Einstein's Dreams" is worth reading mostly because it is the perfect size for a book, especially one you intend to read on a plane.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 22:34 (twenty years ago)

This question is sort of like "who do you find attractive?"

For me, anyway, the answer to both is:

I don't have a type, I just KNOW.

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 23:00 (twenty years ago)

Am I the only one who likes their books small? I don't mean the length/ thickness of the book -- holding a thick, heavy book in my hand is always nice, especially if super thin pages give an extra denseness factor. But books that are extra tall and/or wide totally bother me. They just seem so clumsy and extraneous.

An example: I just read "Poor Things" (the Dalkey Archive editon) and it is extra tall and I think I would have like the book a lot more if it was halfsize. Conversely, I find compact books (esp. hardcovers) to be completely addictive.

This means I don't like most hardcovers, ovb.

― stewart downes (sdownes), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 23:44 (twenty years ago)

I had another edition of "Poor Things" that was about the same size if not bigger with Alasdair Gray (sp?) having designed the whole cover himself. It seems to me the new edition fooled with that a little.

― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 23:59 (twenty years ago)

"I was struck, as soon as I started reading it, by the amount of white space on the page. The margins were set much wider than in any other book I've seen. Plus, although the book looks like its the standard paperback size, when you hold it up against other books you can see that its quite narrower.
The strong impression is that the publishers were trying to make a reasonably short book seem much longer than it really is. This reinforced my opinion that its a really average book pretending to be much more important than it really is."

OTM. The wide spacing and wide margins seem, in themselves, to make the book pretentious -- it's as though the publisher thinks that the short two and a half paragraphs that it fit on the page are as important, as packed with meaning as a regular, full-sized page of most other writers' work.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 1 December 2004 07:11 (twenty years ago)

I'm not a fan of omnibus collections of novels. It seems to rob each novel of its defining characteristics when it's jumbled together with several other books by the author. I'm thinking particularly of the Library of America editions, which have miniscule, very clinical typeface besides.

― Gail S, Wednesday, 1 December 2004 14:55 (twenty years ago)

Stewart: The appreciation of small books is partly why I love old Modern Library editions so much. They are perfect for holding in one hand as you walk through the park to read under a tree, or something equally highfalutin. And "portable editions" used to actually be portable and durable, unlike the modern mammoth paperback "portable editions".

― zan, Wednesday, 1 December 2004 14:56 (twenty years ago)

Gail S and zan otm.

― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 1 December 2004 15:01 (twenty years ago)

I keep meaning to replace my cheesy-cover early 90's John Wyndham reprints with either the really classy new Penguins or the really classy 60's-70's Penguins.

― derrick (derrick), Thursday, 2 December 2004 09:32 (twenty years ago)

two weeks pass...

My big thing (and I think I've posted about this before) is that I have a really hard time reading early- to mid-20th century fiction in modern paperback form.

This is a million times true. I only read The Grapes of Wrath last month, and I got hold of a second edition. As well as looking impressive and smelling fansastic, it also seemed more right somehow - like the difference between old news footage and dramatic reconstructions.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Tuesday, 21 December 2004 10:45 (twenty years ago)

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