Hardcover vs. Softcover: A Bookpuddle Poll
I am just early into the reading of what is already a terribly intriguing and well-written book. Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth, by Gitta Sereny. In 1978, the author began a lengthy series of personal interviews with Albert Speer, the enigmatic Nazi war criminal who escaped a death sentence at the Nuremberg Trials. His penalty for being the overlord of Hitler's entire war economy was twenty years in Spandau Prison. I look forward to providing a full review of this already excellent book somewhere around 2017 when I will finally finish it. The thing is about 20 pounds, the size of an average slab of concrete, and makes Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries look like… The Little Prince. Hence, the topic of tonight's blog. Hardcover vs. Trade Paperback.
Which do you prefer?
The only negative thing I can say about this book by Gitta Sereny is that it's giving me lower lumbar problems. It's so big and heavy and unwieldy. I'm considering devising a pulley system, attached to my neck. I prefer trade paperbacks myself. Not only are they lighter, but the covers bend.
I guess I'm also revealing the dinosauric nature of my reading style at any rate, because a lot of people would probably answer that they prefer their e-readers to either type of book that contain actual paper!
But humour me for a moment. Given that the battery in your Kindle or Kobo dies [or something] and you have to read either a hardcover or a softcover book, which do you prefer?
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4 comments:
My answer: it depends. Mostly I buy paperback but for someone like Margaret Atwood, always hardcover. Big fat books like The Luminaries, I borrowed that one as an ebook from the library precisely because it was so big. If I were to have bought it, I would wait for the paperback.
I MUCH prefer trade paperback but do have quite a few hard cover books as well. Since I am anti ereader of any type I would then prefer hard cover to the electronic version. So I guess I'm ok with both so long as it helps me avoid the electronic, non-book, version of a book.
C.
Neither! I love mass market paperbacks! Compact and portable, cheap-quality paper, dirt cheap (relatively), totally disposable. Sadly, the format is mostly reserved for "genre" (which fortunately I still read quite a bit of).
Frankly, I don't understand the trade paperback. Non-standard sizes, they don't fit in my purse, they're not all that much less cumbersome than hardcovers. Cheaper but still not cheap. Marketing genius, though, cuz most people like them. And I still buy them, and hardcovers.
Yeah, I'd prefer a "metal cover" with a book like that! However, if my e-reader stopped working and I couldn't read it on my computer, then I'd say hardcover. It's backbreaking heft would make the accomplishment of finishing it (in 2017! ha!) much sweeter.
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