I want to confess something: I love paperback books.
Yeah, I know that ebooks are cheaper and easier and generally awesome, but I love my paper.
I grew up in a house filled with books. I think literally every room had a bookshelf in it. In fact one entire wall of my mother’s spare bathroom is a large bookshelf. So if you if have to be constipated, that’s the room to do it in, my friends.
Books were the landscape of my childhood. They were always present, dusty and cluttered on tables and sometimes in stacks on the floor. I think their presence in my life was what made me a reader. Yes, my parents read to me and encouraged me to read, but they also surrounded me with books. I assumed everyone’s house was like that, a little dusty, with teetering piles of fiction on bedside tables. I thought everyone read before bed, like my mother did, or spent lazy Saturday mornings on the couch with a book and a plate full of snacks between us.
When I went to school, books were not threatening or challenging; they were something totally familiar and comforting to me. I associated the smell of new hardcovers and used paperbacks with my mother, a voracious reader herself. When my teacher friends tell me that they have kindergarteners who don’t know how to hold a book, how to orient it, my heart breaks a little.
I totally jumped on the ebook bandwagon when it came out though. I got a Nook, then a Kindle, and realized the pain of clicking buy impulsively when my credit card statement came. One month I spent almost $400 on ebooks. Oops.
There are tons of reasons to love ebooks. I think digital publishing would have changed high school for me completely. I remember reading Harlequin Presents in high school, breaking the spines because I smashed them down on the table in study hall so no one could see I was reading The Greek Tycoon’s Virgin Amnesiac Secretary’s Secret Royal Baby. I lived in terror of being found out. I would leave the books with the really bad clinch covers at home because I knew if someone caught me reading them I’d be humiliated.
To be fair, romance novel covers were kind of awful then. Remember Man of My Dreams by Johanna Lindsey? What the fuck is he doing to her back? Is he penetrating her shoulder blade with his penis? The hell…
I would check out romances from the library, squishing them between books I had zero intention of reading, just to hide them. My face would turn red when the librarian checked me out because she obviously knew I was reading about sex. The horror!
Buying them was no less daunting. I was convinced the bookstore employees had a secret conference after I left, discussing my trashy taste in fiction.
If ebooks had been a thing then, I would have been able to read and buy and rent without this anxiety. I would have been free to indulge in ALL THE JOHANNA LINDSEYS RIGHT IN FRONT OF PEOPLE. It would have been glorious.
I also appreciate the convenience of ebooks, especially for travel. I read a lot on vacation, and on business trips, and I used to have to make choices like “Well, I can wear my panties for two days each if I wear them inside out on the second day, so that leaves room for more books.” Books are heavy. Airlines are assholes. A Boeing 747 can carry the fucking space shuttle, but my two hardcovers are pushing us over the weight limit?
Plus if you get stuck somewhere, you have unlimited books on your ereader. Unless you’re like me and you forget your Kindle while airline hell banishes you to Cleveland. Or Huntsville. Or you just circle Atlanta until everyone on board is likely to die from old age.
Last time I was stuck in the Cleveland airport for eight hours, I bought all three Fifty Shades of Grey books from the bookseller there and read them, my rage ratcheting up by the page. When I finally boarded my plane, the flight attendant asked me how I was and I replied, “Well, I’m not safe, sane or consensual, that’s for fucking sure.”
Okay, I probably said “Fine, thanks.” But I thought it.
So if ebooks are all the awesome, why do I like paper so much? Why do I still prefer it? Lots of reasons.
I love living in a house filled with books. I love the physical presence of books in my life. I love their smell and the way they keep me from having to decorate because they take up all my wall space anyway.
I love used books. Used bookstores are treasure troves for the weird and awesome. You can find the best Old Skool shit there. I mean, look at this:
What the ever-loving fuck is with that mustache? Is he gonna tie her to the railroad tracks?
Plus I love it when you buy a used book and the person before you has left notes or receipts or grocery lists inside. It’s like a mystery, trying to figure out the previous owner. I like it less when you open a page and find a Mystery Stain and are all like “Please, Jesus, let that be Nutella.”
I like passing my books along too. I give them to friends and family members, and I donate them. I don’t really want to own my books. I just want to be a rest stop for them during the course of their lives. Sure, I keep the ones I really, really love, but I like the idea that a paperback can have a dozen different homes in its life.
Cover art has changed too (thank God), and I love the bright, colorful covers that are being shown now. I really adore the Giant Colorful Circus Tent Skirt trend that’s taken over historicals. I appreciated Fabio, but I’m glad he’s gone.
Most importantly though, I don’t give a shit if people know what I’m reading. I stopped being embarrassed a long time ago. I read my romances in restaurants, at work, while waiting at the doctor. Fuck you, if you want to judge me. Some dude is sitting next me with a confederate flag shirt. Give him the side-eye.
I like that when I read them in public I’ll have women, and sometimes men, ask me if the book is any good, if I’ve tried a certain author, if I can recommend something. I need a button that says “I read romances and erotica. Ask me how!”
So, what about you? How do you read? Are you a digital diva? Do paperbacks trip your trigger? Or is it a blend?
I prefer paper to e-versions. For all the reasons you list, I’m with you on both formats. A few extra reasons I love paper books:
Because they can function (at least during a sunny day) without electricity/power. We lost power this winter for 1.5 days and some friends lost it for 7 days. E-readers die by then.
They say that the “blue light” from electronic devices mess with the brain and make it harder to fall asleep. I like to read right before going to sleep. Paper versions are apparently better for this.
Technology changes fast and companies are out to make a buck. Therefore, the first generation nook I own is dead to them. Sadly, it is dead to me too as the power cord stopped working to charge the nook and B&N doesn’t make a replacement cord. Every year or so each comes out with the next better version trying to get you to spend more money. And I could rant a long time about Amazon’s priority format and taking back books purchased.
On the flip side of the last point, paper books can last centuries and still share their information as long as someone can read/translate the language.
However, much harder to get the next book in the series that you must start reading NOW at 1:30 AM or even 11 pm when all the lovely physical book stores are closed. Even ordering a paper book online at that time doesn’t get the story immediately in your hands like an ebook would.
So, each has benefits, but yeah, I prefer paper.
The kind of mass market paperbacks that were churned out in the last half of the twentieth century certainly don’t last forever! even the paper turns yellow and brittle! I’m betting that an old book in perfect condition will fetch a fortune in a hundred years’ time, because of its rarity value!
I have enough devices to keep me going through a day and a half without power. A Kindle or a Nook reader can last between two weeks and a month on full charge.
You can get apps for the “blue light” which turns the light into something more friendly if you have trouble sleeping. I have the Twilight app which works really well, softening the bright light with a pinkish-yellowish tinge.
You can still use your Nook if you can find the charger. These days devices come with a standard micro USB plug, so my phone charger works in my Nexus and so on. You could find an old Nook charger on ebay if you wanted one, and it would automatically update to the latest firmware if you plugged it in. Or you could root it and go vanilla Android. That would give it a new lease of life (I have an old Nook reader, and that’s what I’ve done with mine, but these days I mostly use my Nexus). Because of the lockdown I prefer not to go Kindle and Kindle Fire, but I understand that you can root them too, or download an app that means you can read epub.
I love and still buy both.
I resisted getting a Kindle at first because I do love paperbacks (and much prefer paperbacks to hardcovers) but literally ran out of space to put books in the very small apartment we used to live in. Once I got a Kindle, I fell in love with it madly. I particularly like the immediacy of getting a new book NOW. I love being able to check out some new authors and try new things with all the free or 99 cent deals available, particarly in the romance genre. I love being able to highlight in books without guilt, plus search. I appreciate being able to adjust the font size. And of course I love the convenience and privacy factors.
But I grew up with old school books. I have some I will ways have and read. I love to admire their covers. I love the familiar comfort of a paperback. I as well adore used bookstores. I read a lot of poetry and I’ll only buy poetry in paperback or hardcover – poems just don’t read the same electronically where spacing and line breaks matter so much.
I always buy Nora Roberts in paperback when a new one is released. She’d be a perfect electronic candidate with the quantity, but when I have all her books in paperback, sorted in multiple bins by certain categories, it would feel incomplete to not have the new ones in with the rest.
I’ll also admit with certain very special favorites in the YA genre (my other fave genre besides romance) that I’ll buy both the paperback or hardcover plus the ebooks.
Mmmmm, books….
For reading in the bathtub: iPhone with the waterproof case. White letters on black screen helps with the eye strain.
I am a librarian in a Children’s Department, and we constantly have people donate their old and used books to us. Most of the time when a person brings them in (often in like 5+ boxes, because they’re clearing out their whole effing attic I guess), I will put 99.9% of them out on the sale cart because they’re largely in really crappy condition and not worth adding to the collection. However, I have a coworker who, if someone gives them to her, will pull out anything that has a good-looking cover and pile it onto my desk, like a beaver building a dam. The upshot is that I have developed a motto that sums up the entire collection development process: “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, because if it was previously owned by a family with a 12-year old boy, the margins will almost certainly be heavily annotated with penises and boobs.”
I feel the formerly embarrassed pain!
I used to smuggle the romances home from the public library under my oversized 80s sweatshirts (tucked in my waist band, sorry …!) Hid them in the garage or car trunk until it was “all clear” to bring them in the house. I was allowed to read romance, but I just had a quota – I think it was one “real” book for every three romances. I couldn’t do it. So I had to smuggle.
Now I can read as many as I want, because I’m a grown up, but I have so much less time!
I’m a late ebook adopter, even though that’s how I’m published! I stuck by paper pretty long – in fact, two of the last three books I read were paper (Kristen Ashley’s Own the Wind and Deborah Harkness Discovery of Witches in paper, Lynn Rae Harris Hot Pursuit in ebook). While I prefer paper – price is somewhat of a reason to shift, but space is a bigger reason. We live in Seattle, in a smallish city house (bigger than average by historic Craftsman standards, small by suburban standards). Space costs more than books, and ebooks don’t take up any space.
I’m saddened by the way my paper books from the 80s are harder to read – my Louis L’Amour westerns are almost totally brittle and unreadable, but thicker romances seem to have held up slightly better – but you know? I have about 3 varieties of ebook I can’t open anymore either, unless I work at it, so I think longevity tilts to paper despite the yellowing.
All in all, I’m really happy that Harlequin is putting one of my ebooks out in print next month. It’s good to hold a paper book sometimes.
KKW – re getting rid of books:
I gave a friend a 50th birthday present that was a basket filled with 50 chosen books – across all genres – from my floor, dresser and shelves. They were good books, but not keepers – things I wasn’t embarrassed to give her, but that I knew I didn’t need to reread (or even read the first time) this week.
It was a beautiful gift – and really spectacular at the party – and incredibly LIBERATING! I think it would have been much harder to donate them or take them to a used bookstore, but I was sorting for a particular person.
So if you have any friends who have a big birthday coming up, you could try that – 40 or 50 or 60 books does make a dent, one shelf’s worth – feels good.
I grew up surrounded by books. My parents, it appeared, could not help themselves. I would go through the stacks and shelves looking for books I had yet to read. I was bitterly disappointed to discover that my grandparents, despite being readers themselves, only had one children’s book at their home…but we visited the library and I learned to travel with books.
In university, the end of each year involved the ritual of “freeing the books”…deciding which of the few paperbacks purchased would remained tied to me, and which would go to romp on the shelves of a library or second hand store elsewhere.
But now I am an adult with many, many books and a job which causes me to physically move house every 2 to 4 years. And I have a weight limit for each move. I am tired of leaving books in storage, and so am using my tablet for reading more and more.
However, I still love my libraries and physical books. I have begged to be allowed to buy a week’s pass to the library when visiting my grandmother. I have two active library cards ( and 2 more inactive). I also love e-borrowing and have bribed my brother to use his library card for e book access as well.
My two little readers are following right along in these footsteps.
I really like what you guys tend to be up too. Such clever work and exposure!
Keep up the very good works guys I’ve you guys
to my own blogroll.