These are more generically known as ‘mass market paperbacks’ - and are sadly basically extinct:

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/articles/end-mass-market-pap...

Last year, ReaderLink, the country's largest distributor of books to airports, pharmacies and big-box stores, announced that it would no longer carry mass markets. The books can still be found in some places, but "as a format, I would say it's pretty much over," Ivan Held, the president of publishing imprints Putnam, Dutton and Berkley, said to the Times.

I too mourn them - much more of a convenient size than the now ubiquitous ‘trade paperback’ - but we’re obviously in a small minority.

I don't think cutting it up means he doesn't care about the book when he's going to the trouble of rebinding the pieces so he can keep reading on paper.

It seemed to me more about taking control of things to read in ways that are most comfortable and convenient. I was already off the topic of specifically chopping up books.

You replied to someone comparing it to e-readers; you do not get to complain they say more about e-readers.

What do you do with the pages of the book once you’ve scanned it?

But Amazon does give a seamless experience.

I don't have the urge to fight all my devices.

It does. I photograph the page, not a super close-up of a few words of text.

It's still O(log n) to find the right page from a closed book.

Compare that entire rube goldberg machine with one button press on an e-reader.

In middle and high school when I was reading my way through my parents' fantasy and scifi collection, I got to a point where I'd just make a note of the page number when I set the book down and was able to recall it next time I sat down to read. I don't remember if I kept that up through college, but I've been reading pretty much exclusively on a kindle since 2010 or so.

I found that Japanese book sales cards [0] work very reliably as bookmarks and don’t fall out. One can easily make them oneself out of thin, preferably non-smooth (friction-y) paper, by folding a strip in two and cutting out a lip for easier handling. In use they look like this [1]. They hold better due to being two strips clasping a book page, and due the static friction of the paper. Because they don’t stick out of the book (the lip bends and can fold) like regular (often glossy) thick-paper bookmarks often do, they also don’t “catch” and risk getting pulled out that way.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=%E6%9B%B8%E7%B1%8D%E5%...

[1] https://imgcp.aacdn.jp/img-a/800/auto/aa/gm/article/4/1/4/9/...

This is great until you want to flick back quickly to reference something earlier in the book where you can't quite remember the wording but you remember the rough context.

I don't care about chapter search, nor a dictionary. I actively dislike tapping to change pages, it is far less pleasant than turning a page. Physical books are not obsolete, you just don't like them. Which is fine, everyone has a preference. But it's kind of grating when people use the term "obsolete" which implies that one solution is objectively superior to the other, rather than both having a different experience which some might prefer.

So many books not available as epub...

learned French at all, I got to my current level of ability quite quickly

You probably have some natural ability - or even just drive given your interest. Interests and abilities often hold hands.

The the other major issue with languages is that our teaching methods are rather hit and miss.

This is interesting: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/sep/02/languages.... -- although I cynically worry that he was perhaps rather better at selling himself than doing teaching.

For Korean, I wouldn't bother with Latin letters. Hangul is simple

I've poorly and unclearly explained the idea sorry. Writing is hard.

I would never do this normally, but when I walked the Camino Primitivo the guidebook contained other routes so was more than twice as big as it needed to. Weight matters so I tore out the bit I needed.

I read most fiction these days on my Kobo. I prefer physical volumes when I'm sitting at a desk.

they're not exactly thrilled by termites either. lost a lot of my grandparents' books to that.

When I was in grade school in the 60s (I'm old) they showed us this film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHe2hx1JL7U

For some reason, the lessons learned stuck with me.

Yeah, really, Barnes & Noble marketing is missing a beat by not printing that as a bookmark to include with new book sales after asking the question at the register, "Has the person you are buying this hardcover for ever opened a new book correctly?"

Oblig. XKCD:

https://xkcd.com/1053/

(which I kind of wish was comic #1,000 so it was easy to remember/link)

I bought a copy of Warhammer Quest, a board game, from Lifeline for 5 bucks.

It came with annotations, some kids custom rules, their character sheets and the outline of a custom campaign they were writing. Its got so much texture.

The few times I've had a chance to have something signed by an author I like, I've deliberately taken along with me an old and well-loved copy of one of their books. I've bought the new one, sure, but it's the old one I'll ask them to sign. I don't even know if I'll like the new one yet! No one has said anything about it, yet, but I kind of hope they notice and appreciate it.

Here I thought this was about shredding your books and going completely digital to save space.

I do like when books are wrapped, but to the idea of separating them into parts, I would say probably not worth it. Most books I find myself reading lately are pretty dense, and so my focus is on fitting material in my mind and imagination, i.e. into Gardens of the Moon right now, and I am switching between audiobook, small paperback and companion Claude code wrote for me to help me keep track and visualize what's happening. But hey, if it helps you focus on reading, and you own the book, why not? I do think it is better to just go to your library and work through what they have to offer, without buying the books, so that, hopefully leaves slicing off the table.

I think it's fun. You'll also get the IKEA effect helping you to appreciate the book more

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect

I just did a little sick

Reading your comment I wonder if the parent comment is different each time, because "does the ebook text change reading-to-reading" is not the question being discussed.

That's not a problem with Ebooks writ large -- a zip file of a bunch of HTML documents aren't likely to randomly change on you. It's a problem of some evil vendor's "ebook ecosystem", where one day your copy of 1984 could vanish from your library. Most of the ebooks I've been reading lately are all public domain classics from Standard Ebooks.

My original copy was printed in 1977. His wife's version that I have was printed in 1981.

Parts V and VI were removed from the wife's version.

Hacker News' founder Paul Graham also recommends that you read the original version[1]. I'm curious to see examples of what was changed in the revision. I read it myself a long time ago, but I don't know which one it was and wondering if I missed out on the better version.

[1] https://paulgraham.com/startupfaq.html

Well no, you can only be 100% certain you're reading the text found in that book. Books often change over releases. It's not some sacred tome containing an ever-updating reflection of the author's ideals. It's just the draft at the time the book was printed.

"Seeing your whole collection physically is awesome"

Not after what the submitter did.

I had to stop reading one of my favorite authors when I was doing infant duty with my oldest. The books kept getting thicker, and I could no longer one hand them comfortably reading either end of the novel due to the book's balance. I found a kindle mostly solved my problems, and I could keep reading again one handed.

That said, it never occurred to me to just cut up my book, so I could continue to read it comfortably. I think I might have chosen to do so though, since I find the tactile nature of reading a physical book to be more memorable than digital. Where the words sit on the page, and the act of turning the page, the smell, all does something to my neurons. For my junk novels, I don't really care, but for the authors I cherish, the closer to the printed word I can get the better the experience I have, and the more memorable the writing in general.

This one. Recently I added "re-f" property to my templates for the Review base in Obsidian ie how probable a review/reread/rewatch factor that title has. And it's quite liberating to juas write zero there and remove/delete the title. Also helps with datahoarding tendecies.

You seem to be optimizing for storage space, while others are optimizing for their preferred reading experience.

they just accumulate space..

Can't you dontate them to a library. Or take it from one in the first place..

I had the same problem which inevitable made me buy a bigger apartment. It's hand down the best investment I have ever done since tangible book assets give you so many different an non curated insights which you can only get from reading. You should not see books as something that take up space but rather something that free up space

Why can’t someone else have a different opinion than you, even if it doesn’t make sense to you?

We are talking about our opinions here, so there are no wrong answers. It's an interesting observation, the physical presence of a book is something I hadn't considered. Having said that, I'd wager lots of us avid readers have a daily habit, and we'd likely be working through our backlog during certain hours, even absent a convenient a physical reminder to do so.

I have the reverse. I have a tiny e-reader that fits in my pocket next to my phone. I pull that out instead of doomscrolling on the phone, so I read on trains, on the toilet, etc. It's much more convenient than carrying a dead-tree book around. So I'm way more likely to read a book as an epub.

Yes! Yes!!

I have had Kindles since v1. And the pattern was always the same: Read some books and then get to a boring patch in one and stop and then dont read anything for 6-24mo.

When we had my son we decided we wanted to create an environment where he was more likely to make reading a habit (over touchscreen brainrot etc).

We figured the best way to do that would be to:

1. Make sure he saw us reading for pleasure, often. 2. We read to him regularly as a habit. 3. Create spaces ideal for reading. 4. Put books everywhere.

Even before you get to point 4, it’s clear that physical books are just simply the best possible solution.

So I just bought a ton of books, hooked Openclaw up to my Goodreads and had it regularly scan the inventory of local used bookstores, bought some bookcases, and set aside time every morning and evening to read.

And you know what, I’ve never read as much or enjoyed it as much as now. And I attribute it entirely to having a beautiful wall of books next to a nice comfortable chair right in the middle of the living room.

I see my book on my bedside table every day. It’s a book, not another device. Another nice benefit is when people come over we invariably end up standing in front of the book shelf talking about books. And then they often leave with one to borrow.

Physical books have their issues and drawbacks etc but they definitely have changed our family’s life for the better.

This is what I do as well.

Buy the paperback for larping and performative reading. Get the epub from Anna's to actually read it.

honestly, a manila envelope and some elmer’s glue is a lot easier than i expected going in.

agreed! I'm actually pulled in different directions; I love the nostalgic value of physical books and enjoy possessing them as artefacts, but I vastly prefer the experience of reading an ebook, especially the page turning with one finger.

for a lot of people the huge payoff is the experience of reading a physical book. the ergonomics and sensory aspects are very different.

Quick, someone make a startup to print chopped-up-books on demand.

I have very fond memories of reading hitchhikers guide to the galaxy with a friend in highschool. The book was old and had already started falling apart, and so we just broke it up into chapters and would pass it to the next person one chapter at a time.

I am so confused

I wish more books would come in the same format as the Macmillan Collector's Library series of books. They're tiny hardback books with thin pages. I just checked my copy of Moby Dick, it's about 770 pages, but the book has a very pocket-able size of just 15.6×10×3.5 cm (6.2×4×1.4").

When I was a broke college student I would buy thicker books to get best value.

There's definitively something weird marketing bullshit going on. I have a few books in an old print and a new print. The new print have larger letter and insane margins and line separation. The larger letters are great, if your eyes aren't the best anymore, I just don't get why half the page is margins.

You can have a book printed in the 1970s and it will be half the thickness, and shorter height. It has the exact same content as a modern book. At some point we went from the average number of pages being somewhere around 200-250 to over 400. You don't actually get more words, they just take up more pages. Paper type might also make a difference, I have 60 year old books with ~250 page, they are half the thickness of a modern murder mystery with around 400 pages, and the old book is hardback, the new one is paperback.

I think it's vanity, people would rather be seen reading a brick of a book, regardless of the actual content. Even if the old hardbacks are easier to handle and carry in your backpack.

No, it's necessary only when the alternative is to mutilate the print edition...

I hate my non-spiral bound music books - they never sit well on a music stand. However for all other books I agree, spiral sucks.

I don't understand why Cracking The Coding Interview never published a two volume spiral bound book. It's the perfect candidate: it's huge, you're referencing two different sections regularly, and you stay on one page for quite a while. I never ended up doing it to my copy though.

Giving yourself the old playstation experience. Please insert Disc 2.

someone will come up with the bright idea of serialized novels again

You mean, like on Reddit? ;)

There is a lot of web fiction out there that would be better if the authors had written "the end" a few years ago.

Printing is a good constraint against getting too long, both the physical and cost constraints. Though the Harry Potter series in full still managed to reach a million words.

For another comparison, the Bible is around three quarters of a million words, and tends to use special paper (20–40gsm/30–50 micron) so it works in one volume.

Handwriting is also a good idea for encouraging keeping lengths down; typing and dictation make verbosity too easy; and as for LLMs, words are clearly far too cheap there.

That advice makes no sense.

In fact - many old huge books are epic. I remember in the early 1990s we had a huge book about history. It detailed each year with the most important events. I loved reading in it. Even today I like it.

Unfortunately I am also now part of the digital-only guys, so I have not bought a hardcopy paper books in quite a while (excluding one exception for Raymond Feist, but by and large I only read .pdf files nowadays). So I store things in .pdf files mostly. I also hate .epub files and refuse to use them.

I still have many old books here, but new books rarely come up and I only keep books I find interesting or important or I may re-read. For instance I have one small hardcopy of 1984; I think it is an important book. And a few more like that. But I barely have any new paper books.

I don't presently have any really huge book. Not sure what I will do should I inherit huge books. On the one hand, having them is kind of cool, but I don't want to keep them in a library or shelf either, so ... I will probably not use it. But I would not chop up any book, not even on a first april. It just seems totally pointless and also defeats the point of having huge books. Huge books are kind of cool. Not practical but cool.

Or - don't choose 850 page books for a book club?

You may love it, but your friend may hate it.

Keep it for yourself.

I split a Spanish-English dictionary in half so I could carry around just the English to Spanish part to look up the right words while living in a Spanish-speaking country. In the other direction, I got pretty good at guesstimating the meaning of unfamiliar words based on context and cognate roots, or at least I could get the vibes of what the person was telling me.

I have, on two occasions, actually tossed a book in the trash rather than have someone else stumble upon it. Arguably worse than physical mutilation and I consider myself a book lover.

And, for several others, I have physically cut out and disposed of offending chapters or introductions using the same physical technique as the article suggests. Deeply emotionally satisfying, and not an option available for DRM e-books, as far as I know. And again, a book lover.

Yes, and I recall at the time being exasperated by it -- "Twitter is NOT NEWS it is children yelling across the playground at each other!"

They still do, to the best of my knowledge, although they have started incorporation reddit discussion too.

Well it wouldn't have been as effective as a box office bomb.

Wait until you learn about the namesake for "Dubai chocolate" [NSFW]

True, zootopia 2 agartha conspiracies exist.

Of course, that's why they used the generic word "frozen" with a lot of meanings, as opposed to the specific word "cryogenic" that people would actually search for.

When I took the two day Disney "Walk in Walt's Footsteps" executive employee training 25+ years ago, the training that takes you to his secret apartment above the firehouse, and makes you spend an afternoon as a costumed (minor) character, at the end the woman leading us said "Ok! Now it's time for all of you to kiss Walt's frozen head."

Fortunately, she was kidding.

Or Eldin ring naming your horse "Torrent" so that searches for "Eldin Ring Torrent" would bring up your horse instead of pirate downloads

I remember telling people about it back then and it sounded crazy even to me. Yet..

I heard this is a common tactic in news forum discussions too. When you don't want people talking about the substance of the post, then you mention something like how the site is hosted on wix which supports the IDF, and derail the conversation.

I love my kindle for this exact reason. I never shy away from a book that's "too big" anymore because I have no idea how big it is!

If you read in bed, it’s going to tire your arms out, trying to hold this giant tome over your head.

Eh? What sort of a pretend-reader does that? You must read nothing more than a page at a time.

I have the Diary of Pepys beside the bed and it’s the excerpts, at only about 1000 pages. Enjoying it tremendously.

I used to do this with textbooks so that I didn't have to carry around the whole book all semester. But, I would take it to staples and have the binding chopped off and have it three hole punched, then keep it in a binder.

I like physical copies as they can't be remotely deleted, altered, or slapped full of ads.

I do enjoy a very limited number of hardcovers from my most favorite stories from my favorite authors. Great for curling up in bed with.

Paperback is fine, even in the trade paperback sizes now. Though some authors like Brandon Sanderson don't make novels but bookzillas, and I've thought more than once of getting used copies to split for easier carrying.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisided_record

And the ereader doesn't leave my fingers smelling like mildew!

Ereaders are better suited for novels, but not so good for reference books.

Two page layout. This gives you more context when reading.

That was exactly the reason why I tried out the 12.9” iPad Pro back in like 2016. I used that for 8 years, and now am on my second.

so this is why people buy books! I mostly read ones from the library

Chaotic neutral behavior.

I will applaud them for being clever, hacky even.

Applause!!!!

If you can't figure out how to read a large book in comfort

Isn’t that exactly what he did?

Well, I won't do it, as although books are mainly for reading, they also are beautiful products that I am not willing to destroy. They also look great on shelves and work as decor.

I have faced the problem of books being too big. What I do is I just get an additional copy on my Kindle. For classics this is free, for newer ones, the price is one-sixth to one-third. This is justified because the need is rare.

I read the physical book during the daytime at my home. I travel with the Kindle and take it to my bed.

I remember a story where some big wall climbers were stuck waiting for a storm to pass, and one of them had brought a paperback book to pass the time. Once he'd finished the first half he cut it in half so the other climbers could have something to do during the wait.

This seems rather silly, but I admire the audacity, it's a statement in itself.

This does really seem like satire, but in case anyone wants to do this, most (all?) spine glue like PVA can typically be melted by a standard hairdryer. I find that method to be slightly more gentle.

Is it easier to do this than to hold your big book and read it?

Having hundreds of books at home and being a great enjoyer of old books, fuck off.

Or, and I'm just pointing out the obvious, read the book on an ebook reader and maintain the wallpaper value of the original dead tree book.

I just did this for the first time.

<aside/>I lost interest in programming for pleasure (thank you LLMs), so decided to spend a few years learning all the prerequisites to understand the General Theory of Relativity.

It is so nice to get back to learning from printed matter. The contrast is great. The ability to flip pages back and forth to scan past material is much better than an ebook experience (like referring to a figure on a different page). Best of all, I don't get distracted or tempted to open up a browser window and start doomscrolling. The heft is oddly reassuring too.

Don't forget to sort by color when you're done!

"What I learned is that some folks have a different mindset; they see the world as something to be shaped around themselves, rather than seeing themselves as something that should be shaped to fit the world. That’s been a useful lesson sometimes."

It indeed is. Thanks for putting it in words. I think I will try to adopt this mindset about certain things in life.

cue https://youtu.be/kYfNvmF0Bqw?t=12 :)

I've gotten really used to it too. I find myself reading more because I can carry most books in the side pocket of my shorts or whatever.

If you think this book is too big, I'd like to remind you that there are one-volume paperback editions of The Lord Of The Rings (I have this one: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/r-tolkien-lord-rings-...) with 1100+ pages.

Just don't have weak hands.

Always assume that something you have, someone will want it after you've had your use of it. They do not want a recreation or approximation with all of it's flaws and compromises, something that provides an altered experience or a skewed view. They want the original. If you treat something as disposable that is a disregard for anyone but yourself. Someone may want your old jacket, your old car, your old book. This consideration for those who come after you is the way things survived, how family heirlooms and sacred relics came to be. It's the idea behind the phrase "Plant a sapling you may never sit in the shade of."

That's what machine generation tries to devalue and bury. Infinite recreations, infinite approximations, with no original to compare to. The perfect tool of someone who wishes to create a reality of their own bias rather than one that is a result of all who came before them.

Yes, I remember seeing those double editions come out and thinking they were too large! I bought the volumes as they came out so luckily didn’t have to deal with that problem.

Some, like dickens, just write too long (though he had an excuse, being paid by the word, and in many cases being paid as he worked). Pynchon and Stephenson too. But it feels like Wolfe kept his books short, or at least shorter than they probably started out!

Chunking strategy taken literally. Hmm.