What's the Point of Hardbacks? | Hacker News Reader

What's the Point of Hardbacks?

tomrowley.substack.com

7 pointscasca8 comments

I've lost the point of dead trees entirely. My disenchantment is the result of moving many times over the years and lugging a once-huge but now dwindled collection of books, along with being able to send library books straight to my e-reader. If anything, my reading volume has picked up over the years due to the convenience of the small device.

I no longer buy printed books, but I do keep a few favorites around on a shelf because they look cool and remind me of my favorite reading experiences. I still have my Asimov's SF and comics, though. I'll never give those up.

There's research[1] suggesting readers of physical books have greater reading comprehension than readers of eBooks. Anecdotally, I feel that describes me well.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/well-read/202402/the...

I experience the same, I feel like it has something to do with the content of a book having a permanent spatial configuration.

That we index information related to physical pagination is very plausible to me. Maybe an analogy would be to having to listen to full albums by flipping a record or cassette instead of listening to tracks on a streaming music playlist.

I do find that I read faster on an e-reader.

I think my only contradictory point would be: what is the aesthetic value of indexing information or reading more immersively? Surely there is one, but there may be a qualitatively different value in reading quickly but exposing oneself to more text. For example, I read the entirety of William Gibson's works last year. They went by in a blur, but I did find the speed of encountering his ideas through his novels ironically fitting for his subject matter.

The question is posed about popular fiction. Apparently the audience for the latest Nora Roberts or Danielle Steel book is the person who expects to toss the book into a bag to take to the beach on on an airplane, read it once, then give it away or forget about it. The nonfiction and literary world are much more into hardbacks that last and can be enjoyed or consulted repeatedly.

I have most of Iris Murdoch's novels in hardback, routinely 500 pages but small and compact, a lovely thing to hold and read on the Tube. But I almost never buy modern hardbacks, simply because they are huge.

I always buy hardbacks when possible. I don’t care about hardback part much. But I found that paper quality is often better jn hardbacks.

Of course, French books get it right, first edition is softback but with really nice paper, and not too sodding big. Portable.

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