More shoveling
Feb. 20th, 2026 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutSnow is falling again, quite a lot of it really. Which is weird, because the thermostat says 36, my phone says 37 and the echo show says 35. All of which are above freezing. Oh well. It’s not sticking to the road but is sticking to our driveway. M. came for a visit.
A. only had the one class, so I dropped her off, and waited in the lobby. I deleted a lot more email. I totally missed the union pacific vote last fall. I got some more detail on the questions we asked MF, head of school, about how A&P dissection worked in community college / undergrad these days. That was helpful, actually.
I had a delightful phone convo with K., who still has a persistent cough. I feel kinda bad for her, and hope she feels better soon. Being sick absolutely sucks.
Laundry is in progress.
Recently, the mass market paperback finally reached the end of its life. The trade paperback continues to limp along, but hardcovers are going strong. Like a lot of vinyl, people are collecting all of the different covers, or all the matching ones in a series. BookTok is a lot of this, which is 100% something I do not participate in. I suspect, however, that the increasing number of hardbacks-on-planes I am seeing are there for a couple other reasons, and I was trying to explain this to A. today. I’ll summarize my thoughts here, and then see if I can find any support for any of it.
First, for some time now, pagination has been the same in trade paperback and in hardcover, more often than not. Sometimes, literally the only difference is margin size, but more often the font size and the space between the lines is greater in the hardcover than in the trade paperback. Aging eyes likely explain the hardcover preference.
Second, pbooks in general are likely winning in the ongoing effort to focus on reading a book vs continually being interrupted. Sure, on a device, you can mute notifications, but it takes some effort. You can’t grep dead wood but also, tree corpses don’t beep or buzz. Obviously, e-readers are a solution to a lot of these things (font size, reading in a bright or dark environment, interruptions), however, e-readers make certain demands on the reader that murdered tree cellular material does not.
Third, lots of e-books are read on phones, tablets, computers — active screens. In addition to focus issues, reading on an active screen is tiring on the eyes. Again, e-readers are a solution, but so are all the arboreal people who the Lorax failed to save.
Fourth, a lot of reading happens in bright environments, and adjusting the brightness of devices to have high contrast in bright light will run the battery down faster. E-readers, again, great solution, but so is macerated and reconstituted tree flesh.
Fifth: charge routines. If you are reading on any kind of electronic device, you are going to need to recharge the electronic device, possibly continuously and repeatedly. If you read all the time on a phone, that’s going to be a real problem in several ways. If you read on an e-reader, you are going to have to solve several problems. You have to have a consistent, effective charging routine (which is hard for a lot of people). You are going to have to figure out how to hotspot your phone, in order to download more books onto it, and if you are using the e-reader because your phone is dead, you won’t be able to do that. Getting connected to public wifi can be surprisingly challenging with e-readers. Both hotspot and public wifi are a lot more challenging than one expects with e-readers.
Sixth: cost. While e-readers are not very expensive, if you are comparing, say, a boxed set of Acotar in hardcover to a bottom of the line e-reader, Acotar in hardcover is cheaper. A lot of this comes down to how many books you read. E-readers make sense when you are reading more than a book a month consistently, and they really make sense when you read more than a book a week. Judging by page turn rate on hardcovers on planes, most people reading hardcovers on planes are not reading fast enough to make e-readers dramatically more cost effective.
I think Barnes & Noble is able to open more stores last year and this year for several reasons. First, retail rent is about as cheap as it has ever been, for a variety of reasons that do not need to be belabored right here right now. Second, they are mostly selling hardcover, with some trade paperbacks. The era of mass market paperbacks is completely over. Their margins are thus, presumably, pretty good. Finally, BookTok and other social media are out there showing people how to decorate with books. Books can be signed. B&N is hosting author events. There’s a whole bunch of community reinforcing third place stuff going on here.
Aging eyes, distractibility, the need to get away from constant interruptions, at least when the battery on your phone is completely dead and/or there’s no local data service / wifi, and the multitude of ways in which pbooks create a sense of stepping outside of The Real World and IRL, and stepping into another world, which is exciting, scary but in a not-immediately-personally threatening way, add up to a weird bump in the popularity of hardcover books.
I’m sticking with my light weight, backlit when needed, legible in Caribbean sunlight kindle. You do you. But I had to limit how many books I could own at a time when I had pbooks. I don’t have that limit any more.
A. only had the one class, so I dropped her off, and waited in the lobby. I deleted a lot more email. I totally missed the union pacific vote last fall. I got some more detail on the questions we asked MF, head of school, about how A&P dissection worked in community college / undergrad these days. That was helpful, actually.
I had a delightful phone convo with K., who still has a persistent cough. I feel kinda bad for her, and hope she feels better soon. Being sick absolutely sucks.
Laundry is in progress.
Recently, the mass market paperback finally reached the end of its life. The trade paperback continues to limp along, but hardcovers are going strong. Like a lot of vinyl, people are collecting all of the different covers, or all the matching ones in a series. BookTok is a lot of this, which is 100% something I do not participate in. I suspect, however, that the increasing number of hardbacks-on-planes I am seeing are there for a couple other reasons, and I was trying to explain this to A. today. I’ll summarize my thoughts here, and then see if I can find any support for any of it.
First, for some time now, pagination has been the same in trade paperback and in hardcover, more often than not. Sometimes, literally the only difference is margin size, but more often the font size and the space between the lines is greater in the hardcover than in the trade paperback. Aging eyes likely explain the hardcover preference.
Second, pbooks in general are likely winning in the ongoing effort to focus on reading a book vs continually being interrupted. Sure, on a device, you can mute notifications, but it takes some effort. You can’t grep dead wood but also, tree corpses don’t beep or buzz. Obviously, e-readers are a solution to a lot of these things (font size, reading in a bright or dark environment, interruptions), however, e-readers make certain demands on the reader that murdered tree cellular material does not.
Third, lots of e-books are read on phones, tablets, computers — active screens. In addition to focus issues, reading on an active screen is tiring on the eyes. Again, e-readers are a solution, but so are all the arboreal people who the Lorax failed to save.
Fourth, a lot of reading happens in bright environments, and adjusting the brightness of devices to have high contrast in bright light will run the battery down faster. E-readers, again, great solution, but so is macerated and reconstituted tree flesh.
Fifth: charge routines. If you are reading on any kind of electronic device, you are going to need to recharge the electronic device, possibly continuously and repeatedly. If you read all the time on a phone, that’s going to be a real problem in several ways. If you read on an e-reader, you are going to have to solve several problems. You have to have a consistent, effective charging routine (which is hard for a lot of people). You are going to have to figure out how to hotspot your phone, in order to download more books onto it, and if you are using the e-reader because your phone is dead, you won’t be able to do that. Getting connected to public wifi can be surprisingly challenging with e-readers. Both hotspot and public wifi are a lot more challenging than one expects with e-readers.
Sixth: cost. While e-readers are not very expensive, if you are comparing, say, a boxed set of Acotar in hardcover to a bottom of the line e-reader, Acotar in hardcover is cheaper. A lot of this comes down to how many books you read. E-readers make sense when you are reading more than a book a month consistently, and they really make sense when you read more than a book a week. Judging by page turn rate on hardcovers on planes, most people reading hardcovers on planes are not reading fast enough to make e-readers dramatically more cost effective.
I think Barnes & Noble is able to open more stores last year and this year for several reasons. First, retail rent is about as cheap as it has ever been, for a variety of reasons that do not need to be belabored right here right now. Second, they are mostly selling hardcover, with some trade paperbacks. The era of mass market paperbacks is completely over. Their margins are thus, presumably, pretty good. Finally, BookTok and other social media are out there showing people how to decorate with books. Books can be signed. B&N is hosting author events. There’s a whole bunch of community reinforcing third place stuff going on here.
Aging eyes, distractibility, the need to get away from constant interruptions, at least when the battery on your phone is completely dead and/or there’s no local data service / wifi, and the multitude of ways in which pbooks create a sense of stepping outside of The Real World and IRL, and stepping into another world, which is exciting, scary but in a not-immediately-personally threatening way, add up to a weird bump in the popularity of hardcover books.
I’m sticking with my light weight, backlit when needed, legible in Caribbean sunlight kindle. You do you. But I had to limit how many books I could own at a time when I had pbooks. I don’t have that limit any more.