The matter of the hardbound book

I suppose it is not a sign of my good taste or reverence for books that so many I own are paperbacks. I have fairly strict criteria for buying hardbound volumes: If the book is a gift, if it is a work I expect to frequently reread, if it is a reference book, or if it is something I just can't wait to get my hands on. (Also, if it is offered at steep discount from Sam's Club or Costco, but I can be flexible on that point.)

Thus, I recently sent my brother, for his birthday, a hardbound copy of Ian Rankin's new title, "The Naming of the Dead" even though I'd have been content to wait for the paperback myself. That's not an entirely selfless act: While I have loved nearly all the Rebus novels, I've found the most recent entries to have taken on kind of a meandering quality. I'll see what my brother Mike has to say before picking up a copy for myself.

A number of books in my eclectic collection of hardbounds I'm not particularly proud to display -- there are quite a few Stephen King titles, for example, bought years ago when I really wanted a page-turner for a long trip or something. In my defense, all were steeply discounted.

Comments

Peter Rozovsky said…
You'll find an interesting exchange on this very subject at the It's a Crime! (or a mystery ...) blog, http://itsacrime.typepad.com/its_a_crime_or_a_mystery/2007/06/after_the_hard_.html#more Big hardbacks, especially by A-list crime-fiction authors, remind of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
July 10, 2007 at 3:08 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sleuths are only as good as their sidekicks

Image
I recently read the much-lauded Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands , by French author Fred Vargas, and like many others found it quirky and engaging. Her deft writing left me happy to have found another series character to follow: Commissaire Adamsberg. But that's not what this post is about. I've decided that others do a lot better job with reviews than I do, and I hate laboring over my shallow insights only to find later that I've echoed what everybody else said a long time before. (And yes, I can hear you saying: "But that's never stopped you before." True enough. Nor will it now.) So, short version: Wash This Blood is a good book. Buy it. But for all the talk about it being "eccentric" or even "kooky," it does share one key device with nearly all other detective fiction: the sidekick. Adamsberg's reliance on gut instinct and intuition is sharply defined by the hard-nosed, scientific approach of his second in command, Capitaine ...
Read more

A farewell to copy

Image
On Friday I walked out of a newspaper building as an employee for the last time. During the stroll to the far end of the parking lot, I did a brief review of my career. Here's the high point: I've worked at newspapers that have won Pulitzer prizes. And the low point: None of those Pulitzers were won while I was working at the newspapers in question. Hey, I'm sure that's just bad timing. Of the half dozen papers I worked for, the best was the Philadelphia Inquirer. The worst was the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont. When you enter the cavernous newsroom of the Inquirer, you pass by a wall festooned with pictures of reporters and editors who have won Pulitzers. It is a measure of my love of journalism that when I looked at these pictures, I usually reflected not on the prize-winning stories they reported, but on the clothes they were wearing. Look at them: All these gifted journalists, photographed at the very apex of their careers, and most of them are dressed like t...
Read more

Wall Street and Willa Cather

Image
I've been reading My Antonia , Willa Cather's 1918 novel about growing up on the Nebraska prairie. It's a beautiful book, poignant and uplifting, full of characters who reflect the truth of life in all its joy and pain. It's also an instructive portrait of the time in America when explicit toil was required for mere survival, never mind success. I've been reading it against the background noise of Wall Street's collapse, men and women on CNN droning gravely about the consequences of greed, and the need to ensure that the greediest of all do not, in the end, go broke. It's a complex issue. It takes someone like Yale business student David Bledin, writing an op-ed for the Washington Post, to put a human face on the unfolding tragedy. You think you have it tough; think what it's like for Masters of the Universe-in-training who now rue the rigors involved in chasing a seven-figure salary: "... once I could afford to splurge on a Zagat-rated "$$$...
Read more