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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Format and readability

11:30 / 21.03.06

As I was restacking my bookshelf recently I took some time to consider the kind of books that I find easiest and therefor most enjoyable to read and the crushing conclusion I came to was that the factors that most influenced my enjoyment were more related to a book's design and structure than any quality of its prose.

While I found the prose of Catch 22 riveting, I found wading through the tiny typeface employed in my edition a real chore, slowing me down considerably. Other factors likely to dissuade me are length (anything more than 3-400 pages represents a substantial and somewhat offputting committment in terms of reading time).

Similarly I have found length of chapters seriously effects my reading... short chapters invite a page-turning mentality more forcefully than glittering prose as the internal voice can more easily justify 'one more chapter' of 5-15 pages as opposed to one of 80 or so pages. Without natural breaks in the narrative, like handy ledges for the budding mountaineer to rest briefly on the asscent to the summit, opportunities to take the next few steps and risk being left hanging on.

...and then there is my demanding love-life...

So how do other people find that format effects the readability or even their choice of reading matter?...

13:05 / 21.03.06

I find that large cumbersome hardcovers dissuade me from reading. I usually read on the bus and at school, which means I have to carry the book. If I already have to schlep textbooks around, the last thing I want to carry is a hardcover weighing five pounds. I prefer to read paperbacks because they are a)cheaper and b)lighter.

13:20 / 21.03.06

not tomention C) smaller and thus easier to fit into pockets and bags...

13:28 / 21.03.06

Also, I have a great fondness for certain fonts, but I can't remember what they are called. You can find the first favorite font (alliteration!) in BEE's Glamorama and Jay McInerney's Brightness Falls. The second font appears in the hardcover and trade versions of Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle. This font is eschewed for the myriad of paperbacks (three hardcovers translates to nine paperbacks? WTF? OMG!) I enjoy these books maybe a little more because of the font. (My father's a printer, so I have developed an eye for typesetting and bookbinding. Not a sophisticated eye, but a discerning one.)

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

14:48 / 21.03.06

The Virgin Suicides trade had, perhaps, the best whitespace-to-text ratio, font choice, and paper quality I've ever seen. I decided right then and there that it was what I wanted my first book to look like.

17:25 / 21.03.06

Hardcovers are usually too weighty or big to be useful, unfortunately. My copy of 'Mao II' is hardback and unusually light, though.

Tiny text never seemed to impede, if the material was interesting. Same with the brighter paperstocks.

What bugs me, is when I know there was line-art meant to accompany a book and it's missing. Usually, this is because it was a foreign-writ thing and has been adapted to State-tastes, as it were, but, y'know, it really is shitty. Even when they aren't there originally, I just like some simple line-art placed randomly in the text. I've got copy of 'Wuthering Heights', in nice, tall, thin, hardback, with some very excellent pictures all the way through, almost no detail to them, and I find it much more enjoyable than reading other non-illustrated editions. Familiarity, perhaps. I don't know that 'Foucalt's Pendulum' would be improved with pictures, I guess, or 'The Transmigration of Timothy Archer'.

Computer editions of things designed for the page, should either be lain out like pages or somehow fixed. There's a no-frills, straight .txt-ended version of 'Tristram Shandy' out there, which, might horribly be someone's first introduction to the novel. Formatting in something like 'Tristram Shandy' or 'Cryptonomicon' becomes really significant and should not be thrown out with the expectation that it's just the words and punctuation that count.

17:35 / 21.03.06

The logistics of reading House of Leaves online makes me queasy. The most fun part of the book is the layout of the page and the correlation to the speed of flipping the pages. I can't imagine reading House of Leaves in a format other than the gigantic floppy soft cover I have. Even hardcover on that one might slow down the process.

sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q

19:32 / 21.03.06

i'm highly sensitive to font / layout issues. i tend to like elegant fonts like garamond, and hate it when letters and lines are smushed together. i tend to listen to audiobooks while in transit, so i'm more liable to buy hardbacks unless the paperback is readable. i find knopf's book design pretty fantastic here in the states.

20:14 / 21.03.06

A word in favour of hardbacks, if only a very specific sort of hardback -I'm currently loving the Everyman PG Wodehouse series. There aren't any particularly good photos of them online, but they've got huge margins, a clear font ('Calson', typography wonks!) and are just the right size for carrying around. Wodehouse is about as easy as easy reading gets, but I think the concious efforts at readibility does add an extra layer of joy.

By contrast, I'm currently reading a cheap 'Classics' version of Vanity Fair and it takes me so long to read the letters (as in epistles) in it because of the tiny font and slightly blotchy printing; despite the fact that the plot is really engaging I do a lot more staring out of the window for a 'wee break' that I generally tend to.