Like a lot of people, I've come to adore trade paperbacks. They're the perfect size, easy to read, lighter than hardcovers.
The other day I picked up a mass market paperback and it felt so odd and yet so familiar at the same time. It made me smile because the first word that came to mind when I opened it was "grown-up."
When I was young, kids' books were oversized, about the size of a trade paperback, actually. Moving on to mass market sized paperbacks was an exciting sign of growing up. Being more sophisticated. One I'd forgotten all about.
It's part of the physical pleasure of reading. It goes along with the way books smell and how that's different whether they're new or old or from the library. There's the way the type from a new book sometimes rubs off on your thumb as you turn the pages, leaving a dark smudge on your thumb. The way a book grows heavy and threatens to land on your nose as your eyes begin to close, telling you it's bedtime.
I recently moved into a larger living space, and one of the things I'm most excited about is finally having the space for my books to live. In anticipation of getting new bookshelves, enough to hold my collection, I've sorted through my boxes of books, arranging them by size, by genre, alphabetically by author. There's something soothing about that, too, categorizing and rearranging.
Books make me happy.
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