How convenient and satisfying, when you can walk through town or through the woods, and sitting down at a cafe table or on a tree stump, pull a compact, flexible book from your pocket. No bag unpacking required. What a good feeling. You can skim a few pages or just a paragraph or two and then back it goes and you’re on your way. The age of paperbacks that you could truly…
…fit in your pocket is long gone now. There’s some about still to be sure, but they don’t seem to be as common. And understandably so. Bigger writing and wider margins can be gained in larger books adding to the reading experience and making it more pleasurable to digest (and not to mention easier on the eyes for some). I read quite a reasonably large, thick book previously on a train and wondered how much easier it would be if it was pocketable. But then would the book I’d been reading then even be that legible if it fit in my pocket? The writing would be the size of needle heads. It was a thick book for a reason and one cannot escape that it’s simply not possible for all of them to be pocket-sized. And let’s be honest. How much more difficult is it really to simply put your book in a bag? I know all this of course, yet when you have an old Ian Fleming or Agatha Christie, doesn’t it feel good when you can slip it into your coat in winter?
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