I read Larry Ryan’s piece with interest and some sympathy (The hill I will die on: Heavy, awkward and incredibly expensive – we don’t need hardback books, 6 May). I agree that hardbacks are now becoming prohibitively expensive. I took a passing interest in a new hardback recently but my interest passed quickly when I saw that it was priced at £35.
It is also true that hardbacks are awkward to read, other than at a desk, and make poor travelling companions. They can look attractive, but a pleasingly serious effort is put into the design of paperback covers these days.
A couple of thoughts did occur to me though. Hardbacks have the durability that libraries require to give their stock a decent shelf life. This extends to secondhand bookshops and charity shops, where paperbacks often look as though they’ve led such full and chequered lives that you wouldn’t want to welcome them into your home.
Also, as I’m in my 80s, I increasingly value the larger print that’s usually a feature of hardbacks compared with paperbacks. So please, Larry, chose a different hill to expire on and spare the hardbacks.
John Davies
Caerphilly
• I feel compelled to defend the noble hardback against the flimsy paperback. A hardback is more than a book – it is a statement of intent. A paperback, by contrast, flops about like it’s apologising for existing, its spine creasing under the mildest existential pressure.
The hardback encourages one to sit upright, perhaps near a window, possibly with tea. Paperbacks invite slouching, commuting and being abandoned face-down on a damp cafe table.
Additionally, a hardback will outlive you, your shelving system and possibly western civilisation. A paperback begins ageing the moment you look at it too intensely. By chapter three, it resembles a well-travelled map.
The hardback on a shelf conveys gravitas, taste and the vague suggestion that you might one day reread Tolstoy. Paperbacks suggest that you once went on holiday and bought something at the airport.
In short, hardbacks are books for life; paperbacks are books for the journey home.
Stuart Harrington
Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset
• For me, books are like people: the inestimable library service provides us with acquaintances whom we can get to know on a superficial basis. Some will inspire friendship and we want to keep in touch with them and get to know them better. With books, the choice then is which to buy. If one foresees a stronger, deeper association, with many thumbings and references, paperbacks simply don’t have the stamina to take the strain. Their pages become yellow and the print hard to read. I grant that it is difficult to read a hardback on the tube, but surely that is the perfect opportunity to catch up with the Guardian.
Ruth Baker
Matfield, Kent
• I wonder whether Larry Ryan might be the kind of person who reads books only once and then passes them on, and who perhaps reads relatively slender books. As both an academic and a lover of long fantasy and sci-fi novels, my experience is that hardbacks can be much more durable over decades of use, especially when “use” includes being jammed into backpacks and loaned to students. They can also be physically much easier to read when the book is many hundreds of pages long. Paperbacks are indeed far better for some other purposes but, for long-term reading, long live the hardback.
Erika Szymanski
Fort Collins, Colorado, US
