Occasionally, we have serious discussions about the length of books. In the 19th century, when often people were paid by the penny, writers tended to write awfully long books. These days new fiction tends to hover around the three-hundred-word mark, or not even reach that. I myself rarely read a modern book that is longer willingly, unless I am sure I will enjoy it. But because I am busy with exams, I thought I would take a slightly simpler topic for this post, one that gets less attention, but which is still fun to think about – not the length of books, but the size of them!
I remember my surprise at first seeing a French book someone at school was reading – it was so small! I soon learned that what we have in the United Kingdom (and I presume, in the United States as well) is not a global book-size-format but rather, like the non-metric system we use, a size pretty much unique to us. Studying German and Russian I have been exposed to books of various sizes, including those academic books which for no good reason are bigger than everything else on my shelf – I am looking at you, Princeton University Press.
In general the books we find abroad are smaller than the ones we have here. German books from Fischer or dtv are only slightly smaller than their English translations would be, while the lovely little bright yellow Reclam editions are tiny! Russian books are more formulaic, at least if you are looking for literature, with Azbuka and AST the two main editions. However, I also have a few books from the “little library of masterpieces” series, which are about the same size as the Reclam books, but they are hardbacks and generally longer, being single-volume collected editions or long novels.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of these smaller sizes? One of the clearest benefits is portability. You don’t tend to notice the size of your Penguins or Oxford World’s Classics until you try to put them in a jacket pocket. They do, of course, fit into rucksacks and satchels, but you will look rather silly if you try to put them anywhere else. A thick book will remain thick – or indeed, get thicker – when its size is reduced. But for those shorter books the added thickness is nothing compared to the convenience of actually being able to fit them in one’s pocket.
Short wordcount books look rather out of place in big-sized books as well. A hundred pages in an English-size book generally makes me feel cheated or ripped-off, but when the book is smaller, I tend not to mind. Indeed, the smaller size often allows for smaller texts to be given their own book. The Reclam editions are great for presenting readers with one or two novellas, where an English edition would no doubt demand a whole crowd of them. A small size, then, also helps us focus on what we are reading – it gives each story its due.
I feel more motivated to read smaller books too. Shorter books by wordcount motivate us because we get to finish them quicker. But books of a smaller size achieve the same effect by letting us turn the pages more. Anna Karenina is 1052 pages in my Russian edition, but because the pages were so short, I raced through it. And it was a confidence boost too – I felt like I was a master of Russian because of it! For those of us who are not masters at foreign languages deciphering a long page can often take several minutes – and be hugely demoralising – so smaller page sizes can offer a useful counterweight.
Small books are definitely more suitable for certain types of content, too. The main thing that benefits from a smaller size is poetry. In England we do have the Faber “selected poems” series, and the Everyman poetry hardbacks, but mostly our poetry books are just as big as the rest. Has anyone actually read a poetry book cover to cover? I’ve read Leaves of Grass, my favourite book of poems, like that once and it was a dreadful experience. Poetry needs to be dipped into, and that demands a book size that can be carried with you until the right moment arises. That’s why I have two very small copies of Whitman’s Song of Myself. It lets me carry one around all the time, and then whip it out whenever inspiration strikes.
The main problem of smaller books is that they often also have smaller fonts. However, it’s worth noting that English books are guilty of having small fonts too, or even showing no respect to their margins. My copy of Penguin’s Portable Emerson is particularly guilty of this. German books, which are smaller than their English counterparts, often have larger font sizes than they do, something I very much appreciate. Russian books are more unpredictable on that front. In any case, when it is dark, or we are tired, it’s hard to be grateful for a shorter book when that shortness is achieved by making it harder to read.
The Reclam editions are particularly bad for this. I have a love-hate relationship with them, truth be told. They are so convenient, so portable, but at the same time can be a real struggle to read. And I do find they look ridiculous when they contain big books – my copy of Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation is, at just over seven hundred pages, reasonably sized compared to some of the monsters I have, such as Heine’s collected poems, which go well over one thousand pages. With that kind of length, you often have the feeling that by the time you’ve actually reached the end of the book you’ll need a new pair of glasses.
In the end, though, I do come down firmly on the side of smaller books, even my Reclams. Their portability, and the increased page-turning , just makes reading them that bit more pleasant. I only wish they were written in English, but I suppose I must just get used to that not being the case! Now, there is one area where I think we in the English-speaking world are particularly lucky with our books, and that is in the notes and annotations which most of our serious literature comes with. The Germans are quite good at this as well, but the Russians are absolutely awful. Often their books don’t even have an introduction, let alone a set of notes. Some of my Russian poetry books don’t even have a table of contents! While I don’t always make use of them when they are there, I’d much rather have them than not.
Anyway, readers, how do you like your books? Rare, medium, well done? Big, or small, or somewhere in between?