What are you reading in 2025?

[Parmandur]

When it became possible to record music, there were professional musicians strongly opposed to it, because they guessed (more or less correctly) that the ability to play back recordings would reduce the number of jobs for musicians performing in public. The record business has always been morally filthy, as far as how it treats the musicians, and the switch to streaming hasn't changed that, though--for most acts, at least--the business model has changed from "play shows to get people to buy records" to "make records to get people to come to your shows."

Yeah, and for books the mass market paperback is becoming an endangered species because of ebooks...but hard copies aren't going anywhere.

 

[Autumnal]

I think a more apt comparison is between recorded music and live music. Has recorded music changed the way people interact with live music? Yes. Will it ever fully replace it? No.

As someone who personally reads nearly exclusively in digital forms, this has always been my take. There’s a vocal minority of digital readers who want physical books to go away, but I was never one of them and in fact spent time while active on social media arguing with them. I love physical books and will continue to make space for a bunch of them in my home.

Yeah, and for books the mass market paperback is becoming an endangered species because of ebooks...but hard copies aren't going anywhere.

Though the decline in mass market paperbacks actually began in the ‘80s, and was driven by consolidation among publishers and among places that used to sell them and among distributors. Ebooks were a contributing factor, particularly in genres whose readers buy a whole lot of books, starting with romance, but the decline was well-entrenched before ereading devices and then apps were anything but fringe, and the people responsible are in C-suites making decisions about publishing and book selling while caring nothing for books or readers.

It would be fair to say I have opinions about how my beloved stories (and histories, sciences, etc.) get to me, and all the others who want them.

 

[Parmandur]

As someone who personally reads nearly exclusively in digital forms, this has always been my take. There’s a vocal minority of digital readers who want physical books to go away, but I was never one of them and in fact spent time while active on social media arguing with them. I love physical books and will continue to make space for a bunch of them in my home.


Though the decline in mass market paperbacks actually began in the ‘80s, and was driven by consolidation among publishers and among places that used to sell them and among distributors. Ebooks were a contributing factor, particularly in genres whose readers buy a whole lot of books, starting with romance, but the decline was well-entrenched before ereading devices and then apps were anything but fringe, and the people responsible are in C-suites making decisions about publishing and book selling while caring nothing for books or readers.

It would be fair to say I have opinions about how my beloved stories (and histories, sciences, etc.) get to me, and all the others who want them.

I will believe the decline started earlier, but I learned to read in the 90s so mostly I'm just talking about changes I've seen since ebooks took off when I was in College. Heck, there has been a precipitous decline in Mass Market books juat in the past half decade it seems like.

 

[Autumnal]

Yes. Cumulative effects take their toll, like acceleration to terminal velocity. And to note again, yes, ebooks played a part, but in a world where the Palm, Newton, etc, died without successors, the key factors would still be there. Ebooks have been a handy excuse at least as much as a cause.

I’m bugged, because I think the mass-market format has been really good for the world.

 

[Parmandur]

Yes. Cumulative effects take their toll, like acceleration to terminal velocity. And to note again, yes, ebooks played a part, but in a world where the Palm, Newton, etc, died without successors, the key factors would still be there. Ebooks have been a handy excuse at least as much as a cause.

I’m bugged, because I think the mass-market format has been really good for the world.

I do personally love a good thick mass market paperback, so I have felt the loss acutely.

 

[Autumnal]

Me too! I can look at my shelves and see books both famous and obscure, and recall moments I read them hither and yon. And they were. No joke, an important part of the mid-20th century mass democratic culture. When it became easy for people to read great literature, political philosophy, etc, they did, alongside nurse romances and fixups of stories from Gernsback magazines and their equivalents in other genres. The working person with a paperback in their back pocket or apron pocket became a commonplace figure who really existed. Fluff and serious purpose could coexist and did.

And here’s me waxing my poet, er, waxing poetically, again. For a long time I didn’t know how directly the sf, fantasy, and horror I carried around tied into some of the best parts of the 20th century.

 

[gnarlygninja]

I missed most of the 20th century and I feel that pain looking at older paperbacks compared to new ones. Because of some wonky ebay orders, I've got two copies of Carl Hiaasen's Tourist Season. I strongly prefer the format of the one from the 80s to the 21st century copy, mostly because old paper backs could fit in your pocket. The new ones are too tall, and since my eyes still work fine I prefer the smaller font with out the huge margins modern paperbacks have.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I missed most of the 20th century and I feel that pain looking at older paperbacks compared to new ones. Because of some wonky ebay orders, I've got two copies of Carl Hiaasen's Tourist Season. I strongly prefer the format of the one from the 80s to the 21st century copy, mostly because old paper backs could fit in your pocket. The new ones are too tall, and since my eyes still work fine I prefer the smaller font with out the huge margins modern paperbacks have.

Oh, man, Tourist Season is a great one. I feel like my copy had a Florida seafront scene on the cover, but I can't find an image of it online, so maybe that cover is just in my imagination.

 

[jian]

Finished Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein, which is about how our author (a Canadian who writes about equality and climate change) sometimes gets confused with Naomi Wolf (an American who went from liberal feminist to far-right conspiracy theorist). She cites a poem from Twitter about the confusion:

If your Naomi be Klein
You’re doing just fine
If your Naomi be Wolf
Oh, buddy, woooff.

It’s an interesting and quite personal discussion about identity, branding, social media, how liberals get radicalised to the far-right*, and more far-reaching issues such as capitalism, anti-Semitism (both are Jewish), and autism (Klein has a neurodivergent son). I’d recommend it.

*Klein’s equation is Narcissism + Social Media Addiction + Midlife Crisis + Public Shaming = Right-wing Meltdown. I think that could apply to many famous people who’ve walked the same path as Wolf.

 

[Autumnal]

Hailey Piper keeps getting better. The opening of All the Hearts You Eat:

Once there was a ghost who fell in love with a lady by the sea. It happened here on the sand and rock, against the brine and rhythm and salt.

The ghost first fell in love with her forlorn beauty. And then her smile. And as the ghost haunted her, it fell in love with her spirit. It loved her so hard that it clawed a hole from the world of the dead into the world of the living and tried to take her home to that dead place.

But the ghost was part of the sea, and the sea wants blood. Everyone who lives on the coast and alongside its waves should know that.

The cold of the sea sank its fingers into the lady’s once-warm flesh, into her slowing heart. For a moment, the ghost and the sea were one, and she became one with them, and in another kind of story, this might have been an ecstasy.

We only know the one kind of story: the life in her seeped away, and she died, like all tragic lovers torn between worlds.

The romantics would say they are now ghosts together in the world of the living. But those who walk the coast and brush against its enigmatic nature know the story better. We say that when the ghost broke through the worlds, something shattered in the way people die here, and no one can mend the wound. The romantics might also say that lovers who’ve been torn apart between worlds can at least reunite in the world of the dead.

But those aren’t the kinds of stories we tell in the uncertain places by the sea.

The story seems to focus on at least two young trans women living in a small Atlantic coastal town. But knowing Piper’s work, she’s going to let me turn the page and run into an unexpected revelation that changes the whole scale of the thing. I mean, that’s a big part of why I read her.