How mass market paperbacks brought back my reading habit

Quick thoughts on a recent experiment.

I used to be a huge reader when I was a kid and teenager, but as an adult, it’s one of those things that if you don’t make time for it, it’s not gonna happen. My only desire to read recently started by staring at a bookshelf next to my computer with books that have been bought but never read (don’t lie to me, you know the feeling) and just wanting to sell/give away the books so I wouldn’t have to stare at that damn shelf. But it felt wrong to sell without having read the damn things at least once so I can say I got some sort of value out of it. So lo behold when I was facing an adjacent challenge in minimizing screen time, I took it as an opportunity to see if I could kill two birds with one stone.

I found myself often reaching for a device just to kill a few minutes between tasks or that weird lull in the day where it was neither afternoon nor evening or in transit. It was a space of open time between tasks that just didn’t have anything going on some days so instead of reaching for my phone - I began reaching for a book instead.

The thing with this period is that it’s often random, unpredictable, and can usually happen on the move or out in public hence the push I’m making for mass-market paperbacks. I find them to be super convenient for an everyday carry item. They are small, light, and very affordable. An average trade paperback (the typical paperback you see in a bookstore) can run you anywhere from $25-$35 depending on the book size and can be somewhat large and unwieldy if you don’t want to carry a book everywhere in your bag. A mass-market paperback is typically $10-$15 brand new and even under $10 on regular discounts or even down to $5/$3 if you don’t mind someone’s used copy from a used bookstore or garage sale/marketplace and dimension-wise (on length and width anyway) line up with what’s about a large smartphone pretty well.

Essentially, you can pick up a brand new one for the price of most monthly digital subscriptions these days or a large coffee from Starbucks. And the best part is you can mark them up, underline and sticky them, and do whatever and not care (“it’s only $8 enh why not”) and still get the great feeling of holding a physical book and absorbing and diving into it. Lastly, I find myself reading more works outside my typical genre because not everything is available in this format. It kind of reduces decision fatigue and I’m getting more fiction in my life than always some nonfiction book that I typically gravitate towards. Variety is the spice of life as they say.

Cons

A lot of what’s available that is NEW is “pulp” - IE relatively empty reading for personal pleasure/works of fiction that are and done kind of stories from authors that shit out like 6 books a year (you know the ones, especially in mystery or thriller genres). You can still get lots of old classics, works in philosophy, and other “greatest hits” from certain genres; Carl Sagan’s books are frequently available in this format, but you’ll have to seek them out a little bit. Next, sometimes you just forget! It is a physical thing you have to remember and that means sh*t happens and you might leave it behind sometimes.

All in all, I’m slowly but surely clearing that bookshelf thanks in part to mass-market paperbacks re-kickstarting my reading habit on the go.