“
Don't stop" I tease in a seductive voice. " Give me more, Ben. Did you read eBooks or..." I run my finger slowly down his chest."Hardbacks?"
He pulls his hands behind his head and a smug look washes over his face. "Oh, they were hardbacks, all right. And I'm not sure if you're ready for this, but...I have my own TBR pile. You should read it, Fallon. It's huge"
”
”
Colleen Hoover (November 9)
“
CUSTOMER: Hi.
BOOKSELLER: Hi there, how can I help?
CUSTOMER: Could you please explain Kindle to me.
BOOKSELLER: Sure. It’s an e-reader, which means you download books and read them on a small hand-held computer.
CUSTOMER: Oh OK, I see. So . . . this Kindle. Are the books on that paperback or hardback?
”
”
Jen Campbell (Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops)
“
And [Asimov]'ll sign anything, hardbacks, softbacks, other people's books, scraps of paper. Inevitably someone handed him a blank check on the occasion when I was there, and he signed that without as much as a waver to his smile — except that he signed: 'Harlan Ellison.
”
”
Isaac Asimov (Murder at the Aba)
“
There's nothing like a printed book; the weight, the woody scent, the feel, the look.
”
”
E.A. Bucchianeri
“
I believed that books might save him because I knew they had so far, and because I knew the people books had saved. They were college professors and actors and scientists and poets. They got to college and sat on dorm floors drinking coffee, amazed they'd finally found their soul mates. They always dressed a little out of season. Their names were enshrined on the pink cards in the pockets of all the forgotten hardbacks in every library basement in America. If the librarians were lazy enough or nostalgic enough or smart enough, those names would stay there forever.
”
”
Rebecca Makkai (The Borrower)
“
The last time you came to see me
there were anchors in your eyes,
hardback books in your posture.
You were the five star general of sureness,
a crisp white tuxedo of a man.
I was fiddling with my worn coat pockets,
puffing false confidence ghosts in the cold January air.
My hands were shitty champagne flutes
brimming with cheap merlot.
I couldn’t touch you without ruining you,
so I didn’t touch you at all.
It’s when you’re on the brink of something
that you lose your balance.
You told me that once.
When I can’t bring myself to say what I need to,
my heart plays Russian Roulette with my throat.
I swear I fired that night, but, nothing.
Someday, I’ll show you the bullet I had for you,
after time has done the wash.
I’ll take it out of the jar of missed opportunities.
We’ll hold it up to the light.
You’ll roll it around your mouth like a fallen tooth.
You won’t forgive me exactly,
but we’ll laugh about how small it is.
We’ll wonder how such a little thing
could ever have meant so much.
”
”
Mindy Nettifee
“
There wasn’t much left at the end of the month for her favorite luxuries—great clothes and hardback books, but she didn’t mind. She bargain-shopped and used the library.
”
”
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (This Heart of Mine (Chicago Stars, #5))
“
The fancy things I like are sheets. Pots and pans. And the things I really like aren't fancy at all: old aprons and hankies. Butter wrappers from one pound blocks. Peony bushes, hardback books of poetry. And I like things less than that; the sticky remains at the bottom of the apple crisp dish. The way cats sometimes run sideways. The presence of a rainbow in a puddle of oil. Mayonaise jars. Pussy willows. Wash on a line. The tick-tock of clocks, the blue of the neon sign at the local movie house. The fact that there is a local movie house.
”
”
Elizabeth Berg
“
When the web started, I used to get really grumpy with people because they put my poems up. They put my stories up. They put my stuff up on the web. I had this belief, which was completely erroneous, that if people put your stuff up on the web and you didn’t tell them to take it down, you would lose your copyright, which actually, is simply not true.
And I also got very grumpy because I felt like they were pirating my stuff, that it was bad. And then I started to notice that two things seemed much more significant. One of which was… places where I was being pirated, particularly Russia where people were translating my stuff into Russian and spreading around into the world, I was selling more and more books. People were discovering me through being pirated. Then they were going out and buying the real books, and when a new book would come out in Russia, it would sell more and more copies. I thought this was fascinating, and I tried a few experiments. Some of them are quite hard, you know, persuading my publisher for example to take one of my books and put it out for free. We took “American Gods,” a book that was still selling and selling very well, and for a month they put it up completely free on their website. You could read it and you could download it. What happened was sales of my books, through independent bookstores, because that’s all we were measuring it through, went up the following month three hundred percent.
I started to realize that actually, you’re not losing books. You’re not losing sales by having stuff out there. When I give a big talk now on these kinds of subjects and people say, “Well, what about the sales that I’m losing through having stuff copied, through having stuff floating out there?” I started asking audiences to just raise their hands for one question. Which is, I’d say, “Okay, do you have a favorite author?” They’d say, “Yes.” and I’d say, “Good. What I want is for everybody who discovered their favorite author by being lent a book, put up your hands.” And then, “Anybody who discovered your favorite author by walking into a bookstore and buying a book raise your hands.” And it’s probably about five, ten percent of the people who actually discovered an author who’s their favorite author, who is the person who they buy everything of. They buy the hardbacks and they treasure the fact that they got this author. Very few of them bought the book. They were lent it. They were given it. They did not pay for it, and that’s how they found their favorite author. And I thought, “You know, that’s really all this is. It’s people lending books. And you can’t look on that as a loss of sale. It’s not a lost sale, nobody who would have bought your book is not buying it because they can find it for free.”
What you’re actually doing is advertising. You’re reaching more people, you’re raising awareness. Understanding that gave me a whole new idea of the shape of copyright and of what the web was doing. Because the biggest thing the web is doing is allowing people to hear things. Allowing people to read things. Allowing people to see things that they would never have otherwise seen. And I think, basically, that’s an incredibly good thing.
”
”
Neil Gaiman
“
There was something beautiful and timeless to her about a hardback without its jacket, a book that could be known in no way except by reading it.
”
”
Christopher R. Beha (What Happened to Sophie Wilder)
“
I emerge into a library/study with the highest book population density I have ever come across. Book walls, book towers, book avenues, book side streets. Book spillages, book rubble. Papperback books, hardback books, atlases, manuals, almanacs. Nine lifetimes of books. Enough books to build an igloo to hide in. The room is sentient with books. Mirrors double and cube the books. A Great Wall of China quantity of books. Enough books to makes me wonder if I am a book too.
”
”
David Mitchell (Number9Dream)
“
The bag I finally settled on was impractical, being far too small to carry, for example, either a hardback book or a bottle of Glen’s.
”
”
Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
“
An intelligent man will use a book to settle an argument. Preferably a hardback with a thick spine, flat across the bridge of the nose.
”
”
Shatrujeet Nath
“
Lo saunters over to my neatly arranged bookshelf. “Let’s see, Rose…” He grabs a hardback and carelessly flips through it before shaking the book by the spine. My chest caves. “How does this feel?”
Horrible.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Kiss the Sky (Calloway Sisters, #1))
“
Organizing the books was a fun afternoon. We decided to put the thick hardback books, mostly intro. to philosophy textbooks and Norton literature anthologies, on the top shelves where they looked good but stayed out of reach since there's no reason for opening them ever again. Then we went by genre: mysteries, cozies, modernists, mountains, sci-fi, beloved childhood volumes, books we bought abroad, books required in school we couldn't sell back, books bought for us we'll read soon, books bought for us we have no intention of reading, books we want to read but are too long for a commitment with our current schedules...We're not really done with this organization, and I doubt we ever will be, but that's one great part about it.
”
”
Joshua Isard (Conquistador of the Useless)
“
When Frances was eight years old, a man patted her mother's bottom as he walked past them on a suburban street. "Nice arse," he said in a friendly tone. Frances remembered thinking, Oh, that's kind of him. And then she'd watched in shock as her five-foot-nothing mother chased the man to the corner and swung a heavy handbag full of hardback library books at the back of his head.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (Nine Perfect Strangers)
“
What did he really want, anyway? To buy new books when they came out in hardback.
”
”
Rainbow Rowell (Attachments)
“
Archie, I am so sorry to have hit you with a hardback book,’ I say. ‘I will use a paperback next time.
”
”
Keren David (Almost True (When I Was Joe, #2))
“
Furniture is like that. Used and enjoyed as intended, it absorbs the experience and exudes it back into the atmosphere, but if simply bought for effect and left to languish in a corner, it vibrates with melancholy. Furnishings in museums... are as unspeakably tragic as the unvisited inmates of old folk's homes. The untuned violins and hardback books used to bring 'character' to postwar suburban pubs crouch uncomfortably in their imposed roles like caged pumas in a zoo. The stately kitchen that is never or rarely used to bring forth lavish feasts for appreciative audiences turns inward and cold.
”
”
Will Wiles (Care of Wooden Floors)
“
For me, publishing books in hardback format is a protest against The World Economic Forum's decree that we will own nothing and be happy about it. In an economy that's subscription based, where we stream or rent everything as a service, this is my tiny, tangible fuck you.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat)
“
There wasn’t anything Lincoln wanted that he couldn’t afford. What did he really want, anyway? To buy new books when they came out in hardback. To not have to think about how much money was in his wallet when he was ordering dinner. Maybe new sneakers …And there wasn’t anything he wanted to do that he couldn’t make time for. What did he have to mope about, really? What more did he want?
Love, he could hear Eve saying. Purpose.
Love. Purpose. Those are the things that you can’t plan for. Those are the things that just happen. And what if they don’t happen? Do you spend your whole life pining for them? Waiting to be happy?
”
”
Rainbow Rowell
“
Some books are like tortoises. Hardbacks.
”
”
Doug Weller (Six Word Wonder (Six Word Stories, #1))
“
You Don't Owe It To Them
”
”
Alice Oseman (Heartstopper Series Volume (1-4) & Heartstopper Yearbook (Hardback) 5 Books Collection Set By Alice Oseman)
“
The old man walked over to his sandalwood bookshelves. He couldn’t decide whether to read Balzac or Voltaire. Clotilde de Lusignan or Micromégas. His forefinger hovered over both the hardback books before he plumped instead for the eroticism of Goethe’s Roman Elegies. The old man had amassed a lifetime of learning. The killings aside, he led an oddly monastic life.
”
”
Gary Haynes (The Blameless Dead)
“
Although he could barely hold the weight of a hardback book, he couldn't abide paperbacks. Only a hardcover felt protective enough for the valuable words inside keeping them safe from harm. Now that he felt so unprotected himself, with Time and Death gnawing at his every extremity, he wanted security at least for the words that acted as his companion for this brief time.
”
”
Carsten Henn (The Door-to-Door Bookstore)
“
I always gave her a book. An old hardback from the same section in the used bookstore where you'd find Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, and musty scrawled-in Hobbits, the painted paper covers often ripped or gone...
My favorite was a sort of illustrated guidebook of pond creatures on which a very young child had written in pencil on each page under the picture of an otter
I love otter
Under a muskrat:
I love muskrat
Beaver:
I love beaver
”
”
Peter Heller (The Dog Stars)
“
When little Snugs looked out he saw that the roofs of the cottages, that nestled close to the lighthouse, were now completely white. At ground level, sleet was blowing over the garden, and along the paths. It wouldn’t be long before The Isle of Wight would be snow white – he was sure about that!
”
”
Suzy Davies (Snugs The Snow Bear (Snugs Series #1))
“
Yet Romney’s swagger went only so far. When the paperback version of his book hit shelves that February, observers noted that one line from the hardback, about the success of Romneycare, had been expunged: the author’s hopeful boast that “we can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country.
”
”
Mark Halperin (Double Down: Game Change 2012)
“
I walk the shelves, but no book makes me want to stop and pick it up. They're too new and alphabetically ordered and they smell too clean. I need a chaos of books. So I leave the shop, cross the river, and walk along the south keys. I turn onto Parliament Street and go into the second-hand charity bookshop. The books here are different shapes and sizes and feels. They smell of their previous owners in the same way dogs look like their owners or undertakers look like corpses. I buy a large hardback book with watercolor drawings of birds and a softback book about how to get things done. I would like to get things done and ticked off of lists. Some of my projects are endlessly roaming like lemmings without a leader.
”
”
Caitriona Lally (Eggshells)
“
Do you know Mastering the Art of French Cooking? You must, at least, know of it- it's a cultural landmark, for Pete's sake. Even if you just think of it as the book by that lady who looks like Dan Aykroyd and bleeds a lot, you know of it. But do you know the book itself? Try to get your hands on one of the early hardback editions- they're not exactly rare. For a while there, every American housewife who could boil water had a copy, or so I've heard.
It's not lushly illustrated; there are no shiny soft-core images of the glossy-haired author sinking her teeth into a juicy strawberry or smiling stonily before a perfectly rustic tart with carving knife in hand, like some chilly blonde kitchen dominatrix. The dishes are hopelessly dated- the cooking times outrageously long, the use of butter and cream beyond the pale, and not a single reference to pancetta or sea salt or wasabi.
”
”
Julie Powell (Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously)
“
I was wondering how Ms. Hetley, who seemed to occupy just about every slot on the New York Times hardback, paperback, and e-book bestseller lists, had managed to wring eight five-hundred-page installments out of the concept of wars between rival gangs of vampires and wizards when it seemed obvious to me that all a wizard would have to do to kick a vampire's ass was pounce on it during the day while it was sleeping. How could anyone take this stuff seriously, I wondered. Hetley's graphic depictions of wizard-on-vampire sex, which was creating a bloodthirsty, mutant race of evil, soulless 'vampards', seemed absurd.
”
”
Adam Langer (The Salinger Contract)
“
I loved all the Hardy Boy books. Once I collected my paperboy money each Friday I'd walk into town, make the rounds of all the local thrift shops (where you could buy a used hardback for a quarter.) I'd always get excited swinging open the front cover of a newly discovered book in the series. Let's solve a mystery! And investigate the long-abandoned water tower north of town. They were a lot of fun. And science fiction, although these were paperbacks. I stopped going to church when I was about ten. I'd get dressed and go out the front door telling my mom I was going to church, but I'd have a science fiction paperback jammed in the back pocket of my trousers. Once I got near the church (St. Mary's on Greenwich Avenue), I'd veer down a side street, pull out my book, and stumble along the sidewalks for an hour, visiting another planet, sometimes another galaxy. My mother eventually found out about my deception - a friend told her she had spotted me walking, reading, when I was supposed to be at mass. I explained to my mother I didn't want to attend church anymore, and she accepted that. If it made her sad, she never showed me. She was actually an incredibly good mother, which I realize more and more as I age.
”
”
Ralph Robert Moore
“
My room leads directly from Reception, where old fosters new, modern, light and airy but still entirely intimate. The colours are cool yet warm, shades of white, pale blues and citrus-fruit seasonings. Natural oak shelving engulfs the walls; heavy with journals and books, some receding to my undergraduate and training days. Two hardbacks take precedence on the top shelf. One of these, an extremely worn leather-bound Complete Works of William Shakespeare. The other being The Meaning of Dreaming, my early allure to the workings of the human mind.
”
”
Sarah Simpson (Her Greatest Mistake)
“
Like the circles of Dante’s Inferno, IKEA descends through several floors towards Hell itself (or the checkout, as people with no imagination insist on calling it). Unfortunately for the unwary traveller, you must venture through every floor no matter what item you wish to procure, whether you want to or not. For example, should you wish, like me, merely to purchase a wok and a couple of bookends to stop Greg’s huge hardback rugby books from falling over all the time, you must also look at every other sodding product IKEA has on sale. You must make your way along the circuitous and tortuous route that the sadistic Swedes have laid out between you and the exit. No one in human history has ever said the following: ‘I’ve just popped into IKEA and picked up some meatballs. You fancy a spag bol?’ One does not simply ‘pop’ into IKEA. One plans the visit like a military operation. Make no mistake: shopping there is not to be taken lightly. Not if you wish to retain both sanity and a healthy bank balance.
”
”
Nick Spalding (Fat Chance)
“
Recently I’d been intrigued to read about a self-publishing site, Lulu.com. According to the Web site, I could print a proper hardback book, complete with dust jacket, for less than thirty dollars.
”
”
Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project (Revised Edition): Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun)
“
My attachment to books is sensual as well as intellectual. A friend of mine once broke my concentration to remark that I will caress a book as I read along. I hadn't noticed but it's true: my hands move constantly over the pages. I love to hold them, feel them. I love the way books smell. I will fold a paperback in two and break the spine. I will bend the spine of a hardback, felling the turned page rend just enough until it rest loosely in position.
”
”
James J. Patterson (A Secret Woman: A Novel)
“
Here's a top tip: get hold of a hardback edition of one of these pompous books, cut out the middle couple of hundred or more pages of it, and then you can just put your usual, normal, real people's, non-hipster, pompless, friendly-neighborhood, genuinely readable, unpretentious, happybrow, fun, top-entertainment books inside it, so that people think you're ultra-hip and highbrow and can actually make sense of that wacko shit.
”
”
A. Cretan
“
I emerge into a library/study with the highest book population density I have ever come across. Book walls, book towers, book avenues, book side streets. Book spillages, book rubble. Papperback books, hardback books, atlases, manuals, almanacs. Nine lifetimes of books. Enough books to build an igloo to hide in. The room is sentient with books. Mirrors double and cube the books. A Great Wall of China quantity of books. Enough books to makes me wonder if I am a book too.
”
”
David Mitchell Turnbull
“
When Children of Dune came out in hardback in 1976, it was an instant best seller. True to the prediction of David Hartwell and the gut feeling of my father, it became the top-selling hardback in science fiction history up to that time . . . more than 100,000 copies in a few months. When the novel came out in paperback the following year, Berkley Books initially printed 750,000 copies. That wasn’t half enough, and they went back to press. Six months after the release of the paperback, Dad said paperback sales were approaching two million copies.
”
”
Frank Herbert (Children of Dune (Dune, #3))
“
She’d left the shop with a bag full of new books for her library, including a hardback with crossed flintlocks on the cover that a random woman in the shop had gushed about.
”
”
Emma Newman (A Little Knowledge (The Split Worlds, #4))
“
Dennis hit him with the [Sheri] Tepper. It was a hardback book, six hundred pages of wonder and adventure and a little preachiness mixed in.
”
”
Margaret Ball (Mathemagics (Chicks in Chainmail))
“
I turn a corner, leaving the nonfiction section, and almost bump right into Jensen.
“Hey, Wayfare,” he says, looking at my stack of thick, hardback books. “Doing a little light reading?”
“Heh. Yeah.” I veer past him and head for a table in the back, hoping he doesn’t follow.
He does.
Great.
The books topple from my arms and onto the table. A couple tumble to the floor. Jensen retrieves them for me and looks at the titles.
“Famous Train Robberies of the 1800s,” he says. “Rare and Priceless United States Coins.” He quirks a brow at me. “Going treasure hunting?”
I actually let myself smile. “Yep. I’m traveling back in time to thwart a heist. Want to come along?”
“Sure. Is your time machine a two-seater?”
“No, but it’s got a trunk.
”
”
M.G. Buehrlen (The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare (Alex Wayfare, #1))
“
Basically, you’re saying purchasing one book for you is the gateway into turning you into a book-hoarding dragon?” “Correct.” “Good to know. Do you prefer paper or hardback?
”
”
Camilla Evergreen (How to Fake Date Your Grumpy Boss (How to Rom-com #1))
“
There wasn’t anything Lincoln wanted that he couldn’t afford. What did he really want, anyway? To buy new books when they came out in hardback. To not have to think about how much money was in his wallet when he was ordering dinner. Maybe new sneakers …And there wasn’t anything he wanted to do that he couldn’t make time for. What did he have to mope about, really? What more did he want? Love, he could hear Eve saying. Purpose. Love. Purpose. Those are the things that you can’t plan for. Those are the things that just happen. And what if they don’t happen? Do you spend your whole life pining for them? Waiting to be happy?
”
”
Rainbow Rowell (Attachments)
“
The Well of Lost Plots. To understand the Well you have to have an idea of the layout of the Great Library. The library is where all published fiction is stored so it can be read by the readers in the Outland; there are twenty-six floors, one for each letter of the alphabet. The library is constructed in the layout of a cross with the four corridors radiating from the center point. On all the walls, end after end, shelf after shelf, are books. Hundreds, thousands, millions of books. Hardbacks, paperbacks, leatherbound, everything. But the similarity of all these books to the copies we read back home is no more than the similarity a photograph has to its subject; these books are alive. Beneath the Great Library are twenty-six floors of dingy yet industrious subbasements known as the Well of Lost Plots. This is where books are constructed, honed and polished in readiness for a place in the library above—if they make it that far. The failure rate is high. Unpublished books outnumber published by an estimated eight to one. THURSDAY NEXT,
The Jurisfiction Chronicles
”
”
Jasper Fforde (The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next, #3))
“
hardback crime novel. Her eyes drifted over the words, but in forty
”
”
Chris Barraclough (The Bitch Is Back Book One (The Bitch Is Back British Crime Thrillers))
“
Shelf space was always a problem for the dedicated book lover. Nina had three large floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a stroke of good fortune that made her friends gasp when they first walked into her apartment. One entire bookcase was Book of the Month selections, which was a problem, because they kept coming -- monthly, naturally -- but space was running out. Louise had given her a membership when she turned 18, and she had tried very hard to restrict herself to only one a month, but that still meant she now had over 120 beautiful, hard-backed books in that one section alone. Another section was books that had been signed by their authors; again, an easy hundred of those. She was strict about only including books she'd had signed in person; buying them already signed didn't count. In a totally separate, smaller, glass-fronted bookcase were rare first editions or interesting printings, which was a much smaller collection, because Nina could only afford those occasionally.
”
”
Abbi Waxman (The Bookish Life of Nina Hill)
“
For two weeks every August, the normally private Charlotte Square opens its gates to admit the literary masses. Huge white tents block views of the iron railings that normally keep everyone out, and picnic tables and pastel deck chairs circle the equestrian statue of Prince Albert in the middle of the lawn, inviting readers to relax with their newest signed novel. The tents fill with crowds to see every sort of author: high-flying politicos touting bestselling memoirs; writers of fantasy, chick-lit, sci-fi, young adult (and every possible combination of those). Authors and illustrators enthrall throngs of preschoolers and parents; up-and-comers present their work for appreciative and encouraging audiences. Books are signed by the hundreds and set out for sale in the inviting bookshop tents. People bask in the sunshine, when there is any, or gather in the café tent and grumble good-naturedly about the rain. They shake hands; gush "I love your work"; add to their "to be read" lists, and leave carrying new hardbacks in handy Book Festival-branded tote bags.
”
”
Brianne Moore (All Stirred Up)
“
Kramer's sits on Connecticut Avenue just north of Dupont Circle and is a Washington institution of sorts, functioning as a bookstore, restaurant, and bar all in one. The front always swarms with people perusing the book displays, which overflow with stacks of paperbacks and hardbacks, everything from political memoirs to the juiciest works of fiction.
”
”
Dana Bate (The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs)
“
Digital is convenient but there's nothing like holding a good book--paper or hardback--in your hand.
”
”
Ellie Klipp
“
Novels, some Dickens, The Bell Jar, some geeky pop-science books, a few music books, a few parenting manuals, Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, some stuff on climate change, and a large hardback called Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape.
”
”
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
“
I was unprepared for how the sight of so many bound, hardback books would affect me.
”
”
Callie Hart (Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1))
“
How Can I Contact Qatar Airways via WhatsApp?
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”
”
Thomas Harris (Cari Mora [Hardback] and Hannibal Lecter Series Collection 5 Books Set by Thomas Harris (Red Dragon, Silence Of The Lambs, Hannibal, Hannibal Rising,Cari Mora))