Thursday, March 13, 2008

Aaaaaaagh! I hate this!

Publishers, printers, authors, somebody...please hear me!!!!

I hate it, absolutely hate, abhor, detest it when the edges of a book are unevenly trimmed. For example, please look at the edge of our most recent book club read, The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar.





Am I the only one that sees a problem here? There is at least a quarter of an inch difference in the length of various pages. It probably took me an extra 3 hours to read this book because the page turning slowed me down so much. Okay, so it looks a little prettier than a cut edge book, if you dig the natural wild look. But I am a comfort over appearances kind of girl. Besides, when are you going to see the edge of this book anyway once it is shelved? Why is this suddenly becoming the trendy thing to do, and what can we, the poor readers, do to stop it? Is there a petition somewhere? By the way, I did a little research about book edges tonight. Complete with photos, here are definitions of various types of book edges.

4 comments:

Quad Squad! said...

I'm with you! I hate the uneven pages! It's so annoying!

Heather said...

I thought I was the only one that was bothered by the uneven pages!!

Amberly said...

I hear you! Nothing like fumbling with trying to turn a single page. Hate it.

Anonymous said...

This is actually a practice that publishers use to add a certain quality to the physical book. I know I prefer this design to standard pages because it reduces papercuts, which we all dislike, and it actually makes it easier for most of the people I know to find the next page. Besides the paper stock, did you like the book??