Fantastic Metropolis

Intro · Likes · Rituals · Necessity
Examples · Memories · Bios

Shelley Jackson

That it is a physical object is already likeable and needs no qualification. I like everything that comes with that fact: weight, degrees of stiffness and flexibility, transformations when subjected to water, sun, burrowing insects, knives, glue, hacksaws. I also like the fact that the size of an average book bears a relationship to the size of my hand, and also to the amount of food I would like to see on my plate when hungry. I like books’ propensity for collecting small tokens (a photograph of a naked man asleep on a hotel bed, a phonetic transcription of “Polly Wolly Doodle,” a twenty-dollar bill, a razor blade in a plastic bag, food stains, pressed leaves, pressed insects), and I like the way they close tight and keep their contents secret, but spread themselves whenever I want them to.

Harvey Jacobs

I like everything about books as physical objects, especially that they contain entire worlds. I like the feel of them, sometimes the cover art, the look of type, the paper, etc. ad nauseum. One thing I dislike is books printed on lousy paper or with type that demands a magnifying glass to read.

Stephen Jones

The appearance—you can tell a book by its cover. I sometimes buy them just because I like the dust jacket art. The texture of the paper, the feeling of the binding (and whether it’s stamped or not), and the smell of the ink. Interior illustrations, of course (which is why I try to include them in my own books whenever I can). In short, all the things that make e-books and print-on-demand redundant so far as I am concerned.

Henry Kaiser

Weight. Heft. Tactile qualities. Easy to read.

James Patrick Kelly

I like the texture of paper, especially old paper. I like the way you can run a thumb down a right hand corner and riffle the pages. I like the colors in sewn bindings.

Rick Klaw

I love the heft and feel of a book in my hands. The smell of a used book is a singularly pleasurable experience.

John Klima

I love being able to sit on the couch and stare at the shelves of books. I don’t even pull them off the shelf. Every one of these books has a story (not just the one between the covers) of how it ended up in my care; why I chose to add that book to my collection. I love how solid a well-made book feels in my hands; it means something.

Kathe Koja

The fact that it is a physical object—something that can travel with me, something I can hold.

David Langford

A pleasant heft. A hardback design that lies open without needing special weights, clamps or continuing hand pressure.

Tanith Lee

Everything. Touch, smell, appearance. Content, of course.

Des Lewis

The book as physical object was the container, the thing that gifted what I yearned – so, by association with what it gifted, it became a loved object, by look and smell and feel, and assumed taste. The stitching, the tooled spine, the foxing, the heady waft of predictions of nostalgia in future life…

Nick Mamatas

Honestly, the object itself isn’t so interesting to me, though I like the old “pocket” books and wish contemporary novels would be shorter so I could shove them in my back pocket rather than drag them around in a little red wagon. I also prefer matte to gloss in my hand, but other than that, I would just as soon drink pulp soup as read a thick hardback. Whatever gets the words into my head is fine with me.