Brave Story: Extended Mass

By November 12, 2009

As many of you know, the first edition of Brave Story came out two years ago in hardback. If you own a copy you know the beefy tome takes up a lot of space on your bookshelf (and in your backpack). It's one of those books that goes toe-to-toe with other doorstoppers like Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows and Stephen King's Under the Dome.

Next Tuesday Miyuki Miyabe's award-winning novel gets downsized into a handy Haikasoru paperback edition. "Downsized" might be the wrong word, however. The trim size remains the same, and none of the text has been clipped. We even kept the helpful map of Vision at the beginning of the book. But the new edition is definitely thinner and easier to cart around. You won't suffer any discomfort hefting this book from place to place. And that's good news for me.

Since I live in San Francisco and take public transportation everywhere I go, I'm a big fan of "pocket" books. Gigantic hardback novels can be nice ornamental items sitting in your living room, but they're not convenient on a crowd bus. I much prefer a book I can shove in my jacket pocket and whip out when an opportunity for reading arises. Long live mass market paperbacks, that's what I say. Or, in the case of Brave Story, long live extended mass market paperbacks.