A Pocket Book That Really Fits

One of the blogs I try to keep up with is Everyday Carry, where people dump and photograph the (highly premeditated, tightly edited) contents of their pockets. If I were going to take a snapshot of my EDC these days, it would look something like this:

The "pocket-sized book" rarely lives up to its name. Mass market paperbacks, the small, thick volumes stuffed into the supermarket racks, are the closest thing, but these days they tend to be very cheaply produced ... and quite garishly ugly. And yet, I've been carrying John le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy around in my pocket the past couple of days. Last night I forgot it was there and ended up carrying it along to the house of some friends. It fits in the pocket thanks to an innovative new design format. It's called a flipback.

I've written about the concept recently on my other blog. Recently I met the design team and the printer behind the project, 2Krogh and Jongbloed. They gave me a few flipback editions to whet my appetite. Thanks to Amazon UK, I now have more, which gives me an excuse -- as if any were needed -- to re-read my favorite Le Carre novel.

The flipback works like so: Instead of opening in the traditional way, with a page on the left and another on the right, it's oriented sideways. The text column runs down the length of two pages, effectively doubling the reading surface. This allows the book to be much smaller than a mass market paperback while boasting roughly the same column size. The use of super thin paper helps keep the whole thing quite compact. I'm about halfway through Tinker Tailor and yes, it does take some getting used to. After the first few minutes, the only trick is having to turn the pages upward instead of side to side. 

While there aren't many flipback editions to choose from, what few there are offer a nice variety. Next for me will be Peter Robinson and John Connolly.