Book Report: The Wind Singer

In purchasing books for our recent vacation, my Best Reader picked up The Wind Singer, based on who knows what combination of whim, inside knowledge, and cover-judging. Luckily, it turns out that the book is terrific, and that I fully intend to read more of William Nicholson’s stuff. Actually, in finding that site, I just found out that Mr. Nicholson wrote the play Shadowlands, among others I am already familiar with. I wouldn’t have guessed.

Anyway, I wasn’t going to write about the content of the book at all (other than mentioning that I enjoyed it a lot), but about Hyperion’s decision to publish it with less than 200 words on a page. Big margins, big print, lots of space between the lines. It’s a brick of a paperback, nearly five hundred pages; the Hyperion hardcover is 368 pages, and the British paperback is 352 pages. It’s all part of the magic of Disney. Seriously, what layout designer thought the book would be more pleasurable to read hefting more than a hundred extra pages, whatever the dubious pleasures of white space?

Seriously, it was like the publishers were trying to kid their teacher into believing that it really is a ten-page paper, you know, because the last line or two goes onto the ninth page and then there’s the bibliography. I could understand that, I suppose, if we were talking about a hundred-page novella that really isn’t worth the eight bucks. But what is the point of making a perfectly respectable sized book a brick? Is this some sort of invidious Potterization, wherein the publisher idiotically thinks that the popularity of the books correlates with its weight, and compensates for the lack of filler, redundancy and indulgence in this well-edited gem by adding white space?

Well, and I’ve already bought the Hyperion edition of the second book, but I’m about ready to send away for the Egmont paperback of the third, which is two hundred pages shorter than the Hyperion.

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.