Bye, Bye Mass Market Paperbacks... You Were My Constant Companion for Many Years...

It's true... Mass Market Paperbacks are going the way of the dinosaur in 2026. Readerlink, which is the largest book distributor in the North America, decided to stop distributing mass market paperbacks at the end of 2025. It's the end of an era...

I remember always bringing a paperback with me to the beach, even as a teenager. I remember reading The Shining in a mass market paperback, and The Exorcist too. I remember reading Summer Sisters by Judy Blume and my first romance book, The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy. I bought a used copy of The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher (which is in the photo I took along side a trade paperback book just to compare the sizes). Mass Market paperbacks were easy to carry around, fit in my pocketbook, and they were a lot cheaper than hardcovers. 

(BTW... One thing I noticed with my "old" copy of The Shell Seekers is that the pages are starting to yellow around the edges. This is pretty common on mass market paperbacks because they were made with cheaper paper. Nowadays Trade Paperbacks are generally made with a better quality paper, some of which is acid free paper, so we won't be seeing that yellowing.)

I should have seen it coming... And I accidentally helped the downfall when those trade paperbacks made their first appearance on the bookstore shelves. I was hesitant at first, but then came to like the larger format. A lot of people started liking the larger format. And honestly, I don't remember the books I wanted to read coming in mass market paperback size after trade paperbacks became popular. 

"According to Circana BookScan, mass market unit sales plunged from 131 million in 2004 to 21 million in 2024, a drop of about 84%, and sales this year through October were about 15 million units."... Publishers Weekly News

Trade Paperbacks weren't the only villain in the Mass Market Paperback decline... eBooks came into the picture and took away more of the market. 

Speaking of eBooks... I looked back on some of my eReader news posts over the years and found my first post about the new on the market Kobo eReader in May 2010. And the first Nook eReader I covered in October of 2009. And a fun post about "Are eReaders taking Over the World" Sept. 2010.

What do you think about the downfall of mass market paperbacks? Do you like the size? One thing I can tell you is that as an "older" person now, that larger font in a eReader is a life saver...

Happy Reading... Suzanne

The Sunday Salon and Feeding Your Soul with a Good Book

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! Yes, it's that day of the week we put aside  a little of our time to talk books… So, grab a cup of joe, find a comfy chair and relax.

My reading week had been engrossed in a book I talked about in last week's Sunday Salon - All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, which takes place during WWII about a blind girl who is raised by her father in Paris and a German orphan boy who grows up to be part of the Nazi intelligence. Their two stories merge when the girl and her father flee to the port city of Saint Malo, when Paris becomes part of the German occupation, and the German boy, now a man, lands in Saint Malo. The writing is wonderful, the story is so interesting and I cannot put it down. More on that after I finish it, but I think it's going to be one of those great stories that will stay with me for a while.

There are a few books that hit my radar when I did manage to poke my head out of the pages of that book…

Our Happy Time by Gong Ji-young… "Already a wildly popular bestseller in South Korea, this gripping and passionate debut novel is a death row love story of crime, punishment, and forgiveness"

Yu-Jung, beautiful, wealthy, and bright, is lying in her hospital bed, recovering from her third suicide attempt, when she receives a life-changing visit. Her no-nonsense aunt, a nun, appears by her side and suggests Yu-Jung accompany her on a charitable visit to death row. At her lowest ebb, Yu-Jung is resistant. But something compels her to go to the prison. There she meets Yun-Soo, a convicted murderer who will soon be put to death. Though she is repulsed by his crimes, something about the depth of his suffering strikes a chord in her. Shaken by their encounter, she returns to visit him the next week. And the next… Through their weekly, hour-long meetings, Yu-Jung and Yun-Soo slowly reveal to each other the dark secrets of their pasts and the hidden traumas that have shaped their lives. In doing so they form a deep, unbreakable bond, helping one another overcome their demons. But Yun-Soo’s hands are always in cuffs, the prison officers are always in the background, and they can never lose sight of the fact that their happy time together is tragically brief.

This book is already a smash hit in South Korea and has gotten rave reviews. In fact, Gong Ji-young is a best selling author in South Korea and this is her first book translated into English. I have a eGalley on my Nook and can't wait to start reading to see if it's going to live up to all the hype. I did take a peek at some of the first few chapters and I loved the intro…

"I am going to tell you a story. It is a story of murder. It is a story of a family that was only capable of destruction, where screaming and yelling and whippings and chaos and curses were their daily bread…"

I'll be sinking my teeth into this book next, so stay tuned for my review!

The Moon Sisters by Therese Walsh… After their mother's probable suicide, sisters Olivia and Jazz take steps to move on with their lives. Jazz, logical and forward-thinking, decides to get a new job, but spirited, strong-willed Olivia—who can see sounds, taste words, and smell sights—is determined to travel to the remote setting of their mother's unfinished novel to lay her spirit properly to rest. Already resentful of Olivia’s foolish quest and her family’s insistence upon her involvement, Jazz is further aggravated when they run into trouble along the way and Olivia latches to a worldly train-hopper who warns he shouldn’t be trusted. As they near their destination, the tension builds between the two sisters, each hiding something from the other, until they are finally forced to face everything between them and decide what is really important.

This is touted as a coming of age novel. I like the idea of the sisters going on this adventure together, and look forward to how the story wraps itself around these two.

The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman… Coralie Sardie is the daughter of the sinister impresario behind The Museum of Extraordinary Things, a Coney Island boardwalk freak show that thrills the masses. An exceptional swimmer, Coralie appears as the Mermaid in her father’s “museum,” alongside performers like the Wolfman, the Butterfly Girl, and a one-hundred-year-old turtle. One night Coralie stumbles upon a striking young man taking pictures of moonlit trees in the woods off the Hudson River. The dashing photographer is Eddie Cohen, a Russian immigrant who has run away from his father’s Lower East Side Orthodox community and his job as a tailor’s apprentice. When Eddie photographs the devastation on the streets of New York following the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, he becomes embroiled in the suspicious mystery behind a young woman’s disappearance and ignites the heart of Coralie.

Alice Hoffman is a great storyteller and this novel sounds like a quirky love story, with all the elements of a innocent girl being rescued from her evil captor and whisked off to mysterious other world. I look forward to reading, which was published this past February.

Other bookish things this week include my surprise box from Book Riot. Book Riot is part of a program  from Quarterly Company that boxes up little surprise boxes filled with stuff you're interested in. You can subscribe yearly or try one box. Book Riot is all about readers, so they box up bookish things. This was my first "box" and I subscribed because I just love surprises, and couldn't resist a surprise box filled with bookish things. It's a bit expensive - $50 a quarter if you subscribe, $50 plus shipping if you just order one box to try. Was I impressed? Come back Monday and we'll look at what came in the box and I'll tell share my thoughts on fun versus value.

In The News… Amazon Prime members dues are going up. Yes, the fee Amazon Prime members pay for free shipping, free Kindle lending and other member only perks is going up $20 to $99. I have been a Prime Member from the beginning and have more than made my "dues" up in free shipping, but $99 is pushing it just a little. I don't think I'll be unsubscribing, but it did make me pause since I'm using the library more, downloading more eBooks and not ordering as much as I once did of "other things". If you aren't a Prime Member and were considering joining, if you join before the new price is in effect, April 17th, you'll get a whole year at the old price of $79.

How was your reading week? Reading anything you've just got to share with someone?! I'd love to hear about it! I'm always on the lookout for great reads! And what do you think about Amazon Prime? Are you a member? Worth the price?

Have a great week! And don't forget to stop back this week to see what bookish things I got in my Book Riot box!

Happy reading… Suzanne

The Sunday Salon... And Crashes in Your Reading Life

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them, and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake...

Some of you out there know that a little while back I was in a pretty serious car accident. A teenager on his way home from school decided to run a stop sign, going so fast I didn't even see him when he hit me, and the rest is history. I was lucky because it could have been so much worse. I survived with cuts and big bruises and a concussion and all sorts of lumps all over, and lots of pain (still), and a leg that doesn't function anymore because my knee is torn in a zillion places, and frustration, etc. Someday, I know this will be all behind me. In the meantime, the word crash makes me cringe. SO, I thought since the "crash" is ever present in my mind these days, I'd see what kind of books I could find that had the word "crash" in them. It seems that crash can be more than a car crash...

Crash by Lisa McMann... From the back flap:
Jules lives with her family above their restaurant, which means she smells like pizza most of the time and drives their double-meatball-shaped food truck to school. It’s not a recipe for popularity, but she can handle that. What she can’t handle is the vision. Over and over, Jules sees a careening truck hit a building and explode... and nine body bags in the snow. She has no idea why this is happening to her or if she’s going crazy. It hardly matters, because the visions are everywhere--on billboards, television screens, windows--and she’s the only one who can see them. But it’s not until the vision starts coming more frequently, and revealing more clues, that Jules knows what she has to do. Because now she can see the face in one of the body bags, and it's someone she knows. Someone she’s been in love with for as long as she can remember.

I love this cover! This is a YA, that I think would appeal to the Adult Crossover crowd. The author, Lisa McMann is well known for a 2 other YA series, The Unwanteds , which is a dysptopian trilogy that sounds fantastic, and the Wake Trilogy , and has gotten rave reviews for all her writing. I like the premiss of her getting these visions and her determination to put the pieces together to make sure none of it happens. This book is available in Paperback , Kindle , or Nook!

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson... From the publisher: Weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age. In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous…you’ll recognize it immediately.

Neal Stephenson writing is sometimes referred to as a cyberpunk, or a postmodern kind of world with a good dose of technology thrown in. How can you not like a warrior prince who delivers pizza for a living?! Sci-fi fans should like this, as well as cyberpunk enthusiasts. Snow Crash dates back to some of Neal Stephenson's earlier works, this dating back to 1994, and this book has gotten great reviews! It's available in Paperback , Kindle , or Nook!

Crash and Burn by Artie Lange... from the publisher: Veteran comedian and radio personality Artie Lange turns an unflinching eye and his signature wit on his perilous descent into drug addiction, life-threatening depression, and ultimately, his recovery, in the follow-up to his hilariously raw debut, #1 New York Times bestseller Too Fat to Fish. At a high point in his career, Artie Lange played a sold-out show in Carnegie Hall and totally killed—yet during his standing ovation, all he could think of were the two bags of heroin in his pocket. In the midst of a deep, self-destructive depression, addicted to heroin and prescription drugs, he lashed out at everyone around him— from his fellow cast members on The Howard Stern Show, to celebrity guests, his longtime friends, and even his own family. By turns dark and disturbing, hilarious and heartbreaking, and always drop-dead honest, Crash and Burn lifts the curtain on Artie’s dangerous slide, and offers a new, crystal-clear window into the mind of the addict... With the help and support of friends and family, Artie claws his way back, turning his life and career around. And despite his slipups, backslides, and permanent losses, Artie forges on. With Crash and Burn, Artie Lange goes all-in, confessing a story that is as shocking as it is funny, ever tempered by his characteristic humor, self-awareness, and inimitable way with words. 

I do enjoy a good memoir, but I burned out on celebrity tell-alls a while back. BUT, Artie Lange isn't a celebrity to me, I never heard of him. His crash on drugs is a familiar one to many celebrities, but when I read an excerpt of this from Rolling Stones magazine and I was immediately drawn in to the story and the writing! His story seems fresh and human. The story of someone who has it all, but can't see that until "you only realize how big your mountain is once you're laying motionless, helpless, and hopeless in the valley below." That is Artie Lange's story. This is definitely on my reading list. Crash and Burn will be published Oct. 29th by Touchstone, a division of Simon & Schuster. You can pre-order the Hardcover , and it will be available for the Kindle and the Nook the same day as the hardcover!

Other Bookish news... 
*Author Alice Munro, who writes short stories, won the Noble Prize for Literature on Oct. 10th! "Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" Congratulations Alice Munro!

*Have you heard about the backlash of self-published erotica? Well, it seems that there is a sweeping attack & delete at the major eBook stores of their self-published erotica. A news report about finding "questionable" material in the self-published section even made WH Smith shut down their site entirely. You can read the full story at The Digital Reader

Chick with Books Blog News... Chick with Books is available on Kindle now! If you own a Kindle, YOU can subscribe to Chick with Books via Amazon and have the blog delivered to your Kindle automatically! You can get all the details at my Amazon Kindle Page!

The Week in Review...
On tuesday, Oct. 11th, I reviewed The Nine Fold Heaven by Mingmei Yip. It was a sexy fun thrill ride through the Shanghai of the 1930's! 

On friday, Oct. 14th,  I blogged about eBook subscriptions or the "Netflixing" of the eBook industry. It's coming, and I highlighted 3 of the top choices.

On saturday, Oct. 15th, I reviewed Sailor Twain by Mark Siegel. Folklore, mystery, romance & the open sea all make for a wonderful story, that also happen's to be a graphic novel beautifully rendered in soft charcoal with hand lettering of the text. Do not miss this one even if you're new to graphic novels!

NEXT WEEK, look for an update on some great books coming out this week and next! And of course there's always bookish news.

Happy reading.... Suzanne