Sells Better in Paperback.

Kim Edwards and her debut novel, "The Memory Keeper's Daughter", is selling much better in paperback form:

The book sold about 30,000 copies in hardcover when it was published last year by Viking. But since it came out in paperback in late May, it has been climbing best-seller lists and enjoying rapid sales at places like K-Mart, Barnes & Noble and independent bookstores across the country, inspiring comparisons to previous paperback sensations like “The Kite Runner,” “The Secret Life of Bees ” and “Bel Canto.”

Perhaps this reflects a trend of current readers's tastes? I, for one, prefer a nice, tasty paperback, as compared to a hard, heavy, tome. There will be people who disagree with me, of course, because they prefer the advantage of durability, and hardbacks simply exude a little more "class".

I understand where they're coming from, but one of my criteria when purchasing a book is that it must be portable. I must be able to take the book anywhere, so I can read it on the LRT while going to work, and I can keep it back in my bag when I'm in a position unable to do any reading.

Eh? I digress... Erm, anyway, from a review of "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" at Blogcritics:

The book leaps from that moment to other parallel moments in the lives of twins Paul and Phoebe, and those involved in the choices that made those lives so very different. There's a spiraling structure, each moment that's revealed moving us closer to the character's interiors, until you've wound your way into their cores. Each time that Edwards chooses to show us, there are echoes of those decisions, reflections upon them, leaving the reader to deduce the causes and effects that have lead to each scene. In some ways, as time marches on, we're really seeing the same moment, over and over, played out in new ways.

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