I love them. Their small size is actually part of their attraction for me. I find them very comfortable to hold and carry to read anywhere, despite their length.

The fun is just semantics, really. Much is always made of how supple the Pléiade covers are, so it's funny to see the English label "hardcover" applied to them.



Yes and no. Paperbacks aren't necessarily cheaply made - some of the "grands formats" from French editors are printed on very high quality paper and are bound (cousus) - not glued like it's done in the US, despite having paperbacks. I was handed down by members of my family several old volumes from la Blanche (Gallimard's main collection) and they still look really good despite being 40-50 years old. The French "grands formats" (I think you call those Trade) are in general of higher quality than their US equivalent (I find the paper used for the big US paperbacks usually fairly cheap. The quality of the mass market paperbacks is also much lower, most of them similar to the very cheap PB collections like J'ai Lu). I think I mentionned this to you long ago (or maybe not to you, on this MB in any case...) but there's more than economics involved (some French bookclubs do put out US style rigid cover editions - mostly of american translations - and sell them for the same price as the regular editions, so it's not really an economic issue, I think). The French simply prefer supple to rigid covers, and we do prefer smaller (and lighter) books in general. When the paper covers were introduced they were rapidly adopted - even a high end collection like La Pléiade has kept on purpose the size of the "livres de poche" the young French readers loved so much and sought to make its high quality covers thin and supple. We have so few real hardcovers (for literature, anyway) because there's no demand for them. A lot of people around me actually really dislike American hardcovers. They find them cumbersome to handle and heavy, and not very attractive with or without their dust jackets. They also find they take an awful lot of shelf space (it's true enough, and though personally I don't hate US hardcovers, I buy less and less now because they eat too much of my living space) and they dislike how cumbersome they are to carry out of home. I had a discussion not very long ago with a friend who hates US hardcovers, and his argument was that they're just way too sturdy for nothing and unappealing cheap and mass produced imitations of old style binding, sometimes of fairly low quality (very average printing, cheap binding).

When the French put out hardcover editions, which is rarely, they are high end products and much greater care is taken in making them attractive objects. Omnibus is one editor that releases its books like that (but they're not from authors that interest you - a lot are translations, or anthologies. Many Dumas novels are available in that collection).



Keep an eye on used books, not necessarily antique but pre-1950 editions. I don't think there's any bound edition of either in print, but there will be older editions (typically they'll be leather or imitation leather, the fake-clothe/cardboard covers were never much to the French taste in binding). They're relatively rare for classics now - again, no real demand for those in France. The other thing is that those in France who love nice books like the pricey high end stuff with very sober classic design (and so they hunt mostly for antique editions...), they wouldn't be happy at all with the mass-produced US style hardcovers.

Edit: there are exceptions, sectors where rigid covers and bound books are the norm in French edition. The first is for reference books that are handled a lot. Dictionaries, grammars and such are commonly published that way. Another exception is for children books, and schoolbooks/textbooks too. Yet another exception is for "comics" (bande dessinée). Finally, you'll find US style binding in most public and school libraries. They're not different editions, the libraries just bind the books themselves with rigid cardboard covers.