Normal Book Dimensions Novels & Stories

The sixth register was smaller than any of them expected. Octavo-sized, the kind of book that fit in one hand, bound in the same worn-honey leather as the others but with a different quality to its age this one had been touched more recently, handled more carefully, as though whoever had held it last had understood what it contained and had treated it accordingly.

Her back and joints were stiff, her eyes were hurting from the non-stop reading, and she had already sneezed way too many times from the dust. The book she was reading now was a huge, oversized volume with thick leather binding, cracked along the spine. It probably weighed ten pounds, and was at least twelve inches wide and long. She had it opened to the middle of the book, and each page she turned crackled with age. The pages were thick, so much thicker than those of modern books, and yellow with age. It was a physically gorgeous volume, published in 1661, interspersed with hand-drawn illustrations, some of them in color. Caitlin turned the pages with the utmost care as she went, not wantin

it said. Three more shadows paced towards me and the bat thing, and as they got closer, I realized that I was in a deep mess. The figures were huge, probably 7 feet in height. They all looked the same, humanoid but with white scales for skin, webbed hands and feet. The figure in the middle towered above the rest. It had clear scaly facials, with human features, deep black hair, and quite the large size breast.... No, these things were enormous. If I could invent a new word, I would say......"Enormouficamous"... They made me shout glory in fear.

He wrote: Tell him the east window will put the morning light on the page. Claire did not reply immediately. When she did, she wrote: He said to ask you how wide the desk-sill is. Daniel looked at the margin sketch. He thought about the bridge book — the size of it, the cross-sections, the diagrams that required a generous surface to be read without folding the spine. He thought about the width that would accommodate the spread of material, the book and the notebook beside it and the pencil with room to move. He wrote: Wide enough for a book about bridges and a notebook open beside it.

He does back, almost reverently, while I get down to my knees, and dig it out of the ash and leftover wood. And there it is, in all its glory. It is large; significantly large for a book, about two hands wide and two hand spans long. As Quain lifts it out of the debris, the air seems to thrum around it. 'Did you see that?' I gasp. 'What?' he asks. They both look genuinely confused, so I know they cannot see it. Why, though?

It was small. She registered that first — the specific dimensions of it, smaller than a standard notebook, the kind that fit in a jacket pocket, dark green cover with a worn quality that was not aesthetic but actual, the wear of something that had been handled regularly over a period of time. She registered the weight of it, which was the dense weight of pages that had been written on rather than the airy weight of pages that hadn't. She registered the particular quality of its closure, the elastic band around it in the way of certain notebooks, the elastic gone slightly loose with age. She held it.