Last year my friend, also in her late forties, discovered the convenience of large-print books. She positioned them on her treadmill so that she could walk and read at the same time. When she mentioned this excellent idea to another friend, she got anxious looks. But the switch to large print is not always an occasion to rage, rage against the dying of the light. I was 13 when I discovered large-print editions. My eye doctor had prescribed stronger eyeglasses for two years running, and I was accused of reading too much. (To misquote Philip Larkin, enlightened parenting began in 1983, which was rather late for me.)
You had to be 13 to bypass the children's section and go into the downstairs part of our public library, where a stack of large-print editions towered just inside the door. The paper was thinner, so that the books would not get too heavy. I took home mainly historical romances by Jean Plaidy and Victoria Holt and, in later years, whodunits. In school, when I carried these books, my classmates asked me why I was reading from the “easy” section.
Large print is considered fit for the very young and the very old. Most general periodicals seem to shrink their type with every redesign. My aunt-in-law, who is in her eighties, fumes over The Hindu's type size. (You're reading 9-point type right now.)
But what do we do about books? I have an acrylic magnifying sheet somewhere, but it is unsatisfactory. You have to hold it slightly above the page, and it flops about. My old Chicago Manual of Style, the book editor's bible, recommends at least 10 points for text. It considers 8-point type suitable for footnotes and index. Nowadays we find whole books set in 8-point type. When you can't fit your story in, readability dictates that you edit the text, not shrink the type.
My own sorry collection of large-print editions, set in 14 point, consists of one P.D. James and a mediocre early novel by the otherwise mesmerising Ann Patchett. But for many years I have bought new books with a view to type size, and I regularly upgrade my classics from the pocket-friendly Penguins of my youth to hardbacks from Everyman Library or Zodiac Press, which have a type size about 12, generous enough for reading even by moonlight. Those hardbacks are heavier, of course, and I have wondered whether I would be willing to haul around a large-print edition of the already weighty ‘Vanity Fair'.
But it turns out I don't have to. While I was away, a thoughtful person in the house loaded ‘Vanity Fair' on my Kindle. Now I can make the type as large as I like without making the book heavier, and I will carry another treasure into the next decade.
anantharaman.bookwise@gmail.com
