Reader versus book

I've just finished reading Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. Fantastic. Also fantastically heavy. At 771 pages, my hardback copy definitely qualifies for the doorstop/bar of gold/brick category of books. It joins fellow heavyweights Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (650 pages) and Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate (855 pages) on my bookshelves. These I'm yet to finish, not least thanks to their sheer bulk. 

Reading large tomes is by necessity an at-home-only pleasure; as I found out through experience, The Goldfinch is not a book to lug around on a train. That can be frustrating with a book so compelling, so gripping, that you just want to keep reading in any spare snatch of time you can find.  

Yet there's something wonderful about the lure of a book that you have to rush home for, whose words and characters are only available in one place. It's the antidote to the Kindle. The untransportable book. You have to make the effort to read it, to set aside time at home to immerse yourself in its world.