I think it could work. Maybe not by the page number, but the opposite (ie-if the pg number is at the top, put the % at the bottom.)

Am-Chau, I have other interesting things to say about the book, I just didn't want to be spoily, but if you want to discuss, I'm more than game.

Oh, hey, I know her! Sort of.

Yeah, I knew the name looked familiar when my friend gave me the book, and then I realized she was on LJ, so I stopped by and left her a little "hey, your book is really awesome!" note.

Quick question for the literary hivemind: I'm working on a care package for my National Guard nephew in Baghdad. My plan is to stuff a flat-rate priority envelope as full as I can get it, so I'm thinking a magazine or two and a slim paperback in addition to a letter. Problem is, since Nathan lives in Georgia and I live in Washington, we don't see that much of each other, so I'm not sure what he reads. Obviously, y'all don't know him at all, but I'm just looking for ideas of authors who don't write chick books and who write something slim enough for the envelope--no doorstop fantasy tomes of the type I favor when I venture into more masculine literary territory. Something where if I guess wrong and he doesn't want to read it, he won't have any trouble finding a taker for it.

Douglas Adams? Small books, funny, non-gendered.

Ernest Hemingway. Anyway, he's brief. The Sun Also Rises.

An older YA action classic -- YA tends to be brief, and is easy to get into. The Smugglers is a pirate novel, very exciting, by an author I can't remember. Of course, the paperbacks of these go out of print like the world is ending.

One of those popular history volumes out in trade paperback -- I don't know how thick they are, but the one about salt, or Krakatoa, or longitude?

Conventional wisdom for boys you don't know is to give them popular non-fiction.

Susan, I'd suggest something by Gary Paulsen. He writes a lot of YA, slanted for boys, but Winterdance is one of the most hysterically funny things I've ever read. DH laughed so hard he teared up and he almost rolled off the couch. The book has the advantage of being so far outside the experience of southerners as to lend an extra layer of absurdity to the story. Paulsen's other work is readable, but more in the "triumph over adversity" vein for kids. Winterdance is available in TP, which would fit your envelope nicely, I think.

That's a good idea, Katie, and should definitely be available at any B&N.

(ETA--thanks for the other ideas, too. I'll take a list with me.)

Oh, good choice. Paulsen definitely fits into the "older YA action classics" niche. The Hatchet seems perpetually in print, although I didn't like it much. I think Chris Crutcher is in a similar vein/style, although he tends to write issue-novels and very highschool-oriented novels.

I don't know how thick they are, but the one about salt, or Krakatoa, or longitude?

Salt is thick and heavy. Longitude is pretty slender, but I've only seen it in hardback. Cod is slender, I'm reading it paperback now. It's good, but depressing with all the overfishing and its consequences coming up over and over.

But having a little text note alongside the page number - good idea? bad idea?

I like explanatory extra stuff. Gimme the pie chart and the footnote that says what chapter I'm in. I also like page decorations and initial caps, so maybe I just like clutter and verbiage...

I have a copy of Longitude in paperback and took it with me when I visited Cleveland. It seemed appropriate for a travel book and was appealingly tiny and packable.