Paperbacks blink in and out of print like fireflies. They also, as older collectors have ruefully discovered, fade and fall apart even more rapidly than their owners.

The e-reading revolution may have reached our shores this year but it has yet to reckon with Australia's summer holidays. Intense sunlight plays havoc with screens and the sand invades every nook and cranny, so as convenient and sexy as your new iPad may be, the battered paperback, its pages pocked and swollen from contact with briny hands, will likely remain the beach format of choice for a few years yet.

It even looks exactly like a real book, with pages and print and dust jacket and everything. This disguise is extremely clever, considering the contents: the longest lounge act never performed in the history of the Catskills.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.

Tiny Salmoneus of the air His mimic bolts the firefly threw.

And the fireflies, Wah-wah-taysee, Waved their torches to mislead him.