John "naked as the eyes of a clown" Prine

This is the 19th century equivalent of shooting your movie on a phone so that the footage seems "real". In movies it makes the depicted events seem more immediate and genuine, because "obviously no one was paid to film this." The effect that 19th century authors want to create is like, "it must be true, otherwise he wouldn't care about implying that this apparently totally real lady might be a whore who writes letters to men without parental supervision."

Get a kindle. There are cheaper models than the Paperwhite, and you can also get discounted ones from woot.com (amazon clearance). Once you have a kindle, you can get kindle deals, which has saved me a ton on novels (I admit I'm not super picky about muh casual reading) but also you can get Libby (formerly overdrive) which uses your Library account to allow you to digital books for free. Cheapest way to the best, most on-demand source IMO.

You can do the same basically for free by downloading the kindle app onto a smartphone or tablet, but if you're a serious reader, that's tough on your eyes.

Sorry, not sorry. It's a fuckin dumb question.

I've literally taken shits that could answer this question. Empirically... not like by deduction.

"Hey if I do this thing the cheap shitty way will the result be cheap and shitty? Or are the laws of physics different at my house because my money is the special kind that you don't have to spend on stuff that's not cool?"

That's how I'm reading your question. It is a stupid one.

They said, "hey, baby, wanna fuck?"

You're not supposed to look that up, you're just supposed to be sufficiently seasoned to know that whores say the same thing to sailors in every language.