Cover me up

Whether you're an avid reader or someone who just

with reading,  cover design is a beautiful art, and one Penguin has experimented with over the years. You have to admit that sometimes - whether you read them or not - books look very nice. Though they can also look very horrible - naming no names here. I love comparing all the different covers and editions that are around. And I will pay extra for a well designed cover and nice typeface. I'm not ashamed to admit it. That's why I'm itching to buy myself a set of these Penguin postcards, 100 book covers - I think they'd look sweet stuck on one of my walls.  


p.s. the photo is from Christmas. A friend got gifted this book in a Secret Santa. Funny isn't it.

Eating and Reading

There's nothing cosier than drinking tea and reading a book when it's raining and windy on the other side of the window. What's your perfect accompaniment to reading? A cup of chai and a few biscuits would definitely be my top choice, the digestive being my preferred crumb. Ouissi Gresty's new fabric-design book combines my two loves in one: books and biscuits. This set of pages will help you to craft your very own set of felt biscuits, not forgetting the stylish union jack biscuit tin. But be warned, however realistic they may look (especially that pink wafer...wow!) they're strictly for decorative purposes only. Don't get confused.

Number 20

The pennycandystore beyond the El

       is where I first
                       fell in love
                                   with unreality
       Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
       of that september afternoon
       A cat upon the counter moved among
                                 the licorice sticks
                      and tootsie rolls
              and Oh Boy Gum

       Outside the leaves were falling as they died

       A wind had blown away the sun

       A girl ran in 
       Her hair was rainy
       Her breasts were breathless in the little room

       Outside the leaves were falling
                            and they cried
                                         Too soon!  too soon!

A Coney Island of the Mind. Lawrence Ferlinghetti.    

ssssssh

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun--which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone's eyes." 

Frances Hodgson Burnett. The Secret Garden.


(Designer Cover by Lauren Child)

Pictures were taken

and we'd like to see them now, because we were beautiful then. We'd like to be beautiful again, and in memory we will be.....

We're nearly ready, we're always almost ready and it takes only a little time for the vessels to flush and fill with memory, and then we can open our eyes, lift our heads, sit up in our beds, and turn to meet your gaze. We'll tell you what we remember;

Maile Chapman. Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto.

Rocks. Goats. Dry shrubs.

Buffaloes. Thorns. A fallen tamarind tree. Tents. Red bricks in heaps. White graves, flashes in a brown-yellow universe. A motorbike on an earthen path. An auto rickshaw, yellow and black. Palm trees. Bicycles. Orange saris. A white flower in her hair. Eyes.

Mahbubabad. The morning ride across Telangana, the high plateau east of Hyderabad, seems synchronized with my need for a slow reentry. "Time" again presents itself as a question: does it exist, all of it, all past-future, as a dusty, viscous elastic casing for the mind, twisted into the mind? Each of us gets to see a small segment buried in one of the twists. For example, I have been offered the second half of the so-called twentieth century - an arbitrary boundary, after all - and on for some ways into the twenty-first. One could also run the segment backward. There is even knowledge, however uncertain, of the part that supposedly lies ahead. In fact, one can see it from the train window. Yellow and brown, flashes of white, a grave.

Spring, Heat, Rains: A South Indian Diary. David Dean Shulman.

(Decades) Covers: 1980s

He stood beneath the white tower, and looked up at it with that mournful expression which his face always carried in repose: for one moment he thought of climbing up its cracked and broken stone, and then from its summit screaming down at the silent city as a child might scream at a chained animal.

Peter Ackroyd. Hawksmoor.

(Decades) Covers: 1970s

'Don't look now,' John said to his wife, 'but there are a couple of old girls two tables away who are trying to hypnotise me.'

Daphne Du Maurier. Don't Look Now.

(Decades) Covers: 1960s

It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now.

Anthony Burgess. A Clockwork Orange.

(Decades) Covers: 1950s

When I was quite small I would sometimes dream of a city -- which was strange because it began before I even knew what a city was. But this city, clustered on the curve of a big blue bay, would come into my mind. I could see the streets, and the buildings that lined them, the waterfront, even boats in the harbour; yet, waking, I had never seen the sea, or a boat. ...

And the buildings were quite unlike any I knew. The traffic in the streets was strange, carts running with no horses to pull them; and sometimes there were things in the sky, shiny fish-shaped things that certainly were not birds.

Most often I would see this wonderful place by daylight, but occasionally it was by night when the lights lay like strings of glow-worms along the shore, and a few of them seemed to be sparks drifting on the water, or in the air.

It was a beautiful, fascinating place.

John Wyndham. The Chrysalids.

untitled

She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.

Zadie Smith. The Autograph Man.

(RED) covers

his eyes were naturally heavy, he had an air of having wallowed, fully dressed, all day, on an unmade bed

The Secret Agent. Joseph Conrad.

(RED) covers

I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.

Great Expectations. Charles Dickens.

(RED) covers

What it was least possible to get rid of was the cruel idea that whatever I had seen Miles and Flora saw more - things terrible and unguessable

The Turn of the Screw. Henry James.

(RED) covers

Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well dressed till we drop...

The House of Mirth.Edith Wharton.

(RED) covers

The Arcade of the Pont Neuf is not a place for a stroll.

You take it to make a short cut, to gain a few minutes. It is traversed by busy

people whose sole aim is to go quick and straight before them. You see
apprentices there in their working-aprons, work-girls taking home their
work, persons of both sexes with parcels under their arms. There are
also old men who drag themselves forward in the sad gloaming that falls
from the glazed roof, and bands of small children who come to the arcade
on leaving school, to make a noise by stamping their feet on the tiles
as they run along. Throughout the day a sharp hurried ring of footsteps,
resounds on the stone with irritating irregularity. Nobody speaks,
nobody stays there, all hurry about their business with bent heads,
stepping out rapidly, without taking a single glance at the shops. The
tradesmen observe with an air of alarm, the passers-by who by a miracle
stop before their windows.

Therese Raquin. Emile Zola.

Some may say

that such a girl is not ready for a relationship with a man, especially a man in his late sixties. But to that I say: We don't know anything. We don't know how to cure a cold or what dogs are thinking. We do terrible things, we make wars, we kill people out of greed. So who are we to say how to love. I wouldn't force her. I wouldn't have to. She would want me. We would be in love. What do you know. You don't know anything. Call me when you've cured AIDS, give me a ring then and I'll listen.

Miranda July. No One Belongs Here More Than You.