Monday, November 13, 2006

Judging books by their covers

The Penguin Classics Deluxe imprint looks and feels great. Take its printing of Candide, for instance (shown at left). Chris Ware's fantastic cover complements Voltaire's understated, bleak humour well. You can't see it on the web graphic, but there's mock gold filigree on the cover too, around the "Candide". Very nicely done! The book is a pleasure to touch and look at. (That the contents are worth reading is a given.)

I suspect that the Deluxe imprint is mainly for the US market. Can't find anything about it on the Penguin UK website. The closest to an online catalogue I could find was the US Penguin Classics website. The cover for Siddhartha is wrong though, and the list hasn't been updated with Gravity's Rainbow and Rashomon yet.

Kenny over at BooksActually is thinking of bringing in more of these beautiful paperbacks. Another excuse to go over and browse.

1 comment:

Hyperchondriac said...

after i saw that beautiful cover, i could not help myself and hauled my ass over to the bookstore and got myself the one (and only!) copy they had! Its now sitting there looking so pretty.
jas