Wednesday, September 1, 2021

Six Delectable Paperback Designs

 Paperback fans and skeptics alike should enjoy pix of these six delectable paperbacks.  I will convert ye paperback naysayers.

Monica Dickens's charming novel, The Winds of Heaven, is the story of an impecunious widow who is shuttled from one daughter's house to another and to a friend's hotel in winter - until she cannot stand it and rebels. My copy is an old Penguin; it is also published by Persephone. Anna Kazan's surreal Julia and the Bazooka, her best book of short stories, is published by Norton.  I love the cover!  Published posthumously, these stories were edited by her friend Rhys Davies, who seems to have been her perfect editor.
    

The English-born Australian writer Elizabeth Jolley's comic Miss Peabody's Inheritance is published by Persea Books.  The brilliant Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's The Nature of Passion, the story of an intergenerational clash in a prosperous Indian family, is published as A Fireside book, by Simon and Schuster.  (I blogged about it here.) The cover illustration is by the author's husband, Cryil Jhabvala.
    
Stanley Middleton's Booker Prize-winning Holiday is published by Windmill Books.  Margaret Drabble's charming comedy, A Summer Bird-Cage, was published in paperback by Popular Library, with a cover photo of Margaret Drabble by Jill Krementz.  This was Drabble's debut novel.

These are photos of my books, instead of the images I post from the internet.  As you can see, my paperbacks are in excellent shape - all except the Margaret Drabble, a mass market paperback that has not held up well. 

 Do you have any favorite paperback book covers?  

Here is a paperback cover I covet:
 


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6 comments:

  1. Peter SaucerSeptember 1, 2021 at 10:32 PM

    Do you remember how I had mentioned Blackwell’s, in Oxford, England? Their website offers free shipping to the US of these Penguin UK editions, and at good prices. I have seen this exact title, with that same image but without the blurb on the front:

    https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/search/?keyword=London+belongs+to+me

    I covet just about all the UK Penguin editions…. Beautifully put together, and feel soft to the hand bit with the perfect weight and feel of a paperback book. They come in the mail and the first thing I do is fan the pages and stick my nose in to smell them!

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    1. Peter SaucerSeptember 1, 2021 at 10:38 PM

      P.S. Just saw they have one copy left. But if you enter your email where it says to, they will notify you when they have more copies available if you were to miss that last copy. Whenever I do, they email me within a few days.

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    2. Kat at Thornfield Hall ReduxSeptember 2, 2021 at 10:10 AM

      It does sound like a fun place to shop. This is why I'm an Anglophile: Penguin paperbacks! Well, English novels generally.

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  2. mudpuddleSeptember 1, 2021 at 10:43 PM

    i still recall covers of early Stanislaw Lem books, with art by Daniel Mroz... perhaps it's not the sort of work that appeals to everyone, but i thought they were/are terrific. 50 watts is a blog that features original book covers from all over the globe; it's a fascinating place to visit, if you're so inclined...

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    1. Peter SaucerSeptember 1, 2021 at 11:20 PM

      I’m currently reading Lem’s The Star Diaries! Penguin UK started reissuing them a few years ago. It’s wonderful. Brilliant. Funny. Thanks to Penguin I’ve also “discovered” Russell Hoban.

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  3. Kat at Thornfield Hall ReduxSeptember 2, 2021 at 10:18 AM

    Ooh, I do like the look of those Stanislaw Lem books. Mudpuddle, thnks for the info about 50 watts, a blog I've never heard of. And thank you, Will, for the knowledge that there are yet MORE UK Penguins for the TBR. To Blackwoods I would go - but I thlnk Americans are banned again.

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