CARRIE is, famously, Stephen King’s first novel. I say famously, because it’s actually his fourth written novel, a story that people love to tell when discussing the roads to publication of various big name authors. (“Did you know King wrote three books before he was accepted?’ goes the…
Quite possibly the best music for a Friday afternoon in an empty office
We covet
The Testimony has a cover.
This is the result of months of work, back and forth between the designer and the editors at Blue Door and the Sales & Marketing people of Harper Collins and myself and my agent. It’s a cover that has to be a lot of things to a lot of different people, and we’re…
I want to know what makes you keep a book.
What makes you choose it, buy it, read it, shelve it, lend it to girlfriends, demand that they give it back? Save it when you leave home, clear out, move flat, move city, travelling around Asia?
I don’t just mean the novel. I mean the actual, physical book. E-books are a brilliant invention; they can be read, stored, forgotten and then deleted with the absolute minimum effort required. And isn’t it great how you can be stuck into three or four novels at the same time (as I normally am) and carry them all in your bag. But frankly, who among us has ever had a particular emotional attachment to a digi-file on their kindle?
My favourite book is a hardback copy of Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood.’ I’m not sure what edition it is, but I do know that it is very old. My Mum bought it from a garage sale somewhere on the road between San Francisco and Seattle when she was in her mid twenties. It sat by her bed for 18 years before it moved into my room. The jacket is predominantly a sandy, yellow colour, almost identical to the thick and aged pages inside. When it is opened, the tears around its edges and corners of the spine show little triangles of the dark red canvas underneath, like cuts in a blood orange. The text is printed in an old American typewriter font and the ink is black, really black, thick, and splodgey in places, with uneven, askew lettering. I think that this is what I love most about it. It feels somehow handmade, as though Capote had typed it himself, and then smudged it in the Tennessee heat.
‘In Cold Blood,’ is a brilliant novel – a classic, and I find myself wrapping at least two copies for friends every Christmas. I have never given any as special as mine though, mine has character. Mine has a story in itself.
Now tell me about yours…
from Sonny the intern
—The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (via brooklyntheatrefire)
(Source: ludlowandstanton, via missferguson)
Our final image in the Ronald Searle gallery (from Les Tres Riches Heures de Mrs Mole)
