Tuesday 10 January 2012

The art of books

I've a sneaking suspicion I've posted this video before, but what the hell:



Of course, it's easy to do when you've only got two bookcases. I've got 322 feet of books, with loads piled up because I've run out of room for more. Talking of books, today's haul comprises Alan Garner's Collected Folk Tales and his novel for adults, Thursbitch, and Anthony Cartwright's début The Afterglow which like his Heartland is set in the Black Country. I've also bought Maureen McHugh's Chinese-Marxists-take-over science fiction novel China Mountain Zhang, which features the magnificent cover below, some Robert Browning poetry (the poor man used as graphic rhyming slang in Sarah Waters' Victorian pastiche Tipping the Velvet) and Cavazzoni's fascinating postmodernist novel The Nocturnal Library. The cover features a quote which perfectly describes my friend and colleague Mark's house:
These were corridors where you didn't see a living soul… piles of books on the ground, as though it had been ploughed or was undergoing some upheaval. Table legs, glass, cupboard doors and splinters of wood were mixed up with the paper… like a Pre-Cambrian volcanic eruption… The air was so oppressive and sweaty that you almost felt ill. There was a smell of decomposing wood. Here the books were black; they crumbled like peat if you touched them…

1 comment:

unluckydip said...

You may very well appreciate this link:

http://bookshelfporn.com/