Call me shallow...

but this is pretty.

I love Christmas, because this is when I give people and occasionally receive CHRISTMAS BOOKS. It's the one time of year when I put aesthetics above value for money and buy books with HARD COVERS. Sometimes people give me hardcovers too.

My best present this year, because it was a surprise (apart from the Daniel Jackson action figure complete with removable glasses, magnifying glasses, scroll, walkie talkie, bush hat and strange Gouald* weapon which was even more of a surprise) was Susanna Clarke's new book The Ladies of Grace Adieu, a collection of short stories about people's encounters with the world of Faerie. The special edition came in a box and had a pale pink cover embossed with the same floral decoration picked out in pink on the first picture. I was worried about dirtying it so I had to read it incredibly quickly. At least that was my excuse for gulping it down in two sittings on Christmas and Boxing Day.


Clarke's books are delightful because she plays games with assumptions about historical fiction and class and with people's expectations of fairies being all innocent and fey and delightful. Her fairies are quite different, not bad exactly, just different...

She (or her publisher) also pays particular attention to the appearance of her books. This one has delightful line drawings of most of the stories. As I was reading, I regressed to primary school age and just sat and looked at these pictures until I'd absorbed every detail. And now I'm wondering if it would be too selfish not to lend this book to anyone because it's just too pretty to damage. Usually I just don't care what happens to my books because they weren't that nice to start with. They get read until the covers come off. This sounds like a short step to having a locked bookshelf full of first editions I wouldn't dream of reading...

In Australia her first book, Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell, was printed in paperback with either a black or a cream cover. I bought the black one because I thought it would show the dirt less. It's been read by four people and is still holding up quite well. (This UK multiple volume set has a volume in each of the colours I mean.)


Later on, when I wanted to give a copy to my sister, I could only find copies with the incredibly disappointing colour cover (in this picture).



Now, I don't usually care about the way books look but I couldn't bring myself to buy this for her because the monochrome cover with the raven image was so important to how I enjoyed reading the book. Around then, my Beloved went to England for a meeting and I made him go to bookshop after bookshop until he found a copy with a better cover. I think he found the red one which (of course) is now in all the shops here.

The point of all this is to say that sometimes publishers games work and I can be distracted by pretty things. And I'm not sure that's a good thing.


* I'm enough of a nerd to admit to watching Stargate but not to bother learning how to spell the alien words