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Like you, KCC, I go for the Routledge rebrands. Where previously the titles appeared quite academic - well, yes, that's the point - they now appear a little more accessible while retaining a modicum of class. There's no wizards on horses or Warholised pictures of Derrida - just a quiet feeling of weight, I guess. The fact that the print quality's been improved (mmm, heavier weight, stronger covers!) helps a lot too.
While I guess it is a little dodgy, I do place a lot of weight on how a book looks. Reading magick texts has, for me, been hampered by the fact that the covers are almost universally loathsome; becloaked sword-and-sorcery bongsmoking representations of the act. Uh - no? And given that I'm quite selfconscious, I feel that my books do reflect ME, to a certain degree. And, well, when I'm on the train or the bus or whatever, I don't want to be associated with the monster sitting atop a pile of severed heads, or whatever graces Lovecraft books these days, you know?
As for Penguin's plan - well, if they pursue some of the directions of their highly-covetable, smaller-sized reprints (I'm thinking particularly of the reprinted A Confederacy Of Dunces, as opposed to the dodgy version that's in the Modern Classics range)then it's good. But the ones on display are bad; it ruins the flow of hte art on the front. The way they are now (ie: framed with a piece of yellow around the edge, black copy box at the bottom) are good for me; perhaps I'd go with a matte cover of stronger stock, or slightly higher-grade paper (I always find longer penguin books get incredibly dog-eared very fast) but otherwise - what's the point? Unless they apply a whole new brief to each book (given their range, something they won't do), it's merely chopping about what's already there. Which isn't, in my view, necessary.
And yes, they do look more like WC or Everyman versions in this format. Bad. |
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