"Books, books, books!"

What attracts you to a book, the cover or its contents? Or both!

May 25, 2022

I have a few books that I bought for their covers. I may never read them all, but I enjoy seeing them on the shelf and holding them. I’ve read Taos: A Memory several times because the cover is like a woodcut in desert colors, and I enjoy the author’s personal impressions of her life with the early artists of Taos, New Mexico.

“Poor [Georgia] O’Keeffe loves it here but Stieglitz keeps writing and telegraphing her to come back to him!”

I bought Mr. and Mrs. Baby and Other Stories at a book sale for the curious jacket illustration. I’ve opened it several times, but can’t get beyond the first story, which was strangely interesting. I keep putting the book down before getting to the title story.

(Sorry, I have no quote from this book because it’s already in the library book sale room.)

Sometimes a nostalgic typeface or the texture of older, rough-cut pages is enough for me to pretend that what I’m reading is perfect prose. In this case, it doesn’t matter if the jacket is missing.

I’m thinking of my copy of If Memory Serves, a memoir by the French comedy actor Sacha Guitry, published in 1935.

"I learned in America that the American has a sweet tooth. He likes sweet things and soft colors.”

I’m amused by Guitry’s descriptions.

The windows of [New York City] florists are a mass of green plants with here and there a few little clumps of flowers in vases which scarcely look like vases. …
New York florists are men — not women, as with us — and they sell their wares seriously, as if they were selling cameras or motorcycle parts. [With] cigars in their mouths, [they show you] wickerware decorated with little birds on a periwinkle-blue background.

But then, glancing through the book, I see on page 255 that Guitry writes, “I expressed my admiration for Mussolini …”, and all his theatrical charm evaporates.

Possibly when Guitry wrote this, the Italian Fascist leader had not yet invaded Abyssinia. Still, I don’t give Guitry the benefit of the doubt. He was not as clever a reader of character as I thought. He has lost my trust. Into the donation box!

So over the years I’ve bought books for their covers, and sometimes I keep them for their contents. One author whose book covers always successfully partner with the spirit of her writing is Colette.

These jacket designs welcome me into a familiar place where nature, women’s concerns, and the cool eyes of self-confidence born of willful experience, all come together in ways that bear re-reading as I, myself, age.