Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

I started reading the front flap of the jacket, thinking that this would clue me in to what the book was about, but it doesn't - instead it is a short manifesto about good book design techniques, as practiced by the fine folks at Alfred A. Knopf in their series of Borzoi Pocket Books, of which this is one. The flap reads in part:

"'PERIL IN THINE EYE'

It hurts to read poorly printed books. Headaches or permanently injured eyesight may result.... A famous modern type designer, quoting the remark that a good page should be transparent, so that you look through the type to the idea behind, adds this illuminating simile: 'Reading a poor type is like trying to look at a landscape through a window with a thick fly-screen on it.'

There are many factors in the making of a transparently readable book: good size type, proper type design, even inking, even impression, good paper surface. Great skill is needed to combine all these requirements successfully. The fine results achieved in the Borzoi Pocket Books are due to the long experience of their publisher, who, for more than a decade, had led the way in the making of beautiful books."

The book itself is "...a happy choice of the world's best stories about cats." It contains tales by Twain, Poe, W.H. Hudson, Algernon Blackwood, et al. I love quirky little anthologies, so I'll take this home to browse in.

"Peril in thine eye" sounded familiar but I had to google to discover that it is a phrase from Act II, Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo says to Juliet:

"Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye
Than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet,
And I am proof against their enmity."

The book dates from 1930, and I love how Knopf blithely assumes that all his educated readers will recognize this quote, and appreciate the fine design of his books to boot. Now that I know it is Romeo speaking, I can stretch the quote to encompass book-love. I fell for the sweet design of this small book, not, perhaps, as killingly as Romeo for Juliet, but surely as quickly.

# posted by Sarah Faragher @ 3:04 PM