Comments on: Bits and Bobs

By: gav

gav — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 19:16:31 +0000

Not retentive at all. We do judge a book by its cover after all. That’s what stops us mistakenly picking up a bodice ripper when we actually wanted a good horror novel.

By: John Self

John Self — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 09:55:08 +0000

Ugh yes, Black Swan (who publish Kate Atkinson) use that squarish typeface - Mallard, I think it’s called - on most of their books and it is absolutely f***ing hideous. It actually puts me off buying the books. Is this unnecessary anal retentiveness? I prefer to think that a good book should be aesthetically pleasing as well as intellectually pleasing.

By: gav

gav — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 21:21:33 +0000

They’ve done that with The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie rather annoyingly - it should be a whole package - Wordworth seem to manage it and they are only a couple of quid.

Well I can happily report that the Vintage Fantasy set from Vintage Classics comes with clean crisp text. So I’d assume they’ve all had the same treatment - though assuming does occasionally make an ass out of u and me
I do think that when they don’t do it’s a shoddy saving. The typesetting should be invisible. Case Histories has the most annoying font that I’ve read for a quite a while and not only that they’ve used the same on for the sequel.

Thanks John, I’m glad it’s not just me.

By: John Self

John Self — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 20:21:34 +0000

“I choose classics more on the quality of the type usually making sure it’s been redone in a clean print rather than the ones that look like they’ve bled into the page.”

Oh I do agree! Nothing worse than a shiny new rejacketing of a old book, only to open it and find splotchy old typesetting that they inherited from the first edition in the 1930s. How expensive can it be to reset a book these days? It’s not as though several navvies are required to shift the hot metal about.