News — Cover Club

Schumann by André Boucourechliev, 1959.

Love the cover of this 1958 version of Albert Camus' The Stranger. I snagged it from my mom's bookshelf as she was packing up to move. Turns out it was her favorite book when she was younger. Who knew? The funny things you learn about your parents. Anyhow, she admitted she probably would never read it again so I was able to bring it home with me. I've since seen at at Powell's, but there's something nice about having her copy.

Cover Club is supposed to be about the cover, but with The Happy Little Handsaw we had to include inside images to get the full breadth of this kid's book. Put out in 1955 by West Coast Lumberman's Association, it's pretty much what you imagine it is: a story of a happy handsaw used to convince kids that logging is a-ok. There is a great image in the book of the handsaw being not-so-happy and crying while sitting on a lumberjack's lap, but I didn't include it so as not to upset the kids. It's the happy little handsaw after all!

Recently I was given the new edition of the amazing book "A" by Louis Zukofsky for my birthday. Written over the majority of his life (from 1927-1978), it begins with the letter A and ends with the word Zion and is divided into 24 sections to reflect the hours in the day. Widely considered a masterpiece, it was published in sections throughout his life and was at the printers being printed for the first time as a complete book when he died.

I first saw it in person when I borrowed a copy from the Portland Library and it turned out they are still lending the first cloth edition from 1978. I liked the cover so much that I took a bunch of photos not knowing I would one day do a blog post about book covers (who knows what the future holds!).

new paperback edition published 2011 by New Directions

cloth edition published 1978 by University of California Press

It's the St. Patrick's Day edition of Cover Club, or in this case C(l)over Club. We scanned our shelves to find a book we liked that had a green cover and this 1944 Peter Pauper Press edition of Walden or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau fit the bill perfectly. This book kind of has two covers since it has a slip case and includes two-tone green illustrations throughout by Aldren Watson. It even has a green tint printed on the top edge of the book!