Sunday, 21 April 2013

Peacocks in Russia

One of the most beautiful books I have bought this year is the new, massive collection of novels, novellas and stories by the great Nikolai Leskov, published by Vintage UK. The cover design is by Suzanne Dean, making glorious use of an illustration by Finnish artist Klaus Haapaniemi. Here are the front and back...


Click for bigger--you really need to

..and here is the full book, shown with the reason for the lack of recent blogging, for scale.



Here is the US edition, which is very elegant, but it can't help but look diminished in comparison.


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7 comments:

  1. jb21 April 2013 at 18:07

    Cute picture! I hope you're enjoying the reason for your break from blogging...

    This book's been on my to-get list since I heard it was coming out. I'm a bit torn, though, because the UK cover is better, but the US one - if the past is any guide - will be a better-quality book, paper-&-binding-wise. Maybe I should buy both, then cover the US one with the British cover...?

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  2. JRSM22 April 2013 at 01:49

    Thank you, I have been!

    For what it's worth, this is an unusually high-quality UK hardback: signatures stitched to a ribbon binding rather than glued in for the headband/inner spine lining, for example.

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  3. Laura Ottina22 April 2013 at 05:28

    Lovely cover, and congratulations to the father of the lovely baby

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  4. JRSM23 April 2013 at 04:48

    Thank you, Laura!

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  5. jb23 April 2013 at 16:53

    Hmmm, might have to consider the UK edition more then. But it's so expensive...

    Also, only just noticed the tag on this post. I hope we get a bunch more in that category.

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  6. Steerforth26 April 2013 at 03:21

    Belated congratulations!

    The first two years of parenthood is a strange mixture of delight, fear, contentment, boredom and excitement. Sadly, thanks to sleep deprivation, I remember very little about it - I look at videos and feel as if I'm looking at another life.

    My favourite part was the first smile. My least favourite was the beginning of crawling, as the need for constant vigilance made it very hard to read the Sunday papers!

    I'm not surprised that the blogging has suffered, but I hope you're able to keep going.

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  7. JRSM27 April 2013 at 18:10

    Cheers, Steerforth: I must admit I'm hooked on those smiles. They're like blessings. But my reading has suffered. It's taking multiple days to read a single book now. I feel like Superman hit with kryptonite--this must be what regular people feel like!

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