Neat Books!

Awhile ago I wrote about the Penguin Classics deluxe edition of Kafka's Metamorphosis. Well I've just finisihed the Penguin Classics version of Candide, and I'll say that it trumps Metamorphosis in book illustration and design. (I won't compare the translations or the stories themselves, because really, I just don't want to.) This picture doesn't show the nice detail of gold leaf in the center of the cover, and even though you can see the cartoon strip of the story's plot, you can't see nice little cast of characters on the inside flap. My favorite part of the cover though, is the very back, which reads "The Satirical Scourge of 1759 - Now in Paperback!" around a stick figure of jolly old Candide. Rachel picked up One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which, with its foreword by Chuck Palahniuk and illustrations by Joe Sacco, paired with Ken Kesey's novel, is a neat sort of trifecta of Oregonians. I support that. That puts the count of these Penguin editions up to three in the Rachel-Patrick household, and that number may be on the rise soon.