The Collector (With Apologies to John Fowles)

You know where this poster would look amazing? In my life.

I have the collector's compulsion to both uniformity and completion. This is an unfortunate characteristic currently at odds with the economic climate and my line of credit. It's worst with books. Intellectually, I know that that injunction not to judge a book but its cover has some merit, or else it wouldn't be so annoyingly clichéd. So, whether it comes in a brittle and dog-eared Signet Classic from the used book store, or behind a delightfully revolting and anatomically perfect Charles Burns cover, the provenance of my copy of The Jungle shouldn't matter. But, it does! Knowledge can be bought cheaply, I guess, but pleasure takes more coin. aAd feels better. So, I want to buy the Burns, and hopefully will before it's out of print. But then I'll want the Seth-covered Portable Dorothy Parker, the Ware-designed Candide, and the Spiegelman-drawn New York Trilogy to match. A uniform set! Almost complete.

I managed to buy most of Graham Greene's novels in their old Vintage covers before they were re-designed. But, as much as The Heart of the Matter has given me, it still bothers me that it's Penguin cover looks ugly and ungainly next to the sleek Vintages. And it bothers me still more that I'm missing so many volumes I'll probably now never track down.

So, the only thing left to comfort the wounded collector in me is the Penguin Gothic Reds series. 10 delightful covers, 10 hilariously oversimmered books. The Haunted Hotel comes highly recommended, particularly if you're a big fan of decapitation and Victorian home decor. And they're recent publications, so I have a much better chance of getting them all. Because anything else but the bile and blue cover of The Dunwich Horror would just be a load of tentacles.