Cover art for Ficciones (Fictions), Jorge Luis Borges, c. 1940s-50s

To a cat

Mirrors are not more wrapt in silences nor the arriving dawn more secretive; you, in the moonlight, are that panther figure which we can only spy at from a distance. By the mysterious functioning of some divine decree, we seek you out in vain; remoter than the Ganges or the sunset, yours is the solitude, yours is the secret. Your back allows the tentative caress my hand extends. And you have condescended since that forever, now oblivion, to take love from a flattering human hand. You live in other time, lord of your realm — a world as closed and separate as dream.

Jorge Luis Borges, trans Alastair Reid, 1977

A Un Gato

No son más silenciosos los espejos ni más furtiva el alba aventurera; eres, bajo la luna, esa pantera que nos es dado divisar de lejos. Por obra indescifrable de un decreto divino, te buscamos vanamente; más remoto que el Ganges y el poniente, tuya es la soledad, tuyo el secreto. Tu lomo condesciende a la morosa caricia de mi mano. Has admitido, desde esa eternidad que ya es olvido, el amor de la mano recelosa. En otro tiempo estás. Eres el dueño de un ámbito cerrado como un sueño.

Jorge Luis Borges

Latest post at ml.books

James Agee: A Death in the Family (1957)

Carolyn Thompson, After Pessoa: I was not the only corpse [from 'Post Moderns'], (book leaf, cotton), [based on the 50 texts found in the 'Penguin Modern Box Set' (2018); consisting of 50 separate artworks, each one responding to one book from the collection, the project includes texts pieces, drawings, embroideries, prints and altered books], 2019 [Eagle Gallery, London. © Carolyn Thompson]

We say of space, of time, and of suffering that they are infinite; but infinite has no more bearing than beautiful, sublime, harmonious, ugly ... Suppose we force ourselves to see to the bottom of words? We see nothing - each of them, detached from the expansive and fertile soul, being null and void. The power of the intelligence functions by projecting a certain luster upon them, by polishing them and making them glitter; this power, erected into a system, is called culture - pyrotechnics against a night sky of nothingness.)

- E. M. Cioran, A Short History of Decay, pp.23

my beloveds, does anyone know where the sculpture (?) on the cover of the Penguin edition of L.P Hartley's Facial Justice is from or who it depicts?:

I'm desperate pls help!

The Nigger of the “Narcissus” (1897)

Joseph Conrad

Penguin Modern Classics

A Social Contract - John Court; Penguin Modern Classics.

Mock up cover of an imagined reprint of the 1973 novel by John Court (writing as Nick Stone). In the tradition of other books in that series such as On the Road etc

The 1973 book would have been a pulp novel, much like Richard Allen’s infamous ‘Skinhead’ series from New English Library.

The design is modelled strongly from the Penguin Modern Classics design, using ITC Avant Garde Gothic with a thin border to approximate the original font.

The cover image is adapted from a fashion shoot with the late Andy Whitfield who starred in Spartacus: Blood and Sand until his tragic death in 2011 from non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Brave New World Penguin Modern Classics 1964

from ml.books

The Loved One – Evelyn Waugh 

15.1.2023

As I’ve recently worked on a project about the funerary industry, this called out as some on-topic light reading. It’s kind of embarrassing to read about this era of British high society, and the comedy was all a bit tame by today’s standards. 

Malcolm Lowry: Under the Volcano (1947)

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: English covers

source

Chastity had then, it has even now, a religious importance in a woman's life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest. To have lived a free life in London in the sixteenth century would have meant for a woman who was poet and playwright a nervous stress and dilemma which might well have killed her. Had she survived, whatever she had written would have been twisted and deformed, issuing from a strained and morbid imagination. And undoubtedly, I thought, looking at the shelf where there were no plays by women, her work would have gone unsigned. That refuge she would have sought certainly. It was the relic of the sense of chastity that dictated anonymity to women even so late in the nineteenth century.

- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, pp. 51

On My Book Table... 12 - moving into May with some potential chunksters!

On My Book Table… 12 – moving into May with some potential chunksters!

For my end of the month post, I thought I’d revive an idea I’ve used in the past, where I share some potential reads perching on my dedicated book table. Goodness knows there are plenty of them, and they’ve spread a little… 😆 More of that later, however; firstly, here’s a picture of the books I read during April: Not picture – the Maigret, which was an e-book, and Margaret Atwood’s short story My…

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