I can’t say I marveled at its beauty as I did with The Wild Girl. In fact, if I hadn’t been obliged to buy the book, I’d probably have run 100 miles from it. The cover (which seems to be from a reissue in 1965) manages to be dull and slightly terrifying at the same time, which is quite an achievement. The fact that my copy is second-hand, yellowing and enormous at 527 pages only adds to its unappealing exterior. Equally, the title in huge letters, with its extremely different connotations now in 2013 than when the novel was first published in 1940, isn’t helping matters either. I don’t think it’s one I’ll be reading on public transport…

As I haven’t started the novel yet, I have no idea how much relevance the image of the man has to the plot, but what I do know is that, surely, the publishers could have come up with a better cover. As we all know, book covers are supposed to draw you in and the truly great ones actually add something to the story, and allow even the author to see their work in a new light. This cover however would likely put a potential reader off, which is a great shame considering the book, at the time, was named by TIME as one of the greatest of the 20th century. It is important for publishers to update their works in order to ensure they remain relevant and appealing to a new generation (although the controversial update of The Bell Jar earlier this year might be an example of how not to do it!). After some scouring of the internet I did find a couple of updated covers for Christine Stead’s novel but I’ll leave you to judge if they are improvements…

Sarah Fortune, currently doing work experience at A&B

Penguin stopped doing illustrations on the jacket and gave them all a bright green cover with white text which was easily recognisable and became no less a fixture in bookshops. It’s a shame that classic literature will no longer be available so cheaply – the other Penguin Classics list is priced at £7.99 – as it may have encouraged people to give them a go.

When I moved to London I found that old battered copy of Dorian Gray while I was packing. My annotations are scrawled and squeezed in the margins, important quotations highlighted in pink and numerous page corners are folded down. It is well and truly tatty, but it has pride of place on my bookcase and always will. Popular classics, you will be missed.

Sophie Robinson, Publishing Assistant

Jaz Parkinson is a graphic designer who has begun a series of visual representations of novels through the colours that crop up in the narrative. She calls them colour signatures which has a lovely ring to it. They come out looking like this:

This, for Sherlock fans out there, is a representation of A Study in Scarlet. Interesting I thought, as I would have hazarded a guess that a Conan Doyle would be a bit more brooding in colour tone. There are examples for a number of classics, from Alice in Wonderland (which moves from a gorgeous, sweet-shop selection of colour to a block of rather dull white – where on earth is Alice from that point on?) to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (which, of course, favours emerald green).

She’s taking requests on her blog and is now even selling them on Etsy. What colourful reading would you recommend?

Lesley Crooks, Sales & Digital Manager

Like most of us, I can’t say I’ve sat down and read poetry too often in my life, aside from at school and university. Unlike reading novels or even seeing a play, there’s something about reading poetry that, thanks to our changing literary tastes, seems ridiculously pretentious. However last night, a newly-published poem by the Australian broadcaster and poet Clive James appeared in my Twitter timeline thanks to, of all people, a music journalist at the Guardian. The poem, ‘Leçons de Ténèbres’, can be seen below, thanks to @CormacKinsella.

‘Leçons de Ténèbres’ really moved me as I read the honest yet all-too-tragic reflections of a man as he approaches the end of his life, and the fact it’s surely autobiographical (Clive James was diagnosed with leukaemia, kidney failure and emphysema in 2010 and admits that he is now “near the end”) lends it an added sense of sadness. It reminded me of one of the few poetry anthologies I’ve read cover-to-cover for pleasure rather than a lecture, which is Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters. Published in 1998 to much acclaim, the collection is well-known for being Hughes’ final work before his death, evoking themes extremely similar to those in ‘Leçons de Ténèbres’; a man looking back on his life and apparently searching for redemption in his final days. Of course the sixth-form me who first picked Birthday Letters up was more than a bit intrigued about the ‘tabloid’ aspect of the collection, in which Hughes finally breaks his silence about his infamous marriage to Sylvia Plath, but its poems have definitely stayed with me.

Thanks to one of my friends, I also recently discovered Hollie McNish, a Londoner in her twenties whose spoken word poems on everything from racism to the sexualisation of Disney princesses are often hilarious and hard-hitting at the same time, and I’d definitely urge you to check them out on YouTube. You can start with ‘Mathematics’ and ‘Merida from Brave’…

We can all remember the works of great poets studied at school, and perhaps still quote a few lines, but poetry is such an overlooked form these days that it was nice to be reminded, in two very different ways, of its power for a bit.

Sarah Fortune, currently doing work experience at A&B

Having recently finished Gone Girl, I looked up the rest of Flynn’s titles and found Dark Places and Sharp Objects (her debut which won daggers!). I was working my way backwards through her books and each one seemed to get better. I finished with Sharp Objects which is brilliantly creepy and gave me the chills on a very hot beach.

After giving myself the heebie jeebies for three days I moved onto The Whole World by Emily Winslow and suddenly found myself hooked. Winslow’s Cambridge is beautiful yet slightly eerie; people are trying to hide secrets of the past which come trembling into the light. The book is told from the perspective of five characters so the story slowly unravels from each different account. It makes you question, terrifyingly, how well you can really know someone and what they do.

So in the end my holiday reading consisted of crime, crime, and more dark and creepy crime. I’m pretty sure I didn’t start reading crime until I started work at A&B…

Sophie Robinson, Publishing Assistant

It appears that it won’t be long until we publishers get in on some of this extra dimension action. Alma Books, Independent Publisher of the Year, are leading the way with a new cover printing effect that will make the designs of the Evergreen Classics list ‘pop’ through a clever layering of UV varnish from our printing friends at CPI. I look forward to seeing some of these great designs with the effect.

Can you suggest books that deserve the 3D treatment? I’d suggest a looming, cavernous whale mouth for Moby Dick.

Lesley Crooks, Sales & Digital Manager

I must clarify that this is not a stylised magazine photo – just a snapshot taken by a friend of mine in her garden after discovering a blackbird nesting in their garden’s bougainvillea tree.  Nature’s equivalent of a woman buying beautiful fabrics and cushions to decorate her home or nursery, arranging them just so, to make it as cosy as possible…

I am completely mesmerised by this photograph. And to allow me a tenuous excuse to post it on our blog today, I’ll leave you with a pertinent literary quote from the book Leaf and Tendril, by John Burroughs.

‘To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter… to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.’ 

Chiara Priorelli, Publicity & Online Marketing Manager

To celebrate the publication of Letters to Klaus, a unique London art gallery, Illustrationcupboard, is holding their own exhibition of quirky illustrated envelopes, from 11th to 26th June. So if you’re looking for something a bit different to do in the next couple of weeks, I think I may have found it . . . after all, who can say that they’ve attended an envelope exhibition?

Sara Magness, Editorial Administrator

It has got me thinking about that last page in a novel: how an author must feel reaching the end of their 100,000 word manuscript; how long they may have spent thinking about those last words on the page; how those final words often have the power to make or break your final judgement of a book.  Will they leave you entranced by the novel (wonderful till the very last line!), shocked and delighted (what a brilliant twist!) or ultimately disappointed (what, that’s it?)

A lot of importance is placed on the first lines of a book, designed (more often than not) to capture the reader’s attention from the get-go. How many of you read the first lines of a book in a bookshop before deciding whether or not to buy it?

Starting a story strikes me as the easier side of writing.  Isn’t that the classic exercise given to kids in school when introducing them to creative writing -  give them an interesting starting sentence and tell them to finish the story? Teachers get the easy part, the students are stuck with the more challenging task.  Even wonderfully successful writers can have a hard time with endings – take Stephen King, for example, who famously writes good and bad ones. I do remember my husband reading one of his books which shockingly finished with something akin to ‘and then he woke up and it was all a dream.’

So, take a moment to think about the importance of those last words in a book. Are there any novels with great or terrible endings that stand out for you?

Chiara Priorelli, Publicity & Online Marketing Manager