Penguin paperbacks don't come in all shapes and sizes. But they do come in all sorts of colours. The nice man in the short film below will tell you all about them. Suffice it to say that orange denotes fiction, red - drama, green - crime fiction, dark blue - autobiography, purple - essays, cerise - travel and adventure and grey - world affairs. And don't forget the Pelican and Puffin imprints. Penguin devotees looking to find websites dedicated to Penguins in all their guises won't be disappointed. Hardly surprising really - go and take a look at your own book shelf and see how many you've got.
One colour I haven't mentioned and that's yellow. Yellow was used as a safety net by Penguin for anything that didn't fit any of the regular perameters. Life's Too Short by Jenny Medd, for example. An oft repeated mantra here at at Medd Towers, along with 'there are no pockets in shrouds' and 'you're a long time dead', 'life's too short' is a stock response when defending your corner.
Anyway, here's that nice man I was telling you about.
Loved the film John!...won't feel the same about the Penguins in the local second hand bookshop ever again....thankyou!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you liked it Gerry!
DeleteJohn,
ReplyDeleteI truly have a soft spot for those early Penguin covers. I just finished reading a very well-thumbed copy of Geoffrey Household's 'Rogue Male' (Orange, of course, for this Crime/Suspense gem.)
This is lovely! I'll be looking out for "merry" penguins too now.
ReplyDeleteA whole series of Jenny's wisely worded books would be great...
I'm looking at offering a 'Penguin Package': the colour, name and title of your choice in acrylic on a 12" x 9" canvas. What do you think? Could it fly?
DeleteWell, isn't that odd - I suppose it should be green, but it's included in the generic 'Fiction' category.
ReplyDeleteYou may have a misprint limited edition Marie!
DeleteI love the "dancing" as I have always called them, Penguins and have a lot of the orange and green ones ( I can't pass the Oxfam bookshop without having a quick scan) the question is then how to arrange bookshelves, by colour, genre.... Or by date of the author's birth, yes I once lived with someone who was that sad!
ReplyDeleteI forgot to say " shrouds don't have pockets" is one of the favourite sayings in our house too!
ReplyDeleteI tell you what Suzie, bring one to Roscommon in July and we'll compare Penguins!
ReplyDelete