Pocket Penguins

This is the 70^th anniversary of Penguin books and to celebrate they have released 70 Pocket Penguin editions of short paperbacks (about 100 pages) on various subjects-fiction and non-fiction. Here's the history of the groundbreaking concept:

In 1935, if you wanted to read a good book, you needed either a lot of money or a library card. Cheap paperbacks were available, but their poor production generally tended to mirror the quality between the covers.

Penguin paperbacks were the brainchild of Allen Lane, then a director of The Bodley Head. After a weekend visiting Agatha Christie in Devon, he found himself on a platform at Exeter station searching its bookstall for something to read on his journey back to London, but discovered only popular magazines and reprints of Victorian novels.

Appalled by the selection on offer, Lane decided that good quality contemporary fiction should be made available at an attractive price and sold not just in traditional bookshops, but also in railway stations, tobacconists and chain stores.

He also wanted a 'dignified but flippant' symbol for his new business. His secretary suggested a Penguin and another employee was sent to London Zoo to make some sketches. Seventy years later Penguin is still one of the most recognizable brands in the world.

I picked up two of Pocket Penguin editions to read over the break. The first was #3 Otherwise Pandemonium by Nick Hornby, which included the titled story which had originally been published in McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales and the original composition “Not A Star”-written for this volume. Both stories involve videotape in their plots and are entertaining. The other selection I read was #65 Short Short Stories by Dave Eggers, which were originally published in the British publication, The Guardian. Most of these frivolous one to two page compositions were occasionally entertaining. But I think they are too short for Eggers to develop characters effectively, which I think is one of his fortes. Many of them included some political screeds against the current administration, which I imagine went down quite well in knee-jerk liberal England, but seem misplaced in fiction.