Yesterday marked both my wedding anniversary and the end of my spring semester, so I celebrated by spending a spare hour browsing my beloved used bookshop. I had dropped by last week to drop off a box of trade books—mostly old instructor editions of textbooks no longer in use—but I didn’t pick anything up. I did, however, snap a few photographs of the covers of the old 1980s Latin American authors series that Avon Bard put out. I love these covers, and have bought a few over the years.
I ended up picking up two yesterday: Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s In Evil Hour and Machado de Assis’s Dom Casmurro. The cover for Dom Casmurro is pretty bad, actually, but I want to read it.
Near the Machado de Assis, I found a used copy of Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin, which I couldn’t resist. I also found a Grove edition of Kathy Acker’s Don Quixote, which I haven’t read since college.
I also got a book in the mail. I loved Ann Quin’s novel Berg so much that I had to get more Quin, so I ordered The Unmapped Country from publisher And Other Stories. Very excited for this one.
Biblioklept 
Do you know the title of the painting used for Mulato? Or the artist? Did the same artist do all of the covers for the Avon Bard titles? I spent a few hours trying to figure that out once but got nowhere, even went so far as to send a message to the company who bought out Avon Bard on Facebook.
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I’ve been wanting a copy of “Berlin Alexanderplatz” since I saw NYRB putting it out. Gonna have to grab a copy sooner rather than later personally.
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I honestly love these posts.
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