Oh, to be smart and pretty

Admitted. I have a thing for nice-looking books. I mean, I love reading books, no doubt about that, but just buying them gives me a weird form of satisfaction. I don't know if it's because I hope that I will become insanely smart after having read the book, or if it's just knowing that it will look good on my bookshelf at home, but no matter what I just LOVE'em!

And these bad boys are a sight for sore eyes! The covers are designed by Penguin Books' senior cover designer, Coralie Bickford-Smith, for Penguin Classics. I only have 12 of the 20 she's designed in the 'Clothbound Series' 1 and 2, but I'm trying to find the rest in bookshops and online.

Bickford-Smith has also designed the covers of two new books in the Clothbound Series (Dicken's 'A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings' and Dante's 'Inferno') and many other series of books. Check out the pretty 'Miscellaneous' series and much more on this link.

Left to right: Charlotte Brontë's 'Jane Eyre', Jane Austen's 'Emma', Charles Dickens' 'Oliver Twist', D.H. Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice', Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Cranford', Emily Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights', Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Ubervilles', Dickens' 'Great Expectations', Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Treasure Island', Austen's 'Sense and Sensibility', and Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'.