My favorite book has what could be seen as lavender/purple sheets of a crisply made bed pulled to with a used teacup, spoon, and saucer sitting in the lower right. The entire picture is a close-up of these items, hence my being unsure as to whether the lavender/purple part is in fact sheets. There are tea grounds in the bottom of the cup, which hints that the book may be about or may concern itself with a place where they steep the stuff in loose-leaf format.
The paperback itself is moderately thick–a good read, it would seem, for a lengthy plane or car ride. Even with the title intact, I’m not certain what possessed me to pick it up in the bookstore that day. It was summer of 2005, and we were in a shop on some touristy street in Oxford, England. I flipped through it, decided it looked “extremely British” and took it right over to the young man behind the counter.
That book changed things for me. My writing style became markedly more relaxed, more genial, and more Lewis-esque. I am by no means close to being as talented, thoughtful, or insightful as this creator of Narnia, but his tone is one of telling a story to someone he is very fond of and it is something I strive to emulate, all because of a similar tone in my book with the teacup on the front.
The title ended up being “Notes from a Small Island” and it is a wonderful travel journal by Bill Bryson, who has published a number of other texts, all fantastic reads and all of which make you feel as though you accompanied him and you are now sitting together recounting the journeys you both took over a cup of cider next to a good fire.
AorthianArcher's 