Wondering about the book in the masthead photo?
A number of people have told me they’re stumped by the title of one of the books in my masthead photo. They can see that the red one on the bottom is The Last Lion, the Churchill biography by William Manchester. But the one on top with the black cover is more difficult to identify.
Take a look at one of the outtakes:
There, does that help?
If that’s still too hard, here’s an easier one:
Robert Frost, I think. You’re making fun of us who have really old and fuzzy monitors. I could recognize the photo more than I could read the title.
As I thought, though I wouldn’t have bet my IRA on it.
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Churchill, Frost, and The Dance. Noble touchstones, Neo.
nice table.
love the corner detail.
Hmmm, fooled me. I thought it was a cookbook for apple pie.
I’m a woodworker hobbyist and I noticed the table top trim first! I absolutely love the corner treatments. But, I must admit, the things on the table are “… a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma … ” prompting a frostie choice – – – the books or the tempting apple!
You chose the right take.
Once I knew the poet, the photo was recognizable, but the font for the title is still to precious for me to read, at least, at an angle. You will say, predictable.
I have to go along with Ozy. Whoever chose that font should be shot, or at least keel hauled. My wife is a calligrapher and owns a book by a man who claims that such people would steal sheep…
Neo,
What I would like to know, what is that cylindrical white tube thing in the corner? I have often admired the other well thought out objects, but pondered the other corner item. A white lamp thing from IKEA? A ventilation duct run after the fact in the corner? Some other object d’art of an industrial nature?
Tatyana & CDR Maxwell- you took those words right out of my mouth; the table’s corner detail is the first thing that I was looking at too.
That’s the LOA of Frost. That is, from the Library of America. I know because they have a uniform style for their dust jackets, and I have a few volumes (Lincoln, 19th century poetry, 17th & 18th century poetry) not counting the slip-cased volumes I got when I was a subscriber.
http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=11
A peeve: That position on a web page is a banner. The parallel for a print periodical is called the nameplate. The masthead is the vertical listing of staff and publisher info which usually appears near the gutter on one of the first few pages.
It is a masthead because of its orientation. And it holds up all the people that make the magazine go, like a mast.
This distinction has been lost, I accept. Everyone thinks they’re using smart insider lingo by calling nameplates mastheads. The dictionary has probably already been updated, but I cling to what the words “should” mean.
My peeve aside, I’ve always thought you made a good photo. And I struggled a bit, but recognized the LOA Frost. I have the Churchill in my library.
foxmarks: when I was writing this post, I actually went so far as to look up the term as it relates to blogs. I found that “masthead” seemed to be the commonly accepted term for what I was referring to. You may indeed be correct, however, that “banner” is more technically correct.
I absolutely love Library Of America titles!