I’ve been working shelving books this summer in my university library– it is a wonderful job, very little supervision, I can wear my sandals and listen to my iPod all day, and I discover wonderful new books along the way. Of course, I can’t always check them out, usually I just browse through them for 10-15 minutes before the guilt catches up to me. Yesterday though, I found a great one…

The photos I took of this book, , don’t really do it justice. The cover was constructed from the same kind of cardboard that makes a cardboard box and the paper inside feels like high-quality grocery bag paper.

Books like this appeal to me on a number of levels: the illustrations are fascinating, the paper itself is so textured and present in my hands, and the simplicity of the cover material. Too often I think I forget that the book arts can be, indeed might be at their best when they’re simple.

Clearly I need to dust off my slide library skills when it comes to photographing books. Hopefully I’ll take a few more shots and put them up over on my Flickr page soon– something about the style in this book speaks to me.

A quick Google search didn’t turn anything up about this book or its origins. I’d love to hear from someone who knows about it.  It looks like some kind of dictionary/glossary for another story?  Maybe a primer?  I found it in the Italian language textbook section…