“TankBooks are for people on the move, lovers of literature and connoisseurs of design. Try one and you’ll be hooked.”

The TankBook list:

• Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
• Ernest Hemingway: The Undefeated and The Snows of Kilimanjaro
• Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis and In the Penal Colony
• Rudyard Kipling: The Man who would be King, The Phantom ’Rickshaw and Black Jack
• Robert Louis Stevenson: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Leo Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Ilych and Father Sergius

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Odd, quirky, fun? The perfect gift for the reader who’s quitting? Their website says: “The flip-top cigarette pack is one of the most successful pieces of packaging design in history. TankBooks pay homage to this iconic form by employing it in the service of great literature.”

In his last album, the late Vic Chestnutt has a song called ‘It Is What It Is’.
One of the verses goes:

Appearance is everything
Nothing is how it seems
In a civilized society
It’s called civility

A couple of verses on, he recasts the thought:

Appearance is everything
Nothing is how it seems
In a market economy
It’s called …
marketing

Ah, Marketing! The botox, the vitamins, the Viagra of capitalism. Crack a pack, lie back and inhale.