Just in case you didn’t notice that smoking makes you look cool back when you were 14, TankBooks wants to make sure you get the message. They’ve come out with a set of literary classics designed to look like cigarette packs— “one of the most successful pieces of packaging design in history.” The books come in such smooth and mellow blends as Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Leo Tolstoy, complete with foil wrapping and sealed in cellophane. Buy them singly or by the carton tin—they won’t go stale if you don’t read them right away.
I’m not really sure what these are supposed to do other than look good. I can’t quite see myself pulling a pack from my purse, smacking it smartly on the heel of my hand three times, and shaking out a delicious postprandial Death of Ivan Ilyich anytime soon. If nothing else, it sends a weirdly mixed message to the young folk, and your teenager is just going to steal the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde box to keep his stash in.
On the other hand, you wouldn’t have to keep your Literary Lites matchbooks in the bathroom anymore. Great books… blow some my way.



Hemingway as Lucky Strike, Kafka as Gauloise? And what’s this? Conrad as Sherman Slims? Love it.
Now if they would publish Master and Commander as a pack of Players Navy Cut, I’d be so happy.