1. A Journey Round My Skull — “Unhealthy book fetishism from a reader, collector, and amateur historian of forgotten literature.”
2. The Art of Penguin Science Fiction — A comprehensive collection of Penguin sci-fi covers from 1935 onwards.
3. BibliOdyssey — “Books… Illustrations… Science… History… Visual Materia Obscura… Eclectic Bookart.”
4. Book (Design) Stories — Felix Wiedler’s incredible collection of modernist design and typography books from Germany and Switzerland 1925–1965.
5. Book Worship — “graphically interesting, but otherwise uncollectible, books that entered and exited bookstores quietly in the 50s, 60s, and 70s”.
6. I Was A Bronze Age Boy — Comic books, crime fiction and pulp magazines curated by Mark Justice. Awesome name. Awesome blog.
7. Killer Covers of the Week — Pulpy goodness and v The Rap Sheet‘s
8. The Pelican Project — Things Magazine‘s collection of Pelican paperbacks organized by decade.
Pop Sensation — Rex Parker 9. appraises, critiques and generally ridicules his vintage paperback collection.
10. Spanish Book Covers — Spanish pulp: detectives, masked gangsters, pin-ups, skeletons, and zombies! (French language)
AND BONUS! 11. French Book Covers — But not entirely safe for work… It’s French. You have been warned.
Let me know if I’ve missed any other great vintage book cover sites. AND I’m working on a list of book cover related photostreams and groups on Flickr so please pass on your recommendations! Cheers.
Glad to be included here Dan! I have a good link to add to it:
https://casualoptimist.com/
Thanks Will. I can only aspire to The Cas. Op being quite as good as A Journey Round My Skull! :-)
awesome post, love the links, lots of new stuff to discover and think about!
[…] can feel better about book design after perusing through the Casual Optimist’s ten best websites on that very […]
Thanks again Dan for this fantastic round-up! And your afterthought re: the Alvin Lustig archives duly noted. Have added this post of yours to StumbleUpon. :~)
Thanks Amy! Alvin Lustig’s work is amazing. The site was on my original list but somehow got lost in the shuffle. Anyway I will try and get the list of Flickr pages posted ASAP! :-)
I retweet stuff. I thought this was great. The only thing is, I try to be sort of “G-rated” or at least PG in case children are reading (not likely but possible) and I think a more explicit warning or hint about the French pornographie would be in order. You know, if you want to avoid the P-word, then something like “not suitable for children” or “x-rated” or something.
Thanks for your comment Litbirthdays. I did say that the French Book Covers blog was not entirely safe for work! But I’m sorry if that was too reticent a warning. I will try and be more er… explicit about such things in future. Thanks again.
[…] December 31, 2009 in Art, Books, Writing These are great! 10 Websites for Vintage Books, Covers and Inspiration | The Casual Optimist […]
[…] Much linked to elsewhere, James Pardey (of the The Art of Penguin Science-Fiction site mentioned here) has new project on the Op-Art inspired Fontana Modern Masters book cover designs. He’s also […]
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James Morrison’s Caustic Cover Critic (http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com) is a fine book-related blog as well, that could have very well made it into that list.
Pedro Marques
http://pedromarquesdg.wordpress.com
[…] “10 Websites for Vintage Books, Covers and Inspiration” is one of the most popular posts on The Casual Optimist, and here, at long last, is the promised follow-up: “10 Flickr Groups for Book Design and Inspiration.” […]
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Some of these I hadn’t heard of. Thanks for posting.
[…] (Images via flickrhivemind, casualoptimist, ffffound, vintagepaperbacks) […]