There is a bit of story to this post. The short version is that I started it in 2018 to celebrate 10 years of the blog. When that deadline went whooshing past, I thought I would rework it for the end of 2019 as a look back at the decade. Now in 2020, with the risk of another deadline coming and going before I get it exactly right, I am just going to post this as it is — a collection of covers from the past 10 years1 that I quite like!
The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, design by Will Staehle (Little Brown & Co. / July 2010)
Ethics of Interrogation by Michael Skerker, designed by Isaac Tobin (University of Chicago Press / May 2010)
Filthy English by Peter Silverton, design by Dan Mogford (Portobello / October 2010)
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, designed by Roberto de Vicq (Random House / 2010)
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, design by David Pearson (Picador / December 2010)
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, designed by Rodrigo Corral Design (Random House / September 2010)
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan; design by Barbara deWilde (Knopf / June 2010)
Amerika by Franz Kafka, design by Peter Mendelsund (Schocken / August 2011)
Adventures in the Orgasmatron by Christopher Turner; design by Marina Drukman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux June 2011)
Fever by Sonia Shah; design by LeeAnn Falciani (Picador / June 2011)
The First Husband by Laura Dave, designed by Jaya Miceli (Penguin / May 2011)
The Information by James Gleick, designed by Peter Mendelsund (Pantheon March 2011)
Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi design by Helen Yentus with Jason Booher (Riverhead / September 2011)
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, design by Matt Dorfman (Riverhead Books / May 2011)
After Freud Left edited by John Burnham; designed by Isaac Tobin (University of Chicago Press / May 2012)
The Dubliners by James Joyce; design by Apfel Zet (Penguin / May 2012)
Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck by Eric G. Wilson; design by Rodrigo Corrall, hand-lettering by Jennifer Carrow, photograph by Simon Lee (FSG March 2012)
The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / January 2012)
Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel by Shalom Auslander; design by John Gall (Riverhead / January 2012)
May We Be Forgiven by A. M. Homes; designed by Alison Forner (Viking / September 2012)
NW by Zadie Smith; design by Gray318 (Hamish Hamilton / September 2012)
First Novel by Nicholas Royle; design by Suzanne Dean; photography Stephen Banks (Cape / February 2013)
The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner; design by Charlotte Strick (Scribner / April 2013)
The Hamlet Doctrine by Simon Critchley & Jamieson Webster; design by David A. Gee (Verso September 2013)
Lionel Asbo by Martin Amis; design by Jamie Keenan (Vintage / May 2013)
Middle C by William Gass; Design by Gabriele Wilson (Knopf / March 2013)
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell; design by David Pearson (Penguin / January 2013)
The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot; design by Jamie Keenan (Liveright Classics / September 2013)
What the Family Needed by Steven Amsterdam; design by Jennifer Heuer (Riverhead / March 2013)
All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu; design by Isabel Urbina Peña (Knopf / March 2014)
The Book of Heaven by Patricia Storace; design by Linda Huang (Pantheon / February 2014)
California by Edan Lepucki; design Julianna Lee (Little Brown & Co. / July 2014)
Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson; design by Allison Saltzman; illustration by Bryan Nash Gill (Ecco / June 2014)
Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce; design by Emily Mahon; illustration by Rizon Parein(Doubleday / September 2014)
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka; design by Jamie Keenan (W. W. Norton / February 2014)
My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead; design by Elena Giavaldi (Crown / January 2014)
On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee; design by Helen Yentus; lettering Jason Booher (Riverhead / January 2014)
Your Face in Mine by Jess Row; design by Oliver Munday (Riverhead / August 2014)
The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector; design by Paul Sahre (New Directions / August 2015)
Hotels of North America by Rick Moody; design by Keith Hayes (Little, Brown & Co. / November 2015)
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin; design by Justine Anweiler; photography Jonathan Simpson (Picador UK / September 2015)
Motorcycles I’ve Loved by Lily Brooks-Dalton; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / April 2015)
Munich Airport by Greg Baxter; design by Anne Twomey (Twelve Books / January 2015)
One Day in the Life of the English Language by Frank L. Cioffi; design by Chris Ferrante (Princeton University Press / March 2015)
Weathering by Lucy Wood; design by Greg Heinimann (Bloomsbury / January 2015)
The Woman Who Read Too Much by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani; design by Anne Jordan & Mitch Goldstein (Stanford University Press / April 2015)
Addlands by Tom Bullough; design by Jenny Grigg (Granta / June 2016)
The Children’s Home by Charles Lambert; design by Jaya Miceli (Scribner / January 2016)
Dialogue by Robert McKee; design by Catherine Casalino (Twelve Books / July 2016)
How Propaganda Works by Jason Stanley; design by Chris Ferrante (Princeton University Press / May 2016)
Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett; design by Keith Hayes (Little, Brown & Co. / May 2016)
Moonglow by Michael Chabon; design by Adalis Martinez (Harper / November 2016)
The Start of Something by Stuart Dybek; design Suzanne Dean; cover art by Marion de Man (Jonathan Cape / November 2016)
The Summer That Melted Everything by Tiffany McDaniel; design by Allison Colpoys (Scribe / August 2016)
The Wonder by Emma Donoghue design by Kimberly Glyder (Little, Brown & Co. / September 2016)
The Age of Perpetual Light by Josh Weil; design by Nick Misani (Grove Press / September 2017)
All We Saw by Anne Michaels; design by Janet Hansen; photograph by Jouke Bos (Knopf / October 2017)
Heating & Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly; design by Alex Merto; photograph by Gregory Reid (W.W. Norton / December 2017)
Jerzy by Jerome Charyn; design by Alban Fischer (Bellevue Literary Press / March 2017)
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / May 2017)
A Separation by Katie Kitamura; design by Jaya Miceli (Riverhead / February 2017)
Virgin and Other Stories by April Ayers Lawson; design by James Paul Jones (Granta / January 2017)
We All Love the Beautiful Girls by Joanne Proulx; design by Jennifer Griffiths (Viking / August 2017)
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber; design by David Litman (Simon & Schuster / May 2018)
Cherry by Nico Walker; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / August 2018)
The Comedown by Rebekah Frumkin; design by Rachel Willey (Henry Holt / April 2018)
Evening in Paradise by Lucia Berlin; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / November 2018)
The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer; design by Ben Denzer (Riverhead Books / April 2018)
Liveblog by Megan Boyle; design by Nicole Caputo (Tyrant Books / September 2018)
There There by Tommy Orange; design by Suzanne Dean; art by Bryn Perrott (Harvill Secker / July 2018)
Aug 9 — Fog by Kathryn Scanlan; design by Na Kim (Farrar Straus & Giroux MCD / June 2019)
The Dutch House by Ann Patchet; design by Robin Bilardello; painting by Noah Saterstrom (HarperCollins / September 2019)
Lanny by Max Porter; design by Jonny Pelham (Faber & Faber / March 2019)
Malina by Ingeborg Bachman; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / June 2019)
Muscle by Alan Trotter; design by Gray318 (Faber & Faber / February 2019)
Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / August 2019)
The Unwanted by Michael Dobbs; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)
I agree with everything except . Please defend.
Hahaha. I don’t know which cover you’re referring to. You’ll have to give me a title. I’m not going to “defend” it — it’s a personal choice, what is there to argue about? But I am curious, and I might be able to give an explanation!