A fittingly Alvin Lustig-like cover for New Directions by Rodrigo Corral, seen at Book Covers Anonymous.
An Open Book-Publishing Platform — Book Oven’s Hugh McGuire on WordPress as a book publishing platform. It’s an intriguing idea even if don’t accept Hugh’s belief that books and the web will be indistinguishable in a matter of years. And, to judge by the comments, it something a lot of people have been working on.
Afterlife — With the US publication of The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, Charles McGrath looks at Steig Larsson, the late author of the Millennium series, and his unhappy legacy in the New York Times. Sarah Weinman has more on Larsson and the new book (of course)…
Enticement and Exegesis — Knopf designer Peter Mendelsund (who, incidentally, designed the covers for US editions of the Millennium books) on author David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, and book cover design:
Book jacket design should concern itself with, in my estimation, equal parts enticement (“Come buy this book”) and exegesis (“This is what this book is about, more or less.”) A good cover doesn’t let one category trump the other. A good cover should not resort to cliché in order to accomplish either. But the real key here, in both categories (enticement and exegesis) is the designer’s ability to work the sweet-spot between giving-away-the-farm, and deliberate obfuscation.
Book jackets that tell you too much, suck. Book jackets that try to change the subject also suck, and are furthermore, too easy.
My interview with Peter about Tom McCarthy’s book “C” is here.
And finally…
It’s a Book, Jackass! — a cute video featuring a tech-loving donkey and a book loving ape for It’s a Book! by Lane Smith, published by Macmillan (via Chronicle Books):
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