Oof. This is a little too on the nose from Roz Chast (for The New Yorker).
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Published August 28, 2023
The End of Summer
The Casual Optimist Posts
Published August 18, 2023
‘To Be Read’ by Tom Gauld
Tom Gauld for The Guardian.
My ‘to be read’ wall feels particularly bad at the moment. I did, however, read an ARC of She’s a Killer by Kirsten McDougall on vacation, which is fun if you like an unreliable narrator who is not quite a genius, but very possibly a sociopath (and has an imaginary friend).
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Published August 18, 2023
Where Hollywood’s Printed Props Are Made
Special effects designer Adam Savage (Mythbusters) visits the warehouse of The Earl Hayes Press, a prop house that’s been making printed material for Hollywood movies for over hundred years. Fake newspapers, magazines, currency, and product labels all came from their printing presses. Historian and archivist Michael Corrie of YouTube channel Props To History walks Adam through some of the iconic props that originated by the press, including Blade Runner‘s ID badges and, incredibly, the passports and letters of transit from Casablanca. So good.
(via Waxy)
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Published July 28, 2023
Book Covers of Note, July 2023
Even though it’s still just about July — a supposedly “quiet” month in publishing — I’m running late once again. Hopefully everyone is on vacation and won’t notice that it’s basically August already and I am here sliding in under the wire. There are some great covers this month though. A bit of collage, some really nice typography, and lots of pink and red. Enjoy!
The Absolutes by Molly Dektar; design by Yeon Kim (Mariner / July 2023)
I like this cover a lot, but I’m shamelessly stealing it from Lit Hub’s most recent book cover round-up (a benefit of being last to post!), so I hope the design credit is correct because I couldn’t verify it before posting!
Beijing Sprawl by Xu Zechen; design by Andrew Walters (Two Lines Press / June 2023)
I had this noted as down as July cover, but the book was actually released in June. The cover of the Two Lines Press edition of Running Through Beijing by Xu Zechen has also been re-designed to match.
The Black Eden by Richard T. Kelly; design by Robbie Porter (Faber & Faber / July 2023)
Cat Prince by Michael Pedersen; design by Gray318 (Little, Brown / July 2023)
Jon’s design for Michael’s previous book Boy Friends, which features an illustration by Nathaniel Russell, was on last year’s notable book cover list.
The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos by Fernando Pessoa; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / July 2023)
Counterweight by Djuna; design by Tal Goretsky (Pantheon / July 2023)
Do Tell by Lindsay Lynch; design by Emily Mahon; illustration and lettering by Studio Martina Flor (Doubleday / July 2023)
Excavations by Hannah Michell; design by Arsh Raziuddin (One World / July 2023)
This reminded me of the 2017 cover of Smoke by Dan Vyleta designed by Mark Abrams with an illustration by the late Colombian artist Alejandro García Restrepo who passed away last month.
The Librarianist by Patrick DeWitt; design by Allison Saltzman (Ecco / July 2023)
Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery; design by Katya Mezhibovskaya (Bloomsbury / July 2023)
Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter; design by Natalia Olbinski; art by Angela Faustina (Scribner / July 2023)
I love pretty much everything about this cover.
Screwjack by Hunter S. Thompson; design by Math Monahan (Simon & Schuster / July 2023)
The Sea Elephants by Shastri Akella; design by Dave Litman (Flatiron Books / July 2023)
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia; design by Regina Flath (Del Rey Books / July 2023)
I think this delivers just about everything you want from a horror / thriller cover.
Someone Who Isn’t Me by Geoff Rickly; design by Jesse Reed; art by Jesse Draxler (Rose Books / July 2023)
The Stolen Coast by Dwyer Murphy; design by Dave Litman (Viking / July 2023)
A Thread of Violence by Mark O’Connell; design by Jack Smyth (Granta / July 2023)
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Published July 20, 2023
Sergio García Sánchez’s “On the Same Page”
Sergio García Sánchez‘s cover illustration, coloured by his partner Lola Moral, for the recent fiction issue of The New Yorker is lovely.
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Published July 20, 2023
Corrupting Souls
Tom Gauld‘s Midsummer’s Eve cartoon for The Guardian is from last month (obviously!), but I’m borrowing it to make a bit of boring and overdue social media housekeeping more interesting!
While I haven’t yet asked Wizard Toby to deactivate the Casual Optimist account like a some kind of despairing Baphomet, I have pretty much abandoned Twitter. It’s disappointing because I’ve met some great people through the app and it has always been a tremendous resource, but I can’t support it any more.
I’ve always hated Facebook and I haven’t posted to the Casual Optimist page there in at least a couple of years. I did, however, start an Instagram account which I’m trying to update at least once a month if you want to follow along there. I think it’s pretty unlikely that I will do anything with Threads.
I’m not on Bluesky, but I am trying out Mastodon. It promises a lot, I’m just not quite convinced by it yet (and I gather from more prolific posters than me that there is something of a sea lion problem there). I’ll post a link if/when there is a proper Casual Optimist account. In the meantime, you can find me here.
There is an RSS feed that you can subscribe to if you still use a reader (I use the Old Reader FWIW; I’m not sure what the cool kids are using), or you can get it as an email (it’s not perfect but it works).
Updates are also sent automatically to Tumblr if you’re still rattling around that haunted abandoned mansion.
Anyway, sorry for being very online and tedious. I’ll try to post some more interesting stuff soon (if I don’t quietly pack it in completely and put myself out to pasture…)
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Published June 29, 2023
Book Covers of Note, June 2023
Hey, I hope you are keeping safe and well. There’s a wide variety of styles this month, but pink, yellow and orange are something of a minor theme (although since writing this I’ve actually removed one of the covers that combined bright pink and yellow because the book isn’t out until September — you’ll see it in a couple of months).
I think we’re also starting to see a potential new trend with photographic covers for fiction. I don’t have the vocabulary to neatly identify the style of photography I mean (sorry photography people — I mostly studied paintings in school!), but it’s basically contemporary colour photographs of candid, and sometimes intimate, social moments. It’s different, if adjacent, to the more posed ‘stylish sad girl’ phenomenon, or the use of black and white photography for ‘serious’ literary fiction I think. Anyway, maybe it’s a thing? Time will tell…
American Ending by Mary Kay Zuravleff; design by Laura Williams; illustration by Nora Ayoagi (Blair / June 2023)
I feel like there should be more blackletter on book covers. Why isn’t this more a thing?
Bellies by Nicola Dinan; design by Beci Kelly; photograph by Bobby Doherty (Transworld / June 2023)
Cacophony of Bone by Kerri ní Dochartaigh; design by Rafi Romaya; illustration by Vasilisa Romanenko (Canongate / May 2023)
Forgiving Imelda Marcos by Nathan Go; design by Eric Fuentecilla (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / June 2023)
House Woman by Adorah Nworah; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / June 2023)
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck; design by John Gall (New Directions / June 2023)
La Tercera by Gina Apostol; design by Jaya Miceli (Soho Press / May 2023)
Lucky Dogs by Helen Schulman; design by Janet Hansen; photograph by Christopher Brand (Knopf / June 2023)
The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller; design by Beth Steidle; art by Lisa Ericson (Tin House / June 2023)
I was wondering why the weirdly wonderful art seemed familiar and then I remembered that the cover of Lisa Wells’ nonfiction book Believers designed by Na Kim also makes use of Lisa Ericson painting…
I know I say everything gives me Annihilation vibes but Lisa Ericson’s art definitely gives me Annihilation vibes. And speaking of weird Vandermeer vibes…
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor; design by Alex Merto; illustration by María Jesús Contreras (Picador US / May 2023)
Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar; design by Ben Wiseman (Penguin / May 2023)
Ponyboy by Eliot Duncan; design by Luke Bird (Footnote Press / June 2023)
The cover of the US edition of Ponyboy, published by W.W. Norton this month, was designed by Richard Ljoenes. The cover photo is by Maria Molchanova.
The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue; design by Nico Taylor; photograph by Ewen Spencer (Little Brown UK / June 2023)
The cover of the US edition of The Rachel Incident, published by Knopf, was designed by John Gall. The painting is by Gideon Rubin.
The UK cover also reminded me of the UK cover of Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart designed by Stuart Wilson which features a Wolfgang Tillmans photo.
(Oh and if anyone can tell me who designed and illustrated the Australian cover for The Rachel Incident — which is completely different again — I will be happy to add it in!)
Run Baby Run by Melissa Lenhardt; design by Olga Grlic (Graydon House / June 2023)
Soviet Self-Hatred by Eliot Borenstein; design by Philip Pascuzzo (Cornell University Press / June 2023)
Where I Slept by Libby Angel; design by W.H. Chong; photograph by Konrad Winkler (Text / May 2023)
Text have also just published a collection of W.H. Chong’s drawing and paintings called Portraits, which includes portraits of some designers you might recognize…
4 Comments
Published June 29, 2023
Tragedy After Tragedy
A powerful cover for June 23 2023 edition of Guardian Weekly. Art direction by Andrew Stocks.
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Published June 6, 2023
Ghost Writer
Cartoon by Graham Annabelle.
And just a reminder, Graham AKA Grickle has a new graphic novel for kids called Eerie Tales from the School of Screams coming out this summer.
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Published June 6, 2023
Nighthawks at the Library by Tom Gauld
Tom Gauld for The Guardian.
(Is this a Semisonic joke as well as an Edward Hopper one? Or am I just showing my age?)
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Published May 31, 2023
Book Covers of Note, May 2023
I hope you’re keeping safe and well wherever you find yourself. A couple of people sent me posts about “blob” covers this month. If you read the blog regularly, you probably already know that I am pretty skeptical that they’re as much of thing as they’re made out to be. The examples always seem to be the same old covers with a couple of broadly similar-ish recent ones thrown in for relevance. They kind of look the same (not really) at small sizes, less so up close. “Bold and blocky” always seemed a more accurate description to me — blocks of bold colours combined with blocks of (blocky) bold text. At worst, it feels like a loosely defined trend for the kind of literary-ish books that frequently appear in the likes of New York Times rather than something we should be agonizing over. I don’t know why fixation with it grates. Maybe it’s because the commentary always seems slightly snide? Or because I just don’t think it represents an accurate picture of contemporary book cover design? I mean, book covers are always going to look broadly the same. There are some obvious common limitations that most designers have to work within. Even so, there are still lots of publishers and designers doing interesting and different things if you scratch the surface. Look a bit further — they don’t all look the same!
The Adult by Bronwyn Fischer; design by Kate Sinclair (Random House Canada / May 2023)
Berlin by Bea Setton; design by Emily Mahon; cover image by Nataša Denić (Penguin Books / May 2023)
Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott; design by Tal Goretsky (G.P. Putnam’s Sons / May 2023)
I feel like Megan Abbott often gets really nice covers that work both for the genre and stand out in some way.
(But does this count this as a blob cover? Or is it not quite blobby enough? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
Chrysalis by Anna Metcalfe; design by Jack Smyth (Granta / May 2023)
Close to Home by Michael Magee; design by Na Kim; photograph by Oumayma B. Tanfous (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / May 2023)
I believe the movie poster-like cover of the UK edition of Close to Home, published by Penguin last month, was designed by Gray318. The cinematic photo is by Enda Bowe from his Love’s Fire Song project.
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese; design by Kelly Winton (Grove Press / May 2023)
The East Indian by Brinda Charry; design by Tristan Offit (Scribner / May 2023)
Endpapers by Jennifer Savran Kelly; design by Jaya Miceli (Algonquin / February 2023)
The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank; design by Annie Atkins (Penguin / May 2023)
This is just one of the many great covers in the Penguin Essentials series.
The Guest by Emma Cline; design by Oliver Munday (Random House / May 2023)
A History of Burning by Janika Oza; design by Albert Tang; illustration by Simone Noronha (Grand Central / May 2023)
The cover of the UK edition of A History of Burning, published by Vintage this month, was designed by Suzanne Dean with an illustration by Muhammed Sajid.
In Vitro by Isabel Zapata; design by Zoe Norvell (Coffee House Press / May 2023)
This reminded me that I’ve been meaning to link to Zoe’s side project I Need a Book Cover, an online directory of (English language) book cover designers. It’s well worth checking out even if you don’t literally need a book cover.
I think the Saul Bass-ian cover of the Mexican edition of In Vitro, published Almadía, was designed by Alejandro Magallanes, but it would be great if someone more familiar with Mexican publishing can confirm!
Landscapes by Christine Lai; design by Kate Sinclair (Doubleday Canada / May 2023)
A nice Kate Sinclair double this month bringing the up the Canadian content!
The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar; design by Hayley Warnham (Oneworld / May 2023)
Disembodied hands are a bit of a thing this month (see The Guest), but this actually reminded me of Vasilis Marmatakis‘s lovely minimalist posters for The Lobster:
Our Migrant Souls by Héctor Tobar; design by Rodrigo Corral (MCD / May 2023)
Shy by Max Porter; design by Carlos Esparza (Graywolf / May 2023)
The cover of the UK edition of Shy, published last month by Faber & Faber, was designed by Jonathan Pelham. Jonny is going freelance full-time in June if you would like to hire him!
The Sorrows of Others by Ada Zhang; design by Janet Hansen (Public Space Books / May 2023)
The colour palette of this reminded me of Janet’s cover for Speak, Okinawa by Elizabeth Miki Brina from a couple of years ago.
Published May 23, 2023
R. Kikuo Johnson’s “Perennial”
It feels like we are right on the cusp of spring turning into summer here in Toronto (rain all day Saturday, beautiful sunshine Sunday) so I enjoyed R. Kikuo Johnson’s latest cover illustration for The New Yorker. There are so many lovely touches.
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