Category: Books

Published December 11, 2019

Notable Book Covers of 2019

2019 has felt interminable. It has also felt like there are never enough hours in the day to keep up. You can’t talk to me about TV shows or movies. I haven’t seen any.

When it comes to books, I’m fortunate enough to work in the industry. But what hope do casual readers have of finding the good stuff when the same few titles dominate the conversation and there is so much else competing for their attention?

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood and Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid were inescapable this year.

Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid; design by Caroline Teagle Johnson (Ballantine / March 2019)

Daisy Jones and the Six had a glamorous, louche 1970s look. The US and UK editions, designed by Caroline Teagle Johnson and Lauren Wakefield respectively, took slightly different directions with the type, but the photograph (a stock image apparently) felt ideally suited to social media.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood; design by Noma Bar (Chatto & Windus / September 2019)

The Testaments was everywhere and, like the recent Vintage Classics reissue of The Handmaid’s Tale, the cover illustration was unmistakably by Noma Bar. We live in an age where every cult movie and TV show gets a ‘minimalist’ poster now, and I found that The Testaments looked too familiar for me to find it engaging. It didn’t help that the cover of the 2017 US reissue of the The Handmaid’s Tale by Swedish illustrator by Patrik Svenson had already featured a similar 3/4s silhouette. Nevertheless, it was perhaps a bolder cover choice than I’m giving it credit for. If nothing else, it showed that bright green on book covers — once cursed and reviled — is suddenly all the rage!

In terms of trends, 2019 felt more like a continuation of previous years rather than a break with the past. There was a kind of conservatism to a lot of the covers I saw. My sense was that highly polished designs that looked comfortingly familiar were being approved over riskier ones that stood out from the crowd. The most interesting covers often came from small publishers, especially New Directions who seem to be giving a bit more creative license to the designers they work with (some of whom have 9-5s at much bigger publishers!).

Big centred blocks of utilitarian white type over elaborate backgrounds continued to be a mainstay. It’s the book cover as poster, and it works at any size, so I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.

Handwriting and hand-lettering remained popular too, although my sense is that enthusiasm is starting to wane as publishers are opting for greater legibility and designers are turning back to vintage type styles to give a sense of authenticity and craft. (I’m willing to admit the evidence might not back me up on this, however!)

Fun, swishy 1970s-inspired serifs like Benguiat Caslon revival Cabernet are back. People keep trying to make ITC Avant Garde — another iconic 1970s typeface — happen again too. I don’t think it works for the most part, but I can see why designers think it’s cool in a coked-up New York way. Warren Chappell’s earnest calligraphic sans serif Lydian, originally released in 1938, continued its unlikely rise as a go-to literary typeface. It even got an explainer at Vox.

Black and white portrait photography has been the staple of biographies and classics for years, so it was interesting to see closely cropped black and white photographs used on the covers of a couple of new literary novels this year. This isn’t entirely new obviously. Black and white photography has long been used to signify that something is “art” (as opposed to, say, “pornography”). But I think the latest iteration of trend was started by Cardon Webb‘s 2015 cover for A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara which used a black and white photograph by the late Peter Hujar.

Coincidentally the cover of the US edition of Garth Greenwell’s new novel Cleanness, publishing early 2020, was designed by Thomas Colligan and uses contemporary black and white photograph by Jack Davison. (The UK edition, designed by Ami Smithson fits this trend a little less neatly, but features black and white photograph by Mark McKnight)

Something that I didn’t anticipate was the use of contemporary landscape and figure painting on the covers of some the big literary releases of the year. Like black and white photography, it felt almost pre-digital — a grasp at traditional values of craft. I don’t know if I would go as far as to say it is a rejection of post-modernism. But maybe it is? I don’t know. Discuss amongst yourselves.

The Innocents by Michael Crummey; design by Emily Mahon; art by Diana Dabinett (Doubleday / August 2019)

Thank you to all the designers and art directors who’ve been in touch and helped me identify covers for my posts. I’m sorry if I haven’t replied to your message. It’s been a year.

The Affairs of the Falcóns by Melissa Rivero; design Allison Saltzman; lettering Boyoun Kim (Ecco / April 2019)

Also designed by Allison Saltzman:

*Come Closer and Listen* by Charles Simic; design by Allison Saltzman; art by Jessica Brilli (Ecco / July 2019)

All the Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth; design by Michael Morris (Crown / January 2019)

Aug 9 — Fog by Kathryn Scanlan; design by Na Kim (Farrar Straus & Giroux MCD / June 2019)

Also designed by Na Kim:

Baron Wenkheim’s Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai ; design by Paul Sahre (New Directions / September 2019)

Berta Isla by Javier Marías; design by Kelly Blair (Knopf / August 2019)

Also designed by Kelly Blair:

*Chances Are…* by Richard Russo; design by Kelly Blair (Knopf / July 2019)

Big Bang by David Bowman; design by Jamie Keenan (Corsair / August 2019)

Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James; design Helen Yentus; art by Pablo Gerardo Camacho (Riverhead / February 2019)

Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant by Joel Golby; design by Linda Huang (Anchor / March 2019)

The cover of the UK edition, published by HarperCollins imprint Mudlark in February, was designed by Bill Bragg and is also very good:

The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W. W. Norton / August 2019)

Also designed by Sarahmay Wilkinson:

*Swift* by David Baker; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W.W. Norton / April 2019)

Categorically Famous by Guy Davidson; design by Michel Vrana (Stanford University Press / June 2019)

Also designed by Michel Vrana:

*The Western Alienation Merit Badge* by Nancy Jo Cullen; design by Michel Vrana (Buckrider Books / May 2019)

The Colonel’s Wife by Rosa Liksom; design by Kimberly Glyder (Graywolf / December 2019)

Also designed by Kimberly Glyder:

*The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener’s Companion* by Liberty Hyde Bailey; design by Kimberly Glyder (Cornell University Press / September 2019)

Dead Astronauts by Jeff Vandermeer; design Rodrigo Corral (MCD / December 2019)

Also designed by Rodrigo Corral:

*The Topeka School* by Ben Lerner; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / October 2019)

Doxology by Nell Zink; design Jack Smyth (Fourth Estate / August 2019)

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk; design by Alex Merto (Riverhead / August 2019)

Driving in Cars with Homeless Men by Kate Wisel; design Catherine Casalino (University of Pittsburgh Press / October 2019)

Also designed by Catherine Casalino:

*All This Could Be Yours* by Jami Attenberg; design by Catherine Casalino (Hougton Mifflin / October 2019)

The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg; design by Pablo Delcan (New Directions / July 2019)

Also designed by Pablo Delcan:

*The Social Photo* by Nathan Jurgenson; design by Pablo Delcan (Verso / May 2019)

The Dutch House by Ann Patchet; design by Robin Bilardello; painting by Noah Saterstrom (HarperCollins / September 2019)

Even That Wildest Hope by Seyward Goodhand; design by Megan Fildes (Invisible Books / September 2019)

*Land and Forests* by Andrew Forbes; design by Megan Fildes (Invisible Books / May 2019)

The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada; design by Janet Hansen; photography by Arthur Woodcroft (New Directions / October 2019)

Also designed by Janet Hansen:

*In Her Feminine Sign* by Dunya Mikhail; design by Janet Hansen (New Directions / July 2019)

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold; design by Jo Thomson (Transworld / February 2019)

Follow Me To Ground by Sue Rainsford; design and illustration Beci Kelly (Transworld / August 2019)

Follow This Thread by Henry Eliot; design by Elena Giavaldi (Three Rivers Press / March 2019)

Holy Lands by Amanda Sthers; design by Tree Abraham (Bloomsbury / January 2019)

Also designed by Tree Abraham:

*The Remainder* by Alia Trabucco Zerán; design by Tree Abraham (Coffee House Press / August 2019)

Humiliation by Paulina Flores; design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult / November 2019)

Also designed by Nicole Caputo:

*The Crying Book* by Heather Christie; design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult / November 2019)

Indelible in the Hippocampus by Shelly Oria; design by Sunra Thompson (MacSweeney’s / September 2019)

Lanny by Max Porter; design by Jonny Pelham (Faber & Faber / March 2019)

Learning from the Germans by Susan Neiman; design by Tom Etherington (Allen Lane / August 2019)

Tom Etherington is also the designer of Penguin magazine The Happy Reader:

Life Support by Julia Copus; design by Helen Crawford-White (Head of Zeus / April 2019)

*A Half-Baked Idea* by Olivia Potts; design by Helen Crawford-White (Fig Tree / July 2019)

The Light That Failed by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes; design by Richard Green (Allen Lane / October 2019)

Malina by Ingeborg Bachman; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / June 2019)

Mind Fixers by Anne Harrington; design by Matt Dorfman (W.W. Norton / April 2019)

Mothers by Chris Power; design by Grace Han (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2019)

Also designed by Grace Han:

*Bangkok Wakes to Rain* by Pitchaya Sudbanthad; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / February 2019)

Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin; design by Stephen Brayda (Riverhead / January 2019)

Muscle by Alan Trotter; design by Gray318 (Faber & Faber / February 2019)

Also designed by Gray318:

*Quichotte* by Salman Rushdie; design by Gray318 (Jonathan Cape / August 2019)

Never a Lovely So Real by Colin Asher; design by Jonathan Bush (W. W. Norton / April 2019)

Not Working by Josh Cohen; design by Matthew Young (Granta / January 2019)

Also designed by Matthew Young:

*What We Really Do All* Day by Jonathan Gershuny and Oriel Sullivan; design Matthew Young (Pelican / September 2019)

One Day by Gene Weingarten; design by David Litman (Blue Rider / October 2019)

Also designed by David Litman:

*Ask Again, Yes* by Mary Beth Keane; design by David Litman (Scribner / May 2019)

Our Women on the Ground edited by Zahra Hankir; design by Rosie Palmer; hand lettering by Lily Jones (Harvill Secker / August 2019)

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson; design by Jaya Miceli (Riverhead / September 2019)

Also designed by Jaya Miceli:

*Speaking of Summer* by Kalisha Buckhanon; design Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / July 2019)

Safe Houses I Have Known by Steve Healey; design by Alban Fischer (Coffee House Press / September 2019)

Also designed by Alban Fischer:

*The Hypothetical Man* by Paul Maliszewski & Ryan Weil; design by Alban Fischer (Trnsfr Books / March 2019)

Say Say Say by Lila Savage; design by Jennifer Carrow (Knopf / July 2019)

Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke; design by Anne Jordan & Mitch Goldstein (Open Letter Books / December 2019)

Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / August 2019)

Oliver Munday wrote about designing the cover for New Directions at Literary Hub earlier this year.

He also designed a lot my favourite covers this year…

Riots I Have Known by Ryan Chapman; design by Oliver Munday (Simon & Schuster / May 2019)

Turbulence by David Szalay; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Scribner / July 2019)

The Unwanted by Michael Dobbs; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)

Also designed by Tyler Comrie:

The Revolutionaries by Joshua Furst; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)

The Volunteer by Salvatore Scibona; design by Rachel Willey (Penguin / March 2019)

Also designed by Rachel Willey:

*The New Me* by Halle Butler; design by Rachel Willey (Penguin / March 2019)

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates; design Greg Mollica; art Calida Garcia Rawles (One World / September 2019)

The White Death by Gabriel Urza; design by Joan Wong (Nouvella / June 2019)

A Year Without a Name by Cyrus Grace Dunham; design by Lucy Kim (Little Brown & Co. / October 2019)

*Consent* by Donna Freitas; design by Lucy Kim (Little, Brown & Co. / August 2019)

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Published October 23, 2019

I Love Autumn

Tom Gauld for The Guardian. (I feel… attacked?)1

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Published October 19, 2019

Work in Progress

Lucy Knisley for the New York Times Book Review.

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Published October 18, 2019

Book Covers of Note, October 2019

Oh hey, it’s October, AKA the best month of the year, so this is the last of my monthly cover round-ups for 2019. My look back at the year will be coming soon, so if I have shamefully overlooked your work for the past 10 months, or you want to share a cover design for a book that is coming out in November or December, now would be a really great time to drop me a line! High resolution images are always appreciated. This goes double if you design or illustrate YA covers. 1

All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg; design by Catherine Casalino (Hougton Mifflin / October 2019)

Big Bang by David Bowman; design by Jamie Keenan (Corsair / August 2019)

This makes me think of the décollage art of folks like Mimmo Rotella.

The cover of the US edition published by Little, Brown was designed by Gregg Kulick and takes a different pop art approach…

Dead Astronauts by Jeff Vandermeer; design Rodrigo Corral (MCD / December 2019)

The cover of the UK edition, out in January 2020 from Fourth Estate, was designed by Jo Walker with an illustration by Alycia Rainaud.

Driving in Cars with Homeless Men by Kate Wisel; design Catherine Casalino (University of Pittsburgh Press / October 2019)

The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada; design by Janet Hansen; photography by Arthur Woodcroft (New Directions / October 2019)

Feminist City: A Field Guide by Leslie Kern; design by Ingrid Paulson (Between the Lines / October 2019)

The flaps are fun…

Geometry of Shadows by Giorgio di Chirico; design by Atelier Bingo (Public Space Books / October 2019)

Ghosts of Berlin by Rudolph Herzog; design by Marina Drukman (Melville House / October 2019)

Gorgeous War by Tim Blackmore; design Michel Vrana (Wilfred Laurier University Press / October 2019)

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett; design by Kerri Resnick; illustration Hsiao Ron Cheng (Wednesday Books / October 2019)

Humiliation by Paulina Flores; design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult / November 2019)

I Hope You Get This Message by Farah Naz Rishi; design by Erin Fitzsimmons; illustration by Adams Carvalho (HarperTeen / October 2019)

This makes a nice pair with the Adams Carvalho illustration on the cover of We Are the Lost and Found mentioned last month…

Nightmareland by Lex “Lonehood” Nover; design by Linet Huamán Velásquez (TarcherPerigee / October 2019)

Nothing To See Here by Kevin Wilson; design by Allison Saltzman; art by Christian Northeast (Ecco / October 2019)

Not Me by Marianne Dissard; design by Jamie Keenan (October 2019)

One of the more disturbing covers of the year I think…

One Day by Gene Weingarten; design by David Litman (Blue Rider / October 2019)

Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke; design by Anne Jordan & Mitch Goldstein (Open Letter Books / December 2019)

Space Struck by Paige Lewis; design by Alban Fischer (Sarabande Books / October 2019)

Suspect Communities by Nicole Nguyen; design by Matt Avery (University of Minnesota Press / October 2019)

Redaction on covers is most definitely in…

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / October 2019)

What Happened? by Hanif Kureishi; design Jonny Pelham (Faber & Faber / October 2019)

Are we seeing the beginnings of a psychedelia revival? There are a couple of covers coming in 2020 in addition to these three that make me think we might be…

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Published September 27, 2019

Darkseid Is…

Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads was unexpectedly one of my favourite comics this year. I hadn’t previously read any books set in the ‘Fourth World’ despite it’s massive influence on comics and films. I’ve always found Jack Kirby’s grandiose, dialed up to 11, vision of the New Gods to be a little too much, even for Jack Kirby.1 But the constant overwhelming ridiculousness of it all is one of the themes of Mister Miracle. How do you stay sane, let alone have a normal life with a family, when you are constantly ground down by the world you find yourself in, and confronted daily with situations that are tragic, absurd, and just so much bigger than you?

At the Daily Beast, Entertainment Editor Melissa Leon talks to author Tom King about how his experiences as a CIA counterintelligence officer and his personal struggles with stress and anxiety shaped the book.

“The book started when I had one of those first-episode-of-the-Sopranos panic attacks and I ended up in the hospital,” he says. “It was one of those things where you ask the doctor, ‘Am I dying or am I crazy?’ And they tell you you’re crazy and you’re like, woo-hoo! Oh, wait a second.” He laughs. “I thought I was a pretty tough guy. I’d been to war twice, I’d had three kids. In my own little nerdy corner of the world I was pretty successful. But there was something brittle inside of me.”
Mister Miracle was his chance to write about those brittle parts—and about the creeping suspicion in the age of Trump that reality is fundamentally, metaphysically even, coming undone… Unremarkable events [unfold] in heightened, surreal circumstances; sometimes touching, funny, or grim. The juxtapositions are essential to King, who likens the scenes to the memory of debriefing a source in Iraq in 120-degree weather. “We were both sweating and talking about a guy getting his head chopped off. It was horrible,” he remembers. “But it was my wife’s birthday.” He recalls shuffling into a corner, calling his wife, and singing “Happy Birthday” in half-hushed tones. “That’s what life is, right? The mundane lives right next to the crazy.” …

It sounds all very grim, but somehow it isn’t. At least not completely. There is a lot of humour and affection in it too, which is why I think it works. Somehow King finds a way to be (just about) life-affirming in the end.

Gerads layered artwork is also extraordinary and, at times, beautiful. Laid out on the page in a metronomic 9 panel grid, the glitches, blurs, and repetition add to the sense of dislocation and detachment from reality, like life is being filtered and replayed through a screen.

Part of Mister Miracle’s ambition is to capture a feeling many know intimately, but which can be hard to put into words. King and Gerads articulate that dread succinctly, often with a single phrase: “Darkseid Is.” Panels black out without warning, flashing the phrase in typewriter lettering. It interrupts moments of loneliness or disassociation. But it can also be a punchline, or a shrug: When Big Barda says it, for example, she could just as well say “shit happens.”

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Published September 25, 2019

Book Covers of Note, September 2019

OK, this is super-late even by my standards of lateness, so let’s just get on with it because we’ve all got stuff to do…

Arctic Smoke by Randy Nikkel Schroeder; design by Michel Vrana (NeWest Press / September 2019)

Aeneis by Vergilius; design by Gray318 (Jaguar / 2019)

Jon will surely not thank me for mentioning this, but the Aeneid cover reminds me of the brilliant 2007 Penguin Modern Classics editions of Kafka designed by Mother and Jim Stoddart (featuring photographs by Gary Card and Jacob Sutton), and I can’t pass up the opportunity to post them here. They still look extraordinary…

(And in the process of looking for images, I cam across a nice essay from a couple of years ago by designer Clare Skeats discussing the Kafka covers at Grafik)

The Dutch House by Ann Patchet; design by Robin Bilardello; painting by Noah Saterstrom (HarperCollins / September 2019)

The Enlightenment of Bees by Rachel Linden; design by Kimberly Glyder (Thomas Nelson / July 2019)

Frankly in Love by David Yoon; design by Owen Gildersleeve (G. P. Putnam / September 2019)

From the Shadows by Juan José Millás; design by Tree Abraham (Bellevue Literary Press / August 2019)

In Her Feminine Sign by Dunya Mikhail; design by Janet Hansen (New Directions / July 2019)

High School by Tegan & Sara; design by Na Kim (MCD / September 2019)

The cover of the Canadian edition published by Simon & Schuster Canada (left) was designed by Emy Storey. The cover of the UK edition published by Virago (right) was adapted from the Canadian design by Nico Taylor.

Inland by Téa Obrecht; design by Jaya Miceli; art by Tamara Ruiz (Random House / August 2019)

The Innocents by Michael Crummey; design by Emily Mahon; art by Diana Dabinett (Doubleday / August 2019)

Listening to the Wind by Tim Robinson; design by Mary Austin Speaker (Milkweed / September 2019)

De New York Trilogie by Paul Auster; design by Moker Ontwerp (De Bezige Bij / August 2019)

This reminded me of Evan Gaffney‘s 2012 ‘film noir’ covers for the Vintage paperbacks of James M. Cain.

Permanent Record by Mary H. K. Choi; design by Lizzy Bromley; illustration by gg (Simon & Schuster / September 2019)

This reminded me of the panels of Tony Abruzzo romance comics that Roy Lichtenstein liked to lift from.

gg also illustrated the cover of Mary H. K. Choi’s previous novel Emergency Contact.

Oh and Koyama Press is publishing a new book by gg called Constantly in January 2020. It looks beautiful.

Quichotte by Salman Rushdie; design by Gray318 (Jonathan Cape / August 2019)

Rail by Miranda Pearson; design David Drummond (McGill-Queen’s University Press / September 2019)

Safe Houses I Have Known by Steve Healey; design by Alban Fischer (Coffee House Press / September 2019)

One to add to the redacted covers list.

Shame On Me by Tessa McWatt; design by Allison Colpoys (Scribe / August 2019)

This has some nice Alvin Lustig / New Directions vibes.

Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg; design by Tyler Comrie; illustration Justin Metz (Knopf / June)

For some reason this made me think of the 2015 cover for I Am Sorry to Think I Raised a Timid Son by Kent Russell designed by Peter Mendelsund (with hand lettering by Janet Hansen and photography by George Baier IV)

Sontag by Benjamin Moser; design by Tom Etherington; photograph by Richard Avedon (Allen Lane / September)

The cover of the US edition published by Ecco was designed by Allison Saltzman. Title only appears on the spine (which, if my social media is anything to go by, gets big high fives from book designers everywhere).

To The Island of Tides by Alistair Moffat; Art by Andy Lovell; art direction Gill Heeley (Canongate / August 2019)

It’s lovely to see contemporary landscape art featuring prominently on book covers of late…

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates; design Greg Mollica; art Calida Garcia Rawles (One World / September 2019)

The New York Times ran a short article about the genesis of this cover earlier this year.

For the font-curious, the typeface is Alias Harbour according to the folks at Fonts In Use. Another calligraphic type alternative to the ubiquitous Lydian perhaps?

We Are the Lost and Found by Helene Dunbar; design Nicole Hower; illustration by Adams Carvalho (Sourcebooks / September 2019)

The World Doesn’t Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott; design by Laywan Kwan; art by Fahamu Pecou (Liveright / August 2019)

And I am definitely here for the contemporary figure painting on book covers trend…

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Published September 5, 2019

AIGA Medalist, Alexander Girard

In April this year, AIGA posthumously honoured designer Alexander Girard (1907-1993) with an AIGA Medal, recognizing “his effortless ability to move across innumerable surfaces and scales, his life-long innovative and inspirational cross-disciplinary design practice, and his undeniable impact on mid-century modernism in America.”

Alexander Girard was a designer who defied easy categorization, mostly because he worked—and excelled—in every field. Tireless, creative, and immersive, Girard was most comfortable when absorbed in a project, and he managed to complete a staggering catalog raisonné in his lifetime: houses, department stores, trendy restaurants, less trendy restaurants, logos, a terrazzo material, an airline, a folk art museum, even an imaginary land with its own language…
…Girard’s colorful, geometric, typography-driven, and folk-inspired personal aesthetic became indistinguishable from the midcentury look still sold by the Michigan-based company [Herman Miller]. As later brand director… Sam Grawe wrote back in 2008 for Dwell, “colors hitherto considered gauche—magenta, yellow, emerald green, crimson, orange—became a part of the company’s formal vocabulary, and in time, the world’s.”

Herman Miller — the company with which Girard is most closely associated — recently posted an extended cut of the tribute video made for the AIGA’s celebration of Girard’s life and work:

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Published September 3, 2019

More Tigers

(via Peanuts On This Day)

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Published August 30, 2019

Reader’s Block

I’ve been in a bit of reading slump of late so I can relate to this recent cartoon by Grant Snider for the New York Times Books Review (although, thankfully, I’ve not been banned from the library!).

Grant has a couple of new books coming out that are available for pre-order. What Color is Night? will be published by Chronicle Kids in November, and I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf will be published by Abrams in April 2020.

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Published August 16, 2019

Book Covers of Note, August 2019

Here are your August book covers of note. Another good month, I think?

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath; design by Gray318 (Faber & Faber / July2019)

This is apparently available now (according to Faber’s Instagram at least!), but I haven’t been able to find it online. If anyone cares to share the ISBN, I will try to add a link.

The new design is inspired by the 1966 cover designed by Shirley Tucker.

Berta Isla by Javier Marías; design by Kelly Blair (Knopf / August 2019)

This is an interesting change in direction from the cover of The Infatuations by Javier Marías designed by Isabel Urbina Peña and published by Knopf in 2013.

(The UK covers for Javier Marías’ novels published by Hamish Hamilton are photographic. If anyone can supply me with the design/photo credits, I’d be happy to add them in here for reference!).

The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W. W. Norton / August 2019)

The Catholic School by Edoardo Albinati; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2019)

Thank you to the good folks on Twitter who helped me identify the designer and then the typeface. It turns out the type is “Lydia” from Colophon Foundry — a revival of the Bold Condensed styles of (you guessed it!) Lydian.

Chances Are… by Richard Russo; dsign by Kelly Blair (Knopf / July 2019)

Doxology by Nell Zink; design Jack Smyth (Fourth Estate / August 2019)

And you can read a recent interview with Jack about his work at It’s Nice That.

Ether by Evgenia Citkowitz design by Henry Sene Yee (Picador / July 2019)

You can listen to Henry discussing his work with Holly Dunn on the latest Spine podcast.

Follow Me To Ground by Sue Rainsford; design and illustration Beci Kelly (Transworld / August 2019)

The cover of the US edition, which will be published by Scribner in January 2020(!) was designed by Jaya Miceli featuring a collage by Toon Joosen.

Lithium by Walter A. Brown; design by Keith Hayes (W. W. Norton / August 2019)

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa; design by Tyler Comrie (Pantheon / August 2019)

More Noble Than War by Nicholas Blincoe; design by Steve Leard (Constable / August 2019)

This reminded me of Henry’s cover for A Wall in Palestine by René Backman published by Picador in 2010…

The Need by Helen Phillips; design Rachel Willey (Simon & Schuster / July 2019)

I stopped keeping track of ‘flora-intertwined-with-type’ covers a while ago, but this would be a nice addition to that list.

One Giant Leap by Charles Fishman; design by Richard Ljoenes (Simon & Schuster / June 2019)

Our Women on the Ground edited by Zahra Hankir; design by Rosie Palmer; hand lettering by Lily Jones (Harvill Secker / August 2019)

The cover of the US edition published by Penguin was designed by Na Kim.

The Perfect Plan by Bryan Reardon; design by Jason Booher (Dutton / June 2019)

I like this cover a lot, but it is surprisingly un-bonkers for Jason. I would not have guessed he was the designer!

The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán; design by Tree Abraham (Coffee House Press / August 2019)

Tree also designed the cover of the UK edition published by And Other Stories last year. She wrote about the process of designing both covers for Spine not so long ago (they really are doing a better a job of this than me, aren’t they?).

The Revolutionaries by Joshua Furst; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)

I think it’s kind of interesting to see these two designs side by side….

Speaking of Summer by Kalisha Buckhanon; design Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / July 2019)

Sadly this image doesn’t quite do justice to just how brilliantly orange this cover is in IRL. And apparently flowery collages are the new thing…

The Western Alienation Merit Badge by Nancy Jo Cullen; design by Michel Vrana (Buckrider Books / May 2019)

Michel has also dusted off his comics publishing endeavour Black Eye Books if you’d like to support him. There is a new book by Jay Stephens planned for next month.

White Flights by Jess Row; design by Oliver Munday (Graywolf / August 2019)

This is one of my favourite covers of the year so far, I think.

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Published July 23, 2019

Book Covers of Note, July 2019

Oof, I am very late with this month’s covers post. I think it’s quite a good one though as these things go…?

Categorically Famous by Guy Davidson; design by Michel Vrana (Stanford University Press / June 2019)

Swishy retro fonts are definitely a ‘thing’ now. In this instance I believe the font is Cabernet JF — an unofficial revival of Benguiat Caslon — which has been mentioned here before. The sans is Futura of course. I rather rashly went on record not so long ago saying Futura is a little overused on university press covers (much to the chagrin of Robert Bringhurst!), but I think it works here.

Come Closer and Listen by Charles Simic; design by Allison Saltzman; art by Jessica Brilli (Ecco / July 2019)

Cruising by Alex Espinoza; design by Robert Bieselen (Unnamed Press / June 2019)

More swishy-swishiness. The positioning of the first “i” in “Cruising” does some work here.

Cults by Herb Lester Associates; design and illustration Brian Rau (Herb Lester Associates / July 2019)

The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg; design by Pablo Delcan (New Directions / July 2019)

Pablo also designed the cover of Ginzburg’s Happiness, as Such, also out this month from New Directions.

Happiness, as Such by Natalia Ginzburg; design by Pablo Delcan

Expectation by Anna Hope; design by Jo Thomson (Doubleday / July 2019)

Feel Free by Nick Laird; design by Yang Kim (W.W. Norton / July 2019)

The Fell by Robert Jenkins; design by Jason Anscomb (RedDoor Press / July 2019)

The Great American Cheese War by Paul Flower; design by Dan Mogford (Farrago / June 2019)

(There is probably a post to be had of covers that feature ‘guns’ made of other things. Although I’m struggling to think of any other examples off the top of my head, so maybe I’m thinking of artworks and/or magazine covers? Or just imagining it?)

A Half-Baked Idea by Olivia Potts; design by Helen Crawford-White (Fig Tree / July 2019)

Harbart by Nabarun Bhattacharya; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / June 2019)

Maggie Brown & Others by Peter Orner; design by Lucy Kim (Little, Brown & Co. / July 2019)

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead; design by Oliver Munday (Doubleday / July 2019)

Novacene by James Lovelock; design by Tom Etherington (Allen Lane / July 2019)

Radical Ritual by Neil Shister; design by Sarah Brody (Counterpoint / July 2019)

Say Say Say by Lila Savage; design by Jennifer Carrow (Knopf / July 2019)

The Travelers by Regina Porter; design by Suzanne Dean (Jonathan Cape / July 2019)

The cover of the US edition published by Hogarth last month was designed by Michael Morris.

I would have have a hard time telling you which country these covers came from if I didn’t already know. Using the US spelling “Travelers” on the UK cover confuses the issue, but I don’t think either cover looks particularly American, which is kind of interesting. Michael Morris recently discussed his version with Spine.

Turbulence by David Szalay; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Scribner / July 2019)

The cover of the UK edition of Turbulence, published at the end of last year by Jonathan Cape, reminded me of Anne Twomey’s 2015 cover for Munich Airport by Greg Baxter…

Interestingly, the barcode on the front of the UK edition actually works. You can read an interview from earlier this year with designer Rosie Palmer about the UK cover over at Spine.

Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky; design by Janet Hansen; ice rendered by Justin Metz (Knopf / July 2019)

The Weil Conjectures by Karen Olsson; design by Emma Ewbank (Bloomsbury / July 2019)

The cover of the US edition published by FSG this month was designed by Alison Forner and Thomas Colligan, with art by Jessica Halonen.

weil conjectures US design alison forner and thomas colligan art jessica halonen

We Went to the Woods by Caite Dolan-Leach; design by Jaya Miceli (Random House / July 2019)

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Published June 21, 2019

Book Covers of Note, June 2019

Apparently it is June already. I’m pretty sure it’s a terrible mistake.

Here are your book covers of note.

Aug 9 — Fog by Kathryn Scanlan; design by Na Kim (Farrar Straus & Giroux MCD / June 2019)

Cogito by Victor Dixen; design by Jim Tierney (Collection R / May 2019)

This reminded me of something. I’m not sure exactly what. The best I could up with was Nicole Caputo‘s stripey op-art cover for Liveblog by Megan Boyle, but that’s not it at all…

The Girl at the Door by Veronica Raimo; design by Julian Humphries (Fourth Estate / June 2019)

The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey; design by Will Staehle (Harper Voyager / June 2019)

Lie With Me by Philippe Besson; design by Na Kim (Scribner / April 2019)

The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write by Gregory Orr; design by Jared Oriel (W.W. Norton / June 2019)

Malina by Ingeborg Bachman; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / June 2019)

Norco ’80 by Peter Houlahan; design by Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / June 2019)

November by Jorge Galán; design by Steve Leard (Little, Brown / June 2019)

I’m starting to detect a colour scheme at work here, Steve… ;-)

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong; design by Darren Haggar; photograph by Sam Contis (Penguin Press / June 2019)

Are we seeing a trend for close cropped photographs of… arms? (Don’t get me wrong, these are both beautiful photographs / covers.)

Also of note in a compare-and-contrast sort of way, the cover of the UK edition of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous published by Jonathan Cape was designed by Suzanne Dean: