adalis martinez – The Casual Optimist

A quick update this month. Enjoy…

The Book of Eels by Patrick Svensson; design by Grady McFerrin (Ecco / May 2020)

Broadway for Paul by Vincent Katz; design by Janet Hansen; photograph by Beat Streuli (Knopf / April 2020)

Brown Album by Porochista Khakpour; design by Joan Wong (Vintage / May 2020)

This cover immediately reminded me of Helen Crawford-White’s cover A Half-Baked Idea by Olivia Potts published last year…

And then I thought maybe it was a nod to the cover of The White Album by Joan Didion, published in 1979 (the reissue below uses the original cover), and which Fonts in Use informs me uses the typeface Pistilli Roman. But maybe I am over thinking it…?

I was also reminded of these two recent covers, so maybe it is just a thing…?

*All My Mother’s Lovers* by Ilana Masad; design by Lynn Buckley (Dutton / May 2020)

A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet; design by David High (W. W. Norton / May 2020)

Lydian for Lydia…

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio; design by Matthew Flute (McClelland & Stewart / April 2020)

I believe this is only available as an ebook, which seems a bit of shame. It would be nice to see in print. The cover does remind me of something else though. I can’t think what exactly. The best I could come up with was Tyler Comrie‘s cover for The Unwanted by Michael Dobbs. But I feel like there is cover that does something similar with a painting as a background? Possibly I’m just imagining it.

Oh and for those of you who are interested, the design team at Penguin Random House Canada have started posting their work to Instagram as one_last_tweak.

Fracture by André Neuman; design by June Park (Farrar Straus & Giroux / May 2020)

Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall; design by Lynn Buckley (Viking / February 2020)

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / May 2020)

Out of the Shadows by Walt Odets; design by Tom Etherington; photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans (Penguin / May 2020)

I love this image. I believe it was used on the cover of the hardcover in the UK too.

Pelosi by Molly Ball; design by Adalis Martinez (Henry Holt & Co / May 2020)

Pew by Catherine Lacey; design by Luke Bird (Granta / May 2020)

Pew and Pelosi make lovely use of white space…

A Registry of My Passage Upon The Earth by Daniel Mason; design by Gregg Kulick (Little, Brown & Co / May 2020)

Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg; design by Linda Huang (Vintage / May 2020)

The cover of the hardcover was designed by Tyler Comrie, with an illustration by Justin Metz

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

Very Important People by Ashley Mears; design by Amanda Weiss (Princeton University Press / May 2020)

Walking One Step at a Time by Erling Kagge; design by Linda Huang and Oliver Munday (Vintage / April 2020)

This reminded me Gerhard Richter’s blurry landscape paintings.

The hardcover was designed by Jenny Carrow.

Wicked Enchantment by Wanda Coleman; design by Rachel Willey (Black Sparrow Press / April 2020)

1 Comment

Hey. Here are the book covers that have caught my eye online this month. I hope that they bring a little joy in this very grim time.

If you have the means to buy books at the moment (and I appreciate that is not going to be the case for everyone), please consider supporting your local bookstore. I know a lot of stores are taking orders by email even if they are not answering the phone, and many are offering local delivery if curbside pick-up is not currently an option. The situation seems to be changing daily, so if a store wasn’t accepting orders yesterday, they might be today. We are all figuring this out on the fly.

If you are in the US and don’t have access to a local bookstore, there is Bookshop.org who are trying to provide some financial support to independents. If there are similar initiatives elsewhere, let me know — I’m happy to share the link.

Afterlife by Julia Alvarez; design by Jaya Miceli (Algonquin Books / April 2020)

Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth; design by Kimberly Glyder (Graywolf / March 2020)

The Beauty of Your Face by Sahat Mustafah; design by Grace Han (W.W. Norton / April 2020)

Becoming George Orwell by John Rodden; design by Monograph / Matt Avery; illustration by Lauren Nassef (Princeton University Press / February 2020)

I wonder where the eye — particularly the combination of the colour red and the eye — as a symbol of Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four originated? Does it go back to the 1960s and the Penguin paperback designed by Germano Facetti?

I understand that the eye is a short-hand for the surveillance state. But it is almost as if that is now considered the only element of the book worth visualizing (David Pearson’s cover is in an interesting exception in that it cleverly focuses on censorship rather than surveillance).

I haven’t read Nineteen Eighty-Four in years, but my memory is that the infamous “Big Brother is Watching You” poster is a face whose eyes seem to follow you when you move — something I think Matt’s cover above captures quite nicely — not an all-seeing, omniscient eye. The first time I read the novel, I imagined Big Brother looked something like Lord Kitchener / Uncle Sam in the recruitment posters. I was more traumatized by Room 101 to be honest… Has anyone put rats on the cover of Nineteen Eighty-Four?

The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd; design by Sara Wood (Viking / April 2020)

Los Falcón by Melissa Rivero; design by Adalis Martinez (Vintage Espanol / April 2020)

The cover of the English-language US edition published by Ecco last year was designed by Allison Saltzman with lettering by Boyoun Kim.

Godshot by Chelsea Bieker; design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult / March 2020)

I actually read Godshot in manuscript form last year and liked it a lot. It is set in drought-stricken California, but I had Ry Cooder’s soundtrack to Paris, Texas playing in my head the whole time I was reading it.

I also wanted to give a quick shout-out to Nicole who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of last year and bravely shared her story on social media recently. Stay safe, and get well soon, Nicole. :-)

Grief by Svend Brinkmann; design by David A. Gee (Polity Press / April 2020)

David has designed the covers for a number of books by Svend Brinkmann, including Standpoints, which featured on the blog back in March 2018.

Hinton by Mark Blacklock; design by Jamie Keenan (Granta / April 2020)

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke; cover art by Karl J Mountford (Chicken House / April 2020)

Mountford has also created covers for the other two books in the series, Inkspell and Inkdeath. I love these.

A Luminous Republic by Andrés Barba; design by Mark R. Robinson; illustration by Carly Miller (Mariner Books / April 2020)

The cover of the UK edition of A Luminous Republic, which Granta is publishing in a couple of months, was designed by Luke Bird. It’s a really interesting contrast!