Friday Miscellany, January 23

An interview with J.G. Ballard, whose autobiography Miracles of Life I'm currently reading. It's a wonderful book, but I don't know why I'm wasting time reading non-fiction when there are 1,000 novels we all must read.

The catalog for the Gateways book cover exhibit is now available. If this doesn't seem worth your 25 euros, you're reading the wrong blog: "Over 400 cover designs by 53 designers from 14 countries. This 444 page book contains colour reproductions of all the book cover designs featured in the exhibition. Each cover reproduction is accompanied by a small explanatory text by the designer. Other texts include an introductory essay by Andrew Howard, a text by Jon Grey about his work and a text by David Pearson about the development of the Penguin ‘Great Ideas’ series."

Twitter experiment bookd got off to a fast start but is suffering the effects of auto-DM spam. It's still up, so check it out if you're a Twitter user and interested in receiving short-form book recommendations. There's also a blog. My only regret so far is not keeping a list of all the douchenozzles using auto direct messaging so that we could all say hi to my new friends.