The Dead Fish Museum

Why is dead in italics? Beats the heck out of me.

Does This Look Familiar to Anyone?

So I'm at a trade show and conference in DC and I walk by the HP booth. And I see something like this:



Ring a bell? It should: compare this (and other similar graphics at the HP.com site) to Jonathan Gray's cover of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close:



Is this a blatant, um, homage to Gray, or has he brought the whole hand and finger thing over to corporate advertising? There's no mention of anything other than book design on his Web site.

(Thanks, Keith, for the screengrab.)

The Attack

Quick, someone run to the bookstore. What *is* that dark figure?

This week

Traveling on business for the next week; updates will happen but may be sporadic.

Inhuman Bondage

I understand why so many kinds of type were used -- to emulate a poster from the era -- but that used for the word "inhuman" just doesn't look like it fits.

Translation Nation

First posted almost a year ago as a hardcover, the paperback just came out w/ the same cover, which I like. Who knew that this subject would become just a little more important... :-)

Competitive Eating

If you think "Horsemen of the Esophagus" isn't a great title, there's something wrong with you. Sorry :-)

I do like that there's a bite missing from one of the hot dogs on the "Eat This Book" cover. Ah, it's the small details...

My Bad

On a rainy, cold, craptastic Friday here in Chicago, this made me laugh...

Summer Reading

Now here's a good list of summer reading: the NY Times has named their best works of fiction of the last 25 years. Fairly predictable: Several each from DeLillo, Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy; Toni Morrison's Beloved tops the list. Surprising (to me at least) that Raymond Carver made the cut -- I thought that people had forgotten about him -- and embarassed that I've never heard of Edward Jones' The Known World. I know what *I'm* reading first...

The complete list of books (which of course you can purchase by using that Amazon search box to the right :-)), and the article:

The Top Five:

Beloved
Toni Morrison

Underworld
Don DeLillo

Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy

Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels
John Updike

American Pastoral
Philip Roth

Other Books That Received Multiple Votes

A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole

Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson

Winter's Tale
Mark Helprin

White Noise
Don DeLillo

The Counterlife
Philip Roth

Libra
Don DeLillo

Where I'm Calling From
Raymond Carver

The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien

Mating
Norman Rush

Jesus' Son
Denis Johnson

Operation Shylock
Philip Roth

Independence Day
Richard Ford

Sabbath's Theater
Philip Roth

Border Trilogy
Cormac McCarthy

The Human Stain
Philip Roth

The Known World
Edward P. Jones

The Plot Against America
Philip Roth

The Stolen Child

I'm not a fantasy fan, but whoever designed this--for a book described as a bedtime story for adults, with goblins and such--pretty much nailed it. It's just creepy enough. Deeply saturated greens and reds always shout out EEE-VIL to me.