Catch a Wave

So who's idea do you think it was to make "Beach Boys" bigger than "Brian Wilson?" Marketing department or designer? I know what I think ;-)

Time to Update Your Links

The syntax of links on this blog will change on Wednesday, July 25.

If you link to or bookmark http://www.thebookdesignreview.com, you don't have to do anything.

If you have linked to http://nytimesbooks.blogspot.com in your blogroll or have that URL bookmarked, please update your link to http://www.thebookdesignreview.com.

If you've bookmarked, linked to or shared a link that contains "nytimesbooks.blogspot.com..." in the URL, that link will be broken.

RSS should be unaffected if you subscribe using the Feedburner links in the "About the BDR" links to the right. I'll provide up-to-date RSS links when the time comes.

Stay tuned, as I will post new links to the most popular posts, such as Best of 2006, favorites of 2007, and a few more.

The Ballad of Lee Cotton

Wonderfully evocative of the 50's, and the different shoes make sense given Lee Cotton's life: A "black soul in a white wrapper" who begins a new life as a woman. Or better stated by the character:

"All my life I been hounded for being born the wrong color, or the wrong sex, or dating the wrong person, or living in the wrong place. We ain't what we're born. We're what we do with ourselves.

Interview with Paul Buckley

No doubt one of a bajillion links to Hear Hear's great interview with Penguin art director Paul Buckley. Shawn at Iridesco was nice enough to send the link for part 2.

And in case you missed it, here's part 1.

Thanks, Shawn!

The City Is a Rising Tide

Really, really beautiful. That's all I have to say.

Winkie

The protagonist of "Winkie" is a sentient, animate teddy bear on trial for a number of crimes including Unabomber-style terrorism...

The Ruins

It's never really good when the word "preposterous" appears in the first sentence of a review of your book. Worse is when your book features killer plants that "not only try to ensnare all of Mr. Smith’s characters, but also succeed in choking his novel to death." Ouch. On to the cover: I think it's easy to look at the title treatment and say "hmmm, that's too predictable." But to be honest, I can see myself doing something like that. Can you? C'mon, be honest :-)

Talk Talk / Tooth and Claw

There weren't many of you who liked the US cover of TC Boyle's Talk Talk when I first posted it. Now check out the UK version (bottom).

What amazingly different takes on the same book. What's the book about? A woman has her identity stolen and ultimately figures out the culprit is and undertakes a cross-country chase w/ her boyfriend to find him. Oh yeah, she's deaf too.

The UK version could be the cover for dozens if not hundreds of books. That's the kiss of death for me.





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And a little bonus post: what scares you more, a panther or raccoons? Yeah, me too. Raccoons are nasty.

Kensington Gardens

Groovy, baby, groovy!

Friendship

If you read a review that stated "Drawing on Aristotle, Montaigne, Cicero and Pliny, Epstein lucidly paraphrases and applies wisdom to his own life experience, producing a meditative memoir that is refined and modest in tone, but perhaps too hermetic," would you expect to see something like this? The crazy Rankin Bass type seems really inappropriate.