Trouble

In the past, a good number of readers have asked "Must the words "A Novel" or "Stories" appear on a book cover?" The answer is now clear: yes, they must be included, and used only to depict facial hair. ;-)

Fragile Things

I'm left wondering if the cute puppy dog and kitty cat are on the back cover. Someone please tell me there's something tongue-in-cheek going on here...

Buy Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders.



The UK version? A bit less of an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach:

A Hedonist in the Cellar, UK cover

Lots of readers liked the American cover. I prefer this one.

Print Magazine Regional Design Annual

Returned from vacation to find the always excellent Print Magazine Regional Design Annual waiting for me. There's some brilliant stuff that I'll be posting throughout the week.

Subscribe to Print magazine

The Female Thing

Laura Kipnis is a controversial academic figure, but I don't know enough about her work (her foci are "political correctness, sexual harassment in the workplace, (and) women’s complicity with consumer culture" according to the Times review) to connect this cover to what she does.

I do know, however, that this image creeps me out. The model is either barely pubescent, or is what lots of American men want the lower half of women to look like. But how that might relate to the book itself, I don't know. Anyone know?

(NOTE: My wife points out that those are "man hands." I think she's right -- the position of the hands suggests those aren't the model's hands. Thoughts?)



A tighter crop on the leaf makes the image a bit more ambiguous:



And what about something that's not so monochrome?

Say Hi to Tom Kelly

Tom is the author of three novels: Payback (1997), The Rackets (2001), and Empire Rising (2005). Both The Rackets and Empire Rising were selected as Notable Books of the Year by the New York Times; read a review of Empire Rising by Joe Klein here.

So Tom: I'll get this started: the cover for Empire Rising is by Henry Sene Yee, yes? Art direction by Susan Mitchell, I'm guessing? What kind of involvement did you have with either of them?



If you haven't read Tom's books, grab a copy below. You'll be glad you did.

Beauty Junkies

Wow, there are so many different ways this topic could have been portrayed. I'm on the fence with this one. I like how the repitition of the image reinforces the scope of the issue; actually, I'm a bit suprised that it's only 15 billion...

AC / DC

Man, those guys in AC/DC haven't aged too well...

Buy this book: AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War

Ghost Plane

A great idea, nicely executed.

Buy this book: Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program

The Gaze

There's a good reason why the type looks so "circus-y": "Loosely organized around a neurotic obese woman and a feisty dwarf, (The Gaze) teems with parallel plots and digressions, freely leaping from modern apartment living in Istanbul to a 19th-century Turkish freak show and fur hunts in 17th-century Siberia."

I think I just found a book for vacation :-)

Buy this book: The Gaze