The Contemporary Dictionary of Sexual Euphemisms
Photo by the author; design by Jennifer Carrow.
What, they couldn't take a picture of a rusty trombone? :-)
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Sunday, January 28, 2007
Five Days in August
Design by Sarah Stengle
Getting dangerously close to Barbara Kruger territory here.
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US Guys
Design by Gray 318.
This has a nice screen print look to it in person, but ultimately left me a little flat. 
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Frost
Cover art and design by Peter Mendelsund.
Finding this was interesting. It doesn't seem like something that would pop off the shelf, but nonetheless it did. It might be because it was shelved next to a book called Checkmate, which is a thriller about Muslim terrorists and stolen Pakistani cruise missiles and which has a cover to match, if you know what I mean. So the elegance of this stood out.
Read the Publishers Weekly and Booklist blurbs on Amazon to get a fuller picture of what this novel is about, but these quotes go reasonably far in explaining the design you see: "Bernhard's glorious talent for bleak existential monologues is second only to Beckett's," and "For readers who find Beckett too glib and Kafka a mere fusspot." There is something about the overall feel of this that suggests existentialism, the 1960s, and Penguin books from the period.
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Help Me Give Credit Where Credit Is Due
Spurred on by several requests to do so -- and because it's just a good idea -- it's time to start giving the designers whose work is featured here credit for their creations.
So if you know who's designed something featured here and if I haven't already noted the designer's name, please email TheBookDesignReview@yahoo.com or leave a comment on the post itself. I'll try to keep track of all the people who contribute and maybe we'll find a nice publisher who will give us some books to give away as a thank you.
My solemn vow to you, dear reader? I will:
1. Always carry a pen.
2. Carry paper, too.
3. Conquer my fear of said pen puncturing my scrotum.
So first off: anyone know who designed that amazing Allen Shawn memoir (below)?
Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life
Cover Designer: Herb Thornby
Allen Shawn's memoir has been getting a tremendous amount of press, virtually all of it glowing (the NY Times calls it "brave, eccentric and utterly compelling"). This man's got a LOT of fears, and writes: "I am afraid both of closed and of open spaces, and I am afraid, in a sense, of any form of isolation."
I saw this cover and didn't know what to think. I now think it's fantastic. The op art element creates exactly the kind of tension that's portrayed in the book. Is the design moving away from you or toward you? Is there height or depth? Wish you could be where: in or out? Both at the same time? Well, that's probably what it's like to live as Shawn does.
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Babylon's Burning
It's not often that a book review will mention the cover so explicitly:
We are not party to the publishing decisions that require the book to extend from punk to grunge. Maybe it's just an excuse to get two icons - iconoclast Johnny Rotten and martyr Kurt Cobain - on to a cover that shamelessly echoes Peter Biskind's wonderful Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. The jacket designs are the only thing these two volumes have in common.
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Bambi vs. Godzilla
Design by Brian Barth.
A cover that takes direction from one word: "vs." Works for me.
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The Virgin of Flames
Cover designed by Jerry Buckley
Read the NY Times review of this, as attempting to summarize this seems a fool's errand. I'll just say that the author has probably read Genet more than a few times.
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