Amazon has 60 books in 10 categories up for a vote for “Best Book Covers of 2009.” There’s plenty of literary eye candy in the mix.
Best Book Covers of 2009
Girl Prodigies
Millions contributor Michelle Dean wrote for The New Yorker‘s Page Turner about Opal Whiteley, whose childhood diary–written when she was six on scraps of paper–was published over 100 years ago to meet with acclaim, then controversy, and then obscurity. If girl prodigies interest you as much as they do me, you’ll also love this 2010 piece from Lapham’s Quarterly, on Barbara Newhall Follett.
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Rainy Day Books
Someone left a manuscript out in the rain. On their tumblr blog, Doubleday Books share two pictures of their offices repurposed to dry it out.
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Needs More Pigs
The archives of the British Library have been digitized, and among many other gems is this rejection of George Orwell’s Animal Farm by none other than T.S. Eliot, himself: “And after all, your pigs are far more intelligent than the other animals, and therefore the best qualified to run the farm – in fact, there couldn’t have been an Animal Farm at all without them: so that what was needed (someone might argue), was not more communism but more public-spirited pigs.”
Literary Destinations
Over at The Week, Jeva Lange recommends books based on where your travels are taking you this summer. For other recommended reading, don’t miss our Great Second-Half Book Preview.
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Scathing ‘New York Times’ Book Reviews
Read some of the harshest New York Times book reviews on literary classics, including Lolita, Ulysses, and The Catcher in the Rye.
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Private Ennui
Marlon James, winner of this year’s Man Booker prize, believes that writers of color are “pandering to the white woman.” James touched on some related topics in the conversation with novelist Jeanette Winterson that we told you about yesterday.
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A Life’s Recipe
Just about every review of Virginia Zaharieva’s Nine Rabbits calls attention to its “narrative virtuosity” and the way it “packs several genres into one.” That might sound like empty praise until you check out this excerpt for yourself, and see that the book is not only a memoir, and a coming-of-age story, but it’s also a cookbook.
Anybody else think the cover of “Fat of the Land” looks way too similar to the 1997 Prodigy album cover (http://www.mortesubita.org/sinfonias/artigos/The%20Fat%20of%20The%20Land.jpg)?