As e-books gain market share, publishers are gussying up book designs. Free Press vice president and publisher Martha K. Levin says, “the message [is] that even if you’re buying 90 percent of your books on your e-reader, this is the one that you want to have on your bookshelf.” The article highlights 1Q84 as an example of a successfully well-designed physical object, but if you haven’t seen a copy, check out Chip Kidd’s discussion of his work on the book.
Beautifying Books
More on Reading Rainbow
My mom reacts to Reading Rainbow’s demise and points out that the show didn’t have to go and other less edifying programming is eluding the funding crunch.
Butterball HR
McSweeney’s takes us behind the scenes of the Butterball hotline during the holiday craziness. You could also check out Alexander Cockburn’s short piece on Thanksgiving.
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Winter Reads: The Little House Books
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books bring an icy take on America in winter. To Guardian reader Alison Gibbsme, “as a child, they were full of adventure and excitement; as an adult I am shocked at how full of danger they are.”
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Sci-Fi and Colonialism
The Atlantic discusses the link between science fiction and colonialism. “The fact that colonialism is so central to science-fiction, and that science-fiction is so central to our own pop culture, suggests that the colonial experience remains more tightly bound up with our political life and public culture than we sometimes like to think.”
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Lit Pics, Part Deux
On Monday, March 11th, Electric Literature and Lazy Fascist Press celebrated the release of Sam Pink’s novel Rontel. (If you need a refresher, I wrote about Rontel a few weeks ago.)
Nobel Speculation
With the Nobel Prize for Literature to be awarded on October 7th, speculation is heating up at the Literary Saloon as to who might be this year’s main contenders.
The Charleston Bulletin
Sometimes, Virginia Woolf took a break from her busy schedule of constant brilliance in order to write children’s stories for her nephews’ newspaper, The Charleston Bulletin. A taste: “When in a good and merry mood Trisy would seize a dozen eggs, and a bucket of flour, coerce a cow to milk itself, and then mixing the ingredients toss them 20 times high up over the skyline, and catch them as they fell in dozens and dozens and dozens of pancakes.”
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I might only be the one here but I prefer the U.K. edition covers to Chip Kidd’s cover for the U.S. edition of 1Q84. No doubt Kidd’s design concept for the cover is brilliant (transparent jacket representing parallel worlds) but the end product with the faces and the slightly blocky artwork for the title doesn’t convey in me the sense of mystery and wonder I got from the story compared to the U.K. editions.