A couple more highly anticipated fall books now have cover art. J.K. Rowling’s post-Harry Potter effort The Casual Vacancy features a simple, bold design. And the cover of Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth is a throwback to the design motifs of several decades ago.
New Covers for Anticipated Books
Research
Two weeks ago, Tod Goldberg came out with a new novel, Gangsterland, that centers on a hit man in the Chicago Mafia. At The Nervous Breakdown, you can read an excerpt of the novel, as well as one of their trademark self-interviews, in which Goldberg explains that for the past three years, he’s been “writing and writing and writing. But sometimes, that just means I’m not writing at all.” You could also read the author’s dispatch from AWP.
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Willa Cather on Mark Twain
An early example of the literary take-down. Willa Cather on Mark Twain: “He is not a reader nor a thinker nor a man who loves art of any kind.”
Following eBooks at CES
Open Publishing Lab is keeping tabs on all the ebook news coming out of the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas with photos of the various new gadgets and prototypes. (Thanks, Buzz)
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Cockroaches in Skinny Jeans
Is that an iPod Nano? And a fixed gear bike? Uh-oh: you might have hipsters (via).
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Food for the Hungry
Recommended Reading: On the implications of “devouring” literature.
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Imaginary Oklahoma
“Imaginary Oklahoma” writes Oklahoman writer James McGirk, “is an anthology of forty-six writers’ attempts to envision Oklahoma without ever having visited America’s forty-sixth state.” You can get a taste for the pieces over at The Paris Review, or you can check out the book trailer and attempt to envision The Paris Review‘s write-up without actually reading it.
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Laughing at Lawyers
“Yes, it’s easy to laugh at the lawyers. But what if the lawyers were right? For the question that still needs to be answered, I think, is whether the arguments over the novel’s obscenity and obscurity were just temporary historical effects or whether they point to the essence of Joyce’s originality.” A longform look at why we should still find Ulysses scandalous.