Sean Manning of the Talking Covers blog spoke with a bunch of authors, editors and artists to take a long, close look at the work of Lorraine Louie, the designer “who came up with the uniform, De Stijl layout” of the inimitable Vintage Contemporaries. And while on the topic of book covers, check out Tammy Fortin’s “New Covers for Old Classics” series she put together for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Covers That Were; Covers That Could’ve Been
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Unread Books
Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, cops to a list of classic books he’s never read. Among them: Jane Eyre, Blood Meridian, and Millions Hall-of-Famer Stoner.
A Worthy Prize
The New York Public Library has named five finalists for its inaugural Harriet Tubman prize, which recognizes non-fiction books that explore the topic of slavery. You may also want to revisit our own Edan Lepucki‘s essay from a few years back on slavery in fiction.
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Goodies from The New Yorker
In this week’s New Yorker, James Wood critiques Paul Auster, while his sometime-subject Don DeLillo offers refreshingly offbeat short fiction.
Desire and Freedom
Recommended Reading: Can desire thrive without freedom? On the works of Margaret Atwood and Michel Houellebecq in The Atlantic. Our essay on Atwood’s vision of the future and review of Ben Jeffery’s Anti-Matter: Michel Houellebecq and Depressive Realism pair nicely.
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