Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Robin Sloan
I imagine this quirky novel would be a talking point for people interested in the “digital humanities,” as it pits dusty, old books and their creaky scholars against shiny, electronic devices and their optimistic geeks. That’s definitely both exaggeration and simplification as there are characters that walk the analog-digital line, but then it’s also a lighthearted narrative in which many of the characters are archetypal.
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Americus
MK Reed & Jonathan Hill
I found this story centered around a fight to ban a series of fantasy books about witches to be rather black-and-white — and not just because it’s a graphic novel that is drawn that way. The characters are all clearly set into one camp or another, and there is no one in between. There is little sympathy to be found for those on the pro-ban camp, and the extent of their outrage is difficult to understand, especially as none of them admit to reading an entire book.
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Reading Lolita in Tehran
Azar Nafisi
An intriguing concept, pairing a memoir about living through the Iranian Revolution and the resulting totalitarian regime with literary criticism of Western literature as an attempt to put it all into perspective. Unfortunately Nafisi's effort fell flat to me, mostly because the writing feels too weak for the task.
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Print is Dead : Books in our digital age
Jeff Gomez
A few months ago I listened to some excerpts from this book, and finally got around to actually reading the whole thing.
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Jeff Gomez
I have to preface this by saying that I haven't actually read this whole book yet, but rather listened to some excerpts. I will appreciate the irony (noted by Gomez) that I will be reading a book about how reading paper books is dead when the time comes, but I wanted to put down some thoughts before I lost them.
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Ex Libris: confessions of a common reader
Anne Fadiman
I got this book out from the library the same day as The Book of the Bookshelf, and Petroski makes several references to this book, so that was a kind of odd coincidence. I can't remember now what made me seek out these two books specifically. Then I was also thinking about "books about books" and whether I should integrate it as a category.
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The Book on the Bookshelf
Henry Petroski
Possibly you've read something by Henry Petroski before, as he is quite prolific: writing about the pencil, useful things in general, as well as more abstract concepts like Success through Failure.
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Book One
Chip Kidd
One of the great advantages to designing book covers is that you don't ever have to have an idea, much less a thought, ever, in your head. That is the author's job. Through a manuscript, he or she will give you all the ideas and thoughts that you could possibly need to design a jacket.
If you've heard of Chip Kidd before, the phrase "the closest thing to a rock star in graphic design" will probably ring a few bells, if not a huge gonging irritation for the inordinate ubiquity of the quote.
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By Its Cover
Ned Drew & Paul Sternberger
Modern American Book Cover Design
Looking back through all the covers reproduced in this book, I love Alvin Lustig and Paul Rand's covers from the 1950s, a few things here and there from the 1960s, and then nothing much else until the last chapter, looking at the late 1990s with a section focusing on various Knopf designers.
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Penguin by Design
Phil Baines
This is an image-rich overview of Penguin cover designs from 1935–2005. I've been thinking a lot about book design lately, and there is something oddly fresh about some of the older cover designs. Or perhaps it is just refreshing to see a limited palette when compared to the attention-getting standards of today.
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