The Mother of All Book Tours
This fall, Davy Rothbart (My Heart Is an Idiot, FOUND Magazine) is very likely coming to a town near you. The most up to date information on Rothbart’s tour can be found here.
View Davy Rothbart, My Heart is an Idiot in a larger map
Has there been an incredibly elaborate puzzle embedded in our book jackets? Maybe. For now I’ll just say McNally Jackson is at Stage 1.
Today’s theme: diamonds.
- The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
- In the Plex by Steven Levy
- Why I Love Barthes by Alain Robbe-Grillet
- Uncommon Sense by Gary S. Becker and Richard A. Posner
From the iconic book cover Hall of Fame, courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center.
There’s something Day of the Jackal about this jacket. Stephen Dedalus, secret agent?
Nabokov on his 1944 book Nikolai Gogol:
This little book has cost me more trouble than any other I have composed … I would like to see the Englishman who would write a book on Shakespeare in Russian.
(Always nice to start the day with good news.)
Congratulations to our five finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize:
- Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything by David Bellos (Current Interest)
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Current Interest)
- Molotov’s Magic Lantern: Travels in Russian History by Rachel Polonsky (History)
- Double Shadow by Carl Phillips (Poetry)
- Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor (Fiction)
David Bellos and Daniel Kahneman are also finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. And it’s a banner year for Phillips: not only is he a NBCC award finalist as well, but Double Shadow was named a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award.
Today’s theme: the ocean.
- The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
- Breath by Tim Winton
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- Navigators of the Contemporary by David A. Westbrook
- Displacement by Leslie Harrison
- Aye, And Gomorrah: And Other Stories by Samuel R. Delany
- The Boat by Nam Le
I knew there was something about Sarah Manguso’s book The Guardians that looked familiar…
“I silently judge others by their bookshelves.”
So, so true. From the AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers exhibit.
Today’s theme: fog.
- Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
- Locke 1928 by Shawna Yang Ryan
- Presence by Arthur Miller
- Something Is Out There by Richard Bausch
- The Assassin’s Song by M.G. Vassanji
Today’s theme: profiles.
- Incognito by David Eagleman
- Dangerous Frames by Nicholas J. G. Winter
- The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
- The Story of Psychology by Morton Hunt
- Bush on the Couch by Justin A. Frank
- The Golden Road by Caille Millner
Of course the FSG art department organizes the books by the color spectrum. What did you expect, the Dewey Decimal System?
There’s something about David Bellos that looses book designers’ imaginations. Here’s the French cover for The Fish and the Banana Tree: A Legendary Story of Translation. (Or, as it’s known on these shores, Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything.)
Our own Charlotte Strick pulls back the curtain on the process of book design in The Atlantic:
We cross our fingers and toes and say silent prayers to the design gods in the hopes that our babies don’t end up in the recycling bin—or, worse, that the chosen design is the one we like the least.
