Better than a book trailer? UK publisher Walker Books has introduced a new type of book cover for the forthcoming YA novel Daylight Savings, which interacts with you when you mouse over it. Try it:

Pretty neat.

Artists create 164 unique speculative designs for Nabokov’s Lolita:

As does artist Jim Tierney for Jules Verne’s classics:

Does book design matter to you? If you weren’t interested in reading these books before, do the spiffy new covers convince you to give the book a shot? I’m curious.

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[Via The Rumpus and The Millions.]

Yum.

I would totally read a novel based on Craigslist Missed Connections.

I would also totally enjoy book reports made out of cake. (See left.)

Teenagers on Salinger.

Interlinked short stories via geocaches.

For you book design lovers: 45 beautifully designed book covers and classic titles turned into cigarette packs.

Finnegan’s Wank.

McSweeney’s reimagines The Baby-sitter’s Club for the new decade.

How to be a literary manboy of New York City.

Aaand to get you through the rest of your week: the ultimate graphic novel, in six panels: Read more »

Uh. Is that what I think it is?

Where famous writers delivered their first (and last) words.

The Caustic Cover Critic on Tutis, a publisher that takes public domain works and puts “ridiculously inappropriate covers on them” (see left), via The Second Pass.

The five stages of grief publishing.

Seven books that changed the world, if only they actually existed.

“I can’t control the kittens. Too many whiskers! Too many whiskers!” This and more from a husband who talks in his sleep, broadcast to the world by his adoring wife. Via The Millions.

The WSJ discusses the death of the slush pile, and M. A. Orthofer of The Literary Saloon responds.

Oh, this is sad. An anonymous visitor who is known to leave roses and cognac on Edgar Allen Poe’s grave for the writer’s birthday has broken tradition for the first time in over sixty years.

Lit 101 class in 3 lines or less, via HTMLGIANT.

Aaaand just for kicks, the Spampersand: Read more »

So, judging a book by its cover is like cardinal sin numero uno, right?  We’re in an era when people often find books NOT because of their quality but because they have a pretty cover or they have a long enough title that it matches one of their google search terms. So I should be fighting against the valorization of pretty book covers, right?

Yipes, wrong, I guess.  My design nerdery means that I actually love to browse all the book covers in the bookstore.  I did some graphic design in college and led my own campaign against ugly flyers. That’s how seriously I take design.  This love of all things pretty, well-designed, well-composed, with nice typography means that I’m totally digging this list of the best book covers from 2009 from The Book Design Review blog.  My favorites from the list below the fold:

Read more »

Moby Dick, page 59

An artist draws one picture for every page of Moby Dick, via Vol. 1 Brooklyn.

7 lessons in novel writing inspired by Terminator: Salvation, via Electric Literature.

Remember the time Hugh Grant got drunk and accidentally bought a Warhol?

How to turn off the Internet while writing on your computer.

Stereotyping readers by their favorite authors, via largehearted boy.

Music evolution in action.

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Edgar Allen Pug

John Pupdike, Edgar Allen Pug, and other literary pets.

The best book covers of 2009.

The origin of modern individual consciousness comes not from great literature, but rather from the humble spaces between words.

Twisted kids’ book parodies: Dude, They’re Going to Chop Your Balls Off!, Horton Hires A Ho!, My First Rave.

A step-by-step guide on how to become the most famous author in the world. Or, a list of everything John Cusack did in 2012.

100 mythical creatures in haiku, once a day from yesterday until March 10.

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Newsflash: being shifty-eyed can boost your creativity. Excellent.

Palin poetry.

Computer says Jane Austen and Charles Dickens are not good writers at all. Computer says no.

A Portrait of the “Artist” as a Young Man, The “Great” Gatsby, and other great works of literature made sarcastic by quotation marks. [Thanks, Courtney!]

Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle–beloved by violent guerilla troops around the world–secretly always wanted to be a poet.

Read more »

Is November also National Book Cover Redesign Month? NaBoCoReMo? Did nobody tell me?

Carin Goldberg’s iconic series design from the late 1980s has been replaced with an ostensibly hipper-looking one:

Art director John Gall has also undertaken a book cover redesign project. The assignment: redesign Vladimir Nabokov’s entire book covers, all 21 of them. The result: 21 beautiful specimen boxes (a lovely homage to Nabokov’s passion for butterfly collecting), each created by a different designer: Read more »