http://www.readerville.com/index.php en karen@karentempler.com Copyright {entry_date format="%Y"} {entry_date format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%i:%s%Q"} http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/the-great-perhaps-by-joe-meno/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/the-great-perhaps-by-joe-meno/#When:15:00:39Z by Karen Templer | When I look back at the book covers of 2009 and pick a favorite, there’s a very good chance it will be that of Joe Meno’s The Great Perhaps, designed by Jaime Keenan. I love the curious mix of images: a squid, a plane, a bird and a bomb. I love that they’re all plopped right on top of each other, as if they got dumped into the document and just happened to form a nice Hydra right like that. But what I really love and admire is the choice to differentiate them from each other by extracting the magenta layer from one, the black layer from another, and so on. The squid is so appealing, I’m happy he’s the one who got to keep all his parts. And then that black blob (squid ink?) on top of it all for the type to sit in. It’s just so chic and whimsical; I’m dying to know what any of it means.  Most Coveted Covers 2009-06-02T08:00:39-08:00 http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/short-story-reader/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/short-story-reader/#When:15:00:34Z by Karen Templer | As we reach the end of Short Story Month, I want to call attention to the work of an unidentified man from Georgia, known only as the Short Story Reader. The Web is full of short fiction, of course, but isn’t always easy to ferret out. That doesn’t slow Short Story Man down. He finds it, he reads it, and he shares his thoughts—as well as the all-important link.  Blog of the Week 2009-05-29T08:00:34-08:00 http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/harpers-short-fiction-mash-ups/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/harpers-short-fiction-mash-ups/#When:14:00:18Z by D.G. Strong | Well, here’s a whole bunch of something that I like: a new series of slender collections of older short stories, packaged up in clean, modern and inexpensive editions. As an added bonus, each one comes paired with a contemporary story by a complementary author. (Conveniently also Harper Perennial authors—it’s a good marketing idea.) The Wilde is matched with a Simon Van Booy story; Cather comes paired up with Lydia Peelle; Tolstoy with Holly Goddard Jones. There are three others, but you get the idea. The design of the series alludes to this combination of old and new, featuring vintage cut-out paper-doll-like photographs of the “main” author balanced by a modern, sophisticated type treatment that stays the same from title to title. The second author isn’t supported on the cover, so it’s a nice surprise when you open one up. Harper has a hit on its hands, I think, as each volume clocks in at ten bucks or less. I know I want them all. Most Coveted Covers 2009-05-26T07:00:18-08:00 http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/backlist/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/backlist/#When:15:00:29Z by Karen Templer | Someone at HarperCollins recently seized on the idea that readers don’t really care about publication dates, only about good books, and launched a blog called Backlist. At the top of the site, they define “backlist” as “a book published over one year ago,” though in reality—in average publisher/publicist behavior and presentation—backlist is anything not published within the last couple of months. But the blog is dedicated to highlighting one “older” book every day. Typically the books are chosen out of some relevance—the author or topic is in the news for whatever reason, it’s a birthday or anniversary of some sort, etc.—but, regardless of criteria, it’s lovely to see a publisher paying attention to books they’ve published and are still warehousing. Maybe it’s just crazy enough to catch on! Blog of the Week 2009-05-22T08:00:29-08:00 http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/tiepolo-pink-by-roberto-calasso/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/tiepolo-pink-by-roberto-calasso/#When:15:00:54Z by Karen Templer | I’ve been stockpiling Roberto Calasso books for years, because a) there’ve been several fantastic covers and b) I like to think I’m smart enough to appreciate the contents. (As long as I go on not reading them, we never have to know!) I saw his latest, Tiepolo Pink in the Knopf catalog—in black and white!—and swooned. A new Calasso! And so pretty! I should have guessed it was Peter Mendelsund’s work (as I learned when the color version turned up at the Book Cover Archive). It’s so perfect. Put a Tiepolo fresco on the “ceiling” of a plain box and the box instantly reads as a gallery—a contemporary space for viewing and reflecting on the work. Plus it has that “do come in” attraction about it. Unfortunately, there’s no seeing it in the flesh until October. Most Coveted Covers 2009-05-19T08:00:54-08:00 http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/how-books-got-their-titles/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/how-books-got-their-titles/#When:15:00:14Z by Karen Templer | Such a simple and terrific concept this one: How Books Got Their Titles. Every day Gary Dexter posts a little essay explaining where a book’s name came from. The titles are generally well-known and aren’t necessarily all that unusual—you’ll find E.E. Cummings’ No Thanks as well as Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World—but their origins aren’t self-evident from simply reading the books. He’s been doing this for a few months now, and the research and pace are both impressive. Some of the best entries are about titles you mistakenly thought you knew the story behind, or those you never thought to question. Bonus points for giving his blog about inscrutable titles has such a profoundly, er, scrutable one. And thanks to Jose Furtado for the link. Blog of the Week 2009-05-15T08:00:14-08:00 http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/the-selected-works-of-ts-spivet-by-reif-larsen/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/the-selected-works-of-ts-spivet-by-reif-larsen/#When:16:00:49Z by D.G. Strong | Yeah, so this is really more about the entire package rather than just the cover. Reif Larsen’s The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet is crammed to the margins with little doodle-y drawings and maps and footnotes. The drawings reference dictionary illustrations and artists’ sketches and drunken cocktail napkin notes but they all add up to something larger, some way of subtly enhancing what is actually a pretty straightforward narrative. And it’s all just incredibly, mind-bogglingly beautiful. Are the little hoo-has and doo-whats absolutely necessary to make the story better? Probably not, but they certainly make it more fun, like those dopey “Easter eggs” do on DVDs. The cover itself is pretty obviously lifted from the oeuvre of Joseph Cornell and I think it’s a tiny bit underbaked in comparison to the interior—it’s pretty, but I wish it had the sparky, improvised energy of the interior scratches. Significantly, there’s no designer credit, so I wonder if Larsen did it himself and chickened out when it came to reflecting the interior, or if Penguin Press took it away from him in an effort to smooth it out. Or wait! I bet it’s the legendary Barnes & Noble jackhole who supposedly gets a vote when it comes to choosing covers. Let’s blame her, even though she’s probably going to be downsized in about five minutes. If we’re lucky. Most Coveted Covers 2009-05-12T09:00:49-08:00 http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/lashings-and-lashings-of-ginger-beer/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/lashings-and-lashings-of-ginger-beer/#When:15:30:57Z by Lisa Peet | If you were to draw a Venn diagram of a) people who like to read and b) people who like food, the center section—c) people who like to read about food—would be enormous. There’s something about food and mealtime that’s consistently enhanced in the process of description. Eating is intensely personal and at the same time universal, and it lends itself to memoir, metaphor and myth. Lashings and Lashings of Ginger Beer is an ongoing compendium of memorable literary food, from classics to contemporary, Nikolai Gogol on Christmas Eve dinner to Tama Janowitz on bad New York diner food, and of course Proust‘s madeleines. The three contributors have collected a mouthwatering sampler of tasty writing, nicely indexed by foodstuff, author and title. There’s something for whatever you’re craving—in my case, just in time for summer (which would have been his winter), Pablo Neruda’s ode to the tomato: “It sheds / its own light, / benign majesty.” (Thanks to Maud for the link.) Blog of the Week 2009-05-08T08:30:57-08:00 http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/grey-gardens-by-sara-rebekah-and-albert-maysles/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/grey-gardens-by-sara-rebekah-and-albert-maysles/#When:15:00:01Z by Karen Templer | Making an HBO version of a cult-classic documentary is one thing. Making a book about it is a different challenge altogether. No doubt timed to coincide with the former, the latter is the work of the Maysles family, and like the original, it’s called simply Grey Gardens. But how do you convey, in print, the crazy jumbledy bohemian squalor captured in the original film? They’ve presented everything in what is basically a mash-up of documentary imagery and naive collage, and taken a kitchen sink approach to the cover. Half of me wishes it was a more competent (more artful) collage, while the other half thinks it’s exactly as it should be. Either way, I am getting this book asap. Most Coveted Covers 2009-05-05T08:00:01-08:00 http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/emerging-writers-network/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/emerging-writers-network/#When:19:00:25Z by Karen Templer | I’m repeating myself a tiny bit, but I hope you’ll forgive me. Dan Wickett has one of the most respected litblogs out there—his Emerging Writers Network—and what better time to highlight it than on the first day of Short Story Month, which he’s been celebrating in May for a few years now. This year, he’s set the ambitious goal of reading and writing about three stories per day. “By month’s end, if all goals are met, just under 100 short stories will have been read and commented upon.” That’s worth tuning in for. Blog of the Week 2009-05-01T12:00:25-08:00 http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/ches-afterlife-by-michael-casey/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/ches-afterlife-by-michael-casey/#When:15:00:25Z by D.G. Strong | It’s pretty hard to resist this, isn’t it? Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image is a book about the power of an unlikely logo, so I love that it’s basically just a book with a logo on it. This famous image of Che Guevara is a very strange beast: an image of a revolutionary, a murderer, a martyr. And yet the only way to deal with a book about his power as an image is to just slap it on there. I love that the designer, Mark Abrams, scaled down the original image—small is the new big—and that he convinced the publishers to leave all the type off the cover. If anyone can go subtitle-free, it’s Che. I also applaud that oddball yellow. You see this image all the time on hipster t-shirts and, as we know, hipsters favor Commie red and sweatpant gray or military green; it’s in their handbook. But the yellow is interesting. Does it indicate cowardice? Injustice? Jaundice? Most Coveted Covers 2009-04-28T08:00:25-08:00 http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/and-the-pursuit-of-happiness/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/and-the-pursuit-of-happiness/#When:15:00:00Z by Karen Templer | Just in case there’s any chance you don’t already know this, Maira Kalman (Max Makes a Million, Sayonara, Mrs. Kackleman) is blogging for the New York Times again. Well, in her way she is. Her last “Op-Extra” column/blog became the book Principles of Uncertainty. Her new one, And the Pursuit of Happiness began in January and is a monthly affair, wherein she tackles subjects relating to American democracy—the first was the inauguration; the most recent is the Supreme Court. It publishes on the last Friday of each month and is actually worth the wait. Blog of the Week 2009-04-24T08:00:00-08:00 http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/celtic-tales-retold/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/celtic-tales-retold/#When:17:00:41Z by Pat D'Amico | The ancient Celts were a fascinating people, and their influence remains remarkably far-reaching. The original ecologists, who worshipped Mother Nature and the preservation of the planet (as did few others), they also bequeathed a bardic tradition of storytelling that influenced everything from the legend of King Arthur to Tolkien to present day superheroes and online gaming. The Book of Invasions, the Ulster Cycle, the Mabinogion, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chrétien de Troyes, Bullfinch, Lady Gregory, W.B. Yeats, T.H. White and Mary Stewart are among the well-known references. Here’s a list of some of my favorite, more modern, reimaginings of Celtic lore: The Odd Shelf 2009-04-23T10:00:41-08:00 http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/hold-love-strong-by-matthew-aaron-goodman/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/hold-love-strong-by-matthew-aaron-goodman/#When:16:00:31Z by Karen Templer | I wish I knew for sure what all went into the making of the jacket for Hold Love Strong by Matthew Aaron Goodman. The design credit goes to Christopher Gilbert of Gear Box, and the art credit reads, “Jacket photograph by Marc Volk ... .” So I’m not sure if it’s a photo montage done by Volk or if some portion of it is Volk’s and then Gilbert did some collaging. Whatever it is, it’s lovely. But what’s brilliant here was Gilbert’s decision to slot the letters of the title into that center band, as if it’s one of those ubiquitous signboards—the random red letters being what instantly evokes the variety. There is the faintest suggestion of the clear plastic rectangle such letters are printed on, and the letters themselves are embossed (the whole band is varnished), so it’s not overly literal. Likewise, the imagery does just enough to suggest an inner-city setting without knocking you over the head. Well played. Most Coveted Covers 2009-04-21T09:00:31-08:00 http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/52-books/ http://www.readerville.com/index.php/journal/view/52-books/#When:19:00:26Z by Karen Templer | I find myself following a lot of links to the personal blogs of readers—reading diaries, if you will. God knows there are a billion of them, but it’s rare for me to get drawn in, and I often wonder why that is. When I followed a link to Laura H’s tumblelog 52 Books the other day, it was to a pithy little post that said, simply: To the super cute boy reading Eat, Pray, Love on the N train: Let’s grab a bottle of wine and find you something better to read. I laughed. I clicked to the main page. I read it through, then clicked for more, and before I knew it I was yelling at myself to get back to work. That was a new experience for me where this category of blogs is concerned, so I wanted to share it and to commend the amusing Ms H. Thanks to @vromans for the link. Blog of the Week 2009-04-17T12:00:26-08:00