On his blog the Caustic Cover Critic, James Morrison tracks down, posts, and comments on beautiful and bizarre book cover design — from current titles to finds from years past. We caught up with him to hear what originally sparked the idea, and asked him to rate some recent covers.
“I’m a fairly lowly writer/editor/designer/illustrator in the real world,” James told us. “My most recent job included designing a children’s book about hepatitis, weirdly enough, so I have a professional interest in design. Couple that with an overpowering obsession with books, and an interest in book design is the natural outcome.”
“When I started writing about book design in 2007, there were already a couple of blogs that I knew of that were doing something similar, but they tended to focus on new books only. I’ve tended to wander all over the place, looking at new books, old books, interviewing designers, and occasionally going off on self-indulgent tangents. I’ve stuck with recent covers that are on books you can still buy, if only to narrow down the options for myself. Ask me on a different day and I’ll probably choose five different covers.”
Click through below for more of his picks.
2666
James says: “A lovely object, and a practical response to the structure of the book (which consists of three novellas and two novels, all interlinked). It worked on me: I’d been a bit turned off by all the Bolaño hype, and had no real intention of reading him, but then I saw this box and I had to have it. It turned out that the book was brilliant and the hype-merchants were right, but I wouldn’t have known without Strick’s fantastic design.”
Comments (7)
hi there: you might want to fix the credit on slide #3—the book is by Marilyn Chin. Presumably Hamish Hamilton is the publisher!
Thanks Sara.
[...] Caustic Soda — James Morrison AKA Caustic Cover Critic talks about five great covers (and a few terrible ones) at Flavorwire. The great ones include Charlotte Strick’s design for 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. Charlotte talked about this cover with FaceOut Books a while back. [...]
I recently came across an edition of John Fante’s Dreams from Bunker Hill, issued (I think) by Black Sparrow Press. It is absolutely beautiful, and I want to find a copy. I’ve been told it’s out of print – any ideas where I could possibly start looking for a used copy?
i’m sure you can get the Fante book from Amazon or abebooks without much trouble. generally speaking, all the older Black Sparrow stuff came in beatiful covers. I have a copy of Let It Come Down, by Paul Bowles with the best cover of any book I’ve ever seen, published by Black Sparrow.
Another place with underappreciated but frequently brilliant cover art is in ’60s and ’70s science fiction paperbacks. Some of the art coming out at the time was simply stellar. I’ve got a copy of Fritz Leiber’s A Spectre is Haunting Texas with a gorgeous handpainted cover that made me purchase it instantly.
[...] novels I’ve read all year.” . . . James Morrison (aka the Caustic Cover Critic) discusses a few winning (and losing) designs with Flavorwire. . . . Michael Greenberg kicks off a new column at Bookforum with a piece about a [...]
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