Jay Walker's Library, I'm just a tad jealous. ¶
I recently chewed through a copy of The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. The first night, I didn’t want to put it down, but ended up succumbing to the need for sleep. It’s an odd sort of book that straddles multiple genres, with elements of sci-fi, romance and philosophy to name a few. To a large extent, it’s left up to the reader to determine what sort of book that they want to read. I don’t want to give away too much, but it’s kind of like tossing The Matrix, Memento and Jaws, into a blender and chugging it down.
The official website and alternate reality game offer up the sort of viral marketing which is normally reserved for movies and videogames. Can’t say that these campaigns do much for me, but it may serve to pique your interest. For those that have already read the book, there is a wiki and a forum, if you’ve still got questions.
On a side note, it it probably would’ve been a fun book to design. It’s not incredibly complex, but does offer a little bit more flair than you’d normally see in a trade paperback.
We Tell Stories from Penguin, features six classics retold as digital fiction. I particularly like Hard Times by Matt Mason and Nicholas Felton. ¶
Printing a book in 1947. It's pretty awesome to watch all of the machinery in action. The typesetting aspect is different these days (no more hot metal) but the books still need to be printed, trimmed and bound. ¶
A behind-the-scenes look at generative book covers for Faber & Faber's print on demand series. Each cover is unique and generated on the fly using Processing, a language that I need to spend more time with. ¶
Bembo's Zoo is a children's book featuring animals from A to Z, illustrated using letterforms and punctuation from Bembo. ¶
Internet book piracy will drive authors to stop writing. This article just made me laugh. It almost makes me want to go out and pirate their books, just so they'll cease writing and stop polluting the world with stupid ideas. ¶
Publisher's Bindings Online is a gallery of book bindings from 1815–1930, there are some real gems here. ¶
Interview with Paul Buckley, discussing book cover design and his creative process. ¶
Required Design Books. Armin Vit solicits suggestions for the best graphic design books that designers should see. ¶
The Pelican Project, a collection of Pelican book covers spanning six decades ¶
