Book cover for Luka and the Fire of Life

This is the cover for the soon to be released Luka and the Fire of Life, by Salman Rushdie.  I have to admit I've never read a book by Rushdie, but I might give this one a shot just based on how eye-catching the cover is.  An interesting mix of Indian motifs and western style.  What a great drawing for a book cover.

Cover for Brett Easton Ellis's Rules of Attraction (Vintage Contemporaries)

I previously wrote about the book design for Vintage Contemporaries' edition of Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis.  I've since decided to read through all of Ellis's books in order.  So I went to the Strand to see if I could find a cheap copy of The Rules of Attraction.  They had a copy, but the cover was garish and ugly and I asked myself if I would be willing to pay a few extra dollars for an edition that looked nice.  I came to the conclusion that I would.  So I went to Barnes & Noble and found the Vintage Contemporaries edition.  The cover design is by David J. High and the cover photograph is by Chris Hiller, the same team that did the cover for Less Than Zero. 

I like this cover a lot too.  I was surprised it was a photograph; I initially thought it was a charcoal drawing.  It's a great study in grey value scale.  And only seeing a part of the bed makes you wonder what's going on in the rest of the room, hidden and out of sight.  It also could be an allusion to the harrowing opening scene of the book. 

I believe this is David J. High's website for his design studio, which appears to focus solely on book design.  Check out their portfolio, they've done some great stuff.

Book design for the paperback Less Than Zero

This is an example of my buying a book mainly because of how intriguing the cover was.  Time and place are important in fiction, and I particularly like novels that are set in a city and give the reader a sense of what it was like to be in that city at a certain moment in its history.  So the picture of Los Angeles vanishing in mist, or smog rather, and the description of the story on the back cover as "set in Los Angeles in the early 1980s," together piqued my interest.  In a nutshell, the novel is about the boredom, drug-use, apathy, and nihilism of a group of Hollywood kids during the early stages of the MTV era.  The cover photograph, and the abundance of white/nothingness, does a good job of evoking this "lost generation."  Now, having read most of the book, it also hints at one of the images repeated throughout the story: a billboard that states, "Disappear here."

There are numerous editions of Less Than Zero, all with different cover art; this one is published by Vintage.  The cover design is by David J. High and the cover photograph is by Chris Hiller.

Book jacket design of The History of White People

I saw or read about The History of White People (by historian Nell Irvin Painter) several months ago and put it in my mental checklist of books to read, but forgot about it until I was browsing around in 192 Books the other day.  The title is attention-grabbing by itself; it's probably the first book that proposes to tell the history of the "white" people, whereas books about other races, cultures, or even subsets of "white" people are far more common.  (Note: In her introduction, Painter discusses the problematic aspects of discussing race in general, and the catch-all term "white people/s.") 

But what really caught my eye was the book's spine, which, unlike almost every other book you might see, contains horizontal text providing a brief synopsis of the book.  For this very reason, the book stood out on the book shelf.  Putting a description on the spine conveyed the message 'Look at this, this is important, you should be reading this.'

It would be nice to be able to go to a bookstore and scan the spines for whatever seems interesting.  But if every books started putting descriptions on the spine, shelves could look cluttered.  Plus it would limit the design possibilities for individual books.  I can also understand why designers might not want to place descriptions on the spines.  There can be a certain amount of mystery in a book title, which can make you intrigued enough to pick up the book and look at the table of contents or at the inside flaps of the book jacket.  And getting the book in your hands is a closer step to getting you to purchase it.  In any case, putting text on the spine was a neat tactic for The History of White People.