A cornucopia of book covers

The blog The Book Cover Archive has come up with a short, short list of its top 10 book covers of the aughts, with another 10 runners-up. There are special mentions for a handful of designers, but really, a group of 10  covers -- even 20 -- is not nearly enough.

This set has a heavy helping of covers that work as trompe d'oeil -- 2008's favorite, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," has a cover that appears to be the spines of a bunch of other books lined up in a neat row. But those lose some of their charm when reproduced digitally (it's hard to tell the difference between a clever cover made up of a picture of spines of books and a simple picture of the spines of books). And on balance, the top choices seem to be on the somber side, like a mix tape recorded on a gloomy day.

So there's good reason to go exploring the Book Cover Archive's archive. There are close to 1,200 covers on (cyber) display, sortable by publisher, designer, title. The archive is created with some serendipity -- generally, book covers are added around their publication date, but some are late additions.

But the sorting isn't the point so much as the gazing. Because the archive only includes those covers that merit appreciation, every one is worth a second look -- and displayed in arrays of 70 or more, they're a book lover's eye candy.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Image: Book covers for "Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth" by Chris Ware and Penguin's 70th anniversary reissue of John Steinbeck's "The Murder."

Isabel Rucker's long, long memoir

Tonight the SOMArts Center in San Francisco holds an opening for two artists, including Isabel Rucker, whose very long memoir will be on display. How long, exactly? "The Unfurling" is more than 400 feet long, written and illustrated in graphic novel form on a 12-inch-high scroll. That's Rucker above, just after finishing the installation this week.

Rucker, who is the daughter of science fiction author and cyberpunk visionary Rudy Rucker, began work on "The Unfurling" seven years ago when she lived in San Francisco. It details both her city life and her move to rural Wyoming, off the grid. Using the scroll -- technically, three separate 150-foot rolls of paper -- allowed her to vary the width of the panels. While some are compressed, others are quite broad. The illustration of a road trip from California to Wyoming is more than 10 feet long.

 

"Initially I didn't have Jack Kerouac in mind, but after starting it, I did." Rucker told Jacket Copy via e-mail. "I love 'On the Road' and any other writing by him. A couple of years ago I had the joy of seeing the 'On the Road' scroll in person at the NYC library. It was amazing. I like to think there is a somewhat stream of consciousness similarity. I didn't have an outline for the story."

What could be the future for a graphic memoir that's 400 feet long? While "On the Road" was broken up into pages and published in book form, the design of the "The Unfurling," with its extra-wide panels, seems to resist that. Could a project like this be published as a scroll, sold in bookshelf-friendly tubes?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photos, from top: Isabel Rucker with the installation of "The Unfurling"; an excerpt. Credits: Isabel Rucker

'XKCD: Volume 0' is sticking it to traditional publishers

What's the most stupidly ambitious aspect of "XKCD: Volume 0," the book based on the wildly popular yet still very underground webcomic:

• Is it the assumption that cartoonist Randall Munroe's uber tech-savvy audience would pay for a hard-copy version of the comic strips it gets for free in a comprehensive online archive?
• Is it that Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Conde Nast's Reddit, turned his "un-corporation" Breadpig into a publishing company for his friend Munroe's book, while Munroe, 25, declined several offers from established publishers, despite their persistence? "I kind of make it hard to e-mail me," Munroe said on the phone from Somerville, Mass.
• Or how about the pledge to build a $32,000 school in Laos from a portion of book sales without the luxury of advertising or having copies on major bookstore shelves?

You're right if you guessed all -- or none -- of the above.

"XKCD: Volume 0" is a gamble that's paying off for Munroe, a former NASA contractor who left to pursue stick-figure cartooning full-time.

The first run of 10,000 books is almost sold out. Ohanian's half-baked publishing project has attracted dozens of uninvited proposals from authors. And the school in Laos, whose $32,000 goal was reached shortly after the first two book signings in San Francisco and New York, is almost constructed.

Upcoming Andre Agassi memoir reveals drug use

In his upcoming memoir, tennis star Andre Agassi admits that in 1997 he used the recreational drug crystal meth -- or "gack," as his assistant, referred to only as Slim, called it. The book "Open: An Autobiography" will be in stores in November, but is being serialized by the Times of London beginning Thursday. And they ran this excerpt today:

Slim dumps a small pile of powder on the coffee table. He cuts it, snorts it. He cuts it again. I snort some. I ease back on the couch and consider the Rubicon I’ve just crossed.

There is a moment of regret, followed by vast sadness. Then comes a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought in my head. I’ve never felt so alive, so hopeful -- and I’ve never felt such energy.

I’m seized by a desperate desire to clean. I go tearing around my house, cleaning it from top to bottom. I dust the furniture. I scour the tub. I make the beds...

Later, Agassi tested positive for the drug. It would mean a public suspension, and he feared, a lot more.

My name, my career, everything is now on the line. Whatever I’ve achieved, whatever I’ve worked for, might soon mean nothing. Days later I sit in a hard-backed chair, a legal pad in my lap, and write a letter to the ATP. It’s filled with lies interwoven with bits of truth.

I say Slim, whom I’ve since fired, is a known drug user, and that he often spikes his sodas with meth — which is true. Then I come to the central lie of the letter. I say that recently I drank accidentally from one of Slim’s spiked sodas, unwittingly ingesting his drugs. I ask for understanding and leniency and hastily sign it: Sincerely.

I feel ashamed, of course. I promise myself that this lie is the end of it.

While the admission now may get him in hot water with some sports officials, it certainly can't hurt his book sales. How many people knew the 1992 Wimbledon champion had a memoir coming out? Now, we all do.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Andre Agassi at a 2007 press conference. Credit: Ian Salas / EPA

Pasadena Museum of California Art launches its first reading series

The happily local Pasadena Museum of California Art is launching a fitting reading series, Written in California. The free series kicks off Thursday at 7 p.m., with discounted ($5) access to the galleries for the hour prior.

Thursday night will feature Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, who was nominated for the National Book Award for her debut novel, "Madeline Is Sleeping." She now lives in Southern California and teaches at UCSD, so she could read her recent short fiction or from her second book, 2008's "The Ms. Hempel Chronicles." Susan Salter-Reynolds wrote our review:

Such a beautiful book is "Ms. Hempel Chronicles," the kind that gives its reader profound insights into ordinary, everyday life. The more such insights we have, the better able we are to really live, and not just go through the motions.

Beatrice Hempel is a young middle-school teacher, "still young enough to decipher the lyrics" of the songs her students listen to, but "old enough to feel that a certain degree of outrage was required of her." Beatrice, Ms. Hempel, is often uncertain of herself. She thinks she is a terrible teacher, but her students love her. The school bureaucracy makes teaching with any heart all but impossible.

Current exhibitions at the museum include "Wayne Thiebaud: 70 Years of Painting," "Behold the Day: The Color Block Prints of Frances Gearhart" and "Population: Portraits by Ray Turner."

Written in California is scheduled to return roughly bimonthly. The next announced reading will be in January 2010, featuring Marisa Silver, an LA Times book prize finalist for her novel "The God of War."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Pasadena Museum of California Art. Credit: Annie Wells / Los Angeles Times

Lovecraft comes to life

Although he acknowledged a debt to Poe, H.P. Lovecraft is now recognized as a master of his own kind of horror, fantasy and science fiction. He created a fictional world -- complete with monsters and gods -- and encourages his friends to bring it to life in their own work.

That world includes Miskatonic University, which appears in several of his short stories and the novella "At the Mountains of Madness." Miskatonic U is in Arkham (not a real town) in Essex County, Mass. (a real place).

But that's not quite good enough for the blog Prop Nomicon, which has been creating real-life memorabilia from Miskatonic. In the above photo, there are a newly made vintage postcard, a school pin, an embroidered school badge, and three notebooks of the kind used by the characters in Lovecraft's work. The items sold out earlier this week, but will be available again, probably before the holidays.

Sales aren't the blog's main concern, though: It's focused on bringing Lovecraft's stories to life. Just take a look at this meticulously assembled kit. It brings to life the one used in the 1930 Miskatonic University Antarctic expedition ("At the Mountains of Madness"). It includes decade-perfect binoculars and measuring instruments, core samples, fossils, expedition photos, maps and plans. Some materials have been restored, some aged (rubbed down with dirt and cocoa), others created from scratch.

It's a monumental accomplishment, but one that the site's proprietor doesn't feel proprietary of. He's enthusiastic about Creative Commons, and any of the documents he's created -- the detailed map of the expedition, the mock-ups of the plane, the re-created vintage pilot's license -- are available for download, remixing and re-use. Just like Lovecraft would have wanted it.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Prop Nomicon. Used with permission.

Ray Bradbury, painter

The author of "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Martian Chronicles" didn't always reach for a pencil. He used to reach for a paintbrush. He talked to Hero Complex's Geoff Boucher:

"Painting has been part of my life since I was a child," Bradbury told me Thursday when we spoke by phone. "My Aunt Neva went to the Art Institute of Chicago and she took courses there and she took me to see the paintings. I began to paint in the 1930s and 1940s and I did a lot of amateur work over the years. I visited art galleries everywhere I went in the world.... My artwork doesn't inspire my writing, it's my writing that inspires my artwork."

The above painting, which Bradbury did in 1948, is about to be issued as a giclee print. Called, unofficially, "Dark Carnival" -- for the short story collection whose cover it eventually graced -- it will be printed in a limited edition of 200. The 18-by-24-inch prints, which Bradbury will sign at the bookstore Every Picture Tells a Story on Oct. 24, cost $300.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Image: Ray Bradbury

Thurston Moore to launch boutique art publisher

This weekend, Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore announced the upcoming launch of Ecstatic Peace Library, a boutique publisher of art books to debut in 2010. Catalogs of the initial releases are being distributed at this weekend's New York Art Book Fair and will be available from the publisher's website on Jan. 1. The publisher intends to release the art books in tandem with recordings from the artist-authors, slated to include Raymond Pettibon, Dave Markey and Kim Gordon, his wife and band-mate.

Moore,  best known for his inventive, dissonant guitar, has also written, edited and art-directed more than a dozen books, including "Mixtape: The Art of Cassette Culture," "We're Desperate: The Punk Rock Photography of Jim Jocoy," "Punk House: Interiors in Anarchy" and "No Wave: Post Punk. Underground. New York."

Lee Ranaldo, the other inventive, dissonant guitar player in Sonic Youth, is also an author, having published tour diaries with Soft Skull Press and other works with independent publishing houses. 

Moore's Ecstatic Peace Library books will be distributed through D.A.P./ Distributed Art Publishers; look for them at bookstores with cool artsy books and museum bookstores near you.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Thurston Moore performs with Sonic Youth. Credit: Barry Brecheisen/WireImage.com

Henry Miller lithograph crops up at estate sale

Onetime Big Sur resident Henry Miller is best known as an author. He wrote the controversially racy "Tropic of Cancer" -- published in 1934 in France, it finally came to America in 1961, where it was the subject of an obscenity trial -- and "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare," a portrait of America's commercialism circa 1945. But he also liked to sketch and paint, often producing brightly colored, whimsical works.

Some of his art is for sale on a website maintained by Miller's daughter, Valentine. She writes:

He painted mainly watercolors, turning out several thousand in his lifetime. He painted for pleasure, enjoying the process of creating. His paintings were shown in exhibitions in the U.S., Japan & Europe.

Many of his watercolors were printed as lithographs, usually in editions of 250-300 prints. Dad would have them stacked on the ping pong table taking time in the day to sign & number them. He was pleased that people liked his paintings, giving them to friends & admirers.

Original watercolors from the Miller family collection are listed on the site for as much as $30,000; signed lithographs are $8,000 to $15,000. Other lithographs, some signed, are available on EBay for a few hundred dollars. And this weekend, a signed Henry Miller lithograph will be among the items offered by Hughes Estate Sales at a sale in Northridge.

The estate belonged to Milt Rosen, who wrote episodes of "My Three Sons," "That Girl," "Bewitched," "The Brady Bunch" and even "The A Team." Like most estate sales, this one includes furniture, china and knick-knacks. The Henry Miller art is something different. And for the literarily inclined, there will be books for sale too.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: dalvenjah via Flickr

Patti Smith at Book Soup on Saturday

Saturday at noon, Patti Smith and filmmaker Steven Sebring will appear at Book Soup to sign copies of "Dream of Life." The book is taken from Sebring's 2008 documentary film of the same name, and is described as "an evocative exploration of the interior life of the artist Patti Smith."

Smith began publishing poetry in the early 1970s and has continued to use books as one of her creative outlets since then. Her most recent work, "Trois," was released in conjunction with a 2008 show at the Cartier Foundation in Paris. It consists of three paperback notebooks: one a combination of text, drawings and photos focusing on Arthur Rimbaud; one photobook; and one journal, half-filled by Smith, the other half empty, to be completed by its new owner.

Will the poet laurete of punk read from her writings? Will she engage with fans? There are no guarantees. In fact, all we know for sure is that she's supposed to show up at Book Soup to sign copies of "Dream of Life," which, judging by Sebring's website, promises to be quite beautiful.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Patti Smith in 1978. Credit: Los Angeles Times