Books, Specifically Covers

So I've always thought that a great job would be designing book covers. I mean, I am definitely guilty of buying books that I thought looked mediocre just because they had a stunning cover. Granted, this is more in the graphic design realm than I am now, but over at RISD they have a class just for book cover design. I would definitely take that class, especially after checking out some of the awesome book covers at The New York Times Book Review and The Penguin UK Blog. One of the coolest sets of book covers I saw were done by Penguin designer Coralie Bickford-Smith when they were republishing a bunch of classic horror stuff for October. The coolest part? They are cyanotypes! My favorite kind of graphic design is the stuff that has an element of hand work in it. It always just seems to have a lot more depth if there is some part of a photo or hand drawing in it. That's just my aesthetic. But these covers are just GORGEOUS:





















I think what I really like about them is that they are spooky and haunting without resorting to the cliche of black and red and white. You can see her talking about the process of making them here:


Design to get you hiding under the covers from Penguin Books on Vimeo.

In other news, I am currently reading an extremely interesting book called Jonathan Loved David by Tom Horner.

I think a lot of people who have read the story of Jonathan and David in The Bible (Samuel I & II) would agree that they were probably pretty much gay for each other. This book talks about middle eastern attitudes toward homosexuality in Biblical times, and much like their Greek and Roman brethren, many men were getting it on with each other. I found this very interesting because it sounded like there were a lot more men sleeping with each other than would count for a contemporary gay/bisexual population. It would seem that a lot of men were unabashedly bisexual. This started to make me think about how probably a lot of our own preconditions on our sexuality are socially conditioned. I mean, obviously all of these men were sleeping with other men because they wanted to. It's not like when they slept with women in order to procreate. There was really no motivation other than wanting to, and perhaps in some instances a power play. I am really interested by this ancient world idea of manly men who heroically love each other. There are several stories of it: Jonathan and David, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and Achilles and Patroclus. Was this a love between people who considered themselves equals in a time when love between a man and a woman could not be about respect because of the socially constructed sexism and gender segregation of the time? I wonder about "love" between men and women from that time. After all, it would have been very rare for a man to have viewed a woman as more than an object. And yet, they would think they were in love though they knew next to nothing about the object of their affection. These are the themes I am going to explore in my next short story, I think. You can read Jonathan Loved David online on google books here: Jonathan Loved David.

Also: Lot is a douchebag. What kind of man offers up his own daughters for rape? That is messed up.