Book Cover of the Day

Richard Yates
By Tao Lin
Melville House $14.95

It's like a way more literal Georgia O'Keefe...

Book Cover of the Day

Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End
By Leif GW Persson
Random House $27.95

I like this cover mostly because it takes you, at least it took me, a minute to see what the picture really is and what the red is supposed to be. If the tree weren't there it would take me longer to see that it looks like snow and ice against a window.

Book Cover of the Day

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
By Charles Yu
Random House $24.

I like this cover a lot, I like the ray guns, I like that a couple of them look like Super Soakers, and I like the random dog thrown in for good measure.

Book Cover of the Day

The German Genius
By Peter Watson
Harper Collins $35

Great color scheme, great layout. The text has a sort of spiral effect making you want to get closer to read what's in the middle which is a (dare I say it) genius way to get someone to pick up a book.

Book Cover of the Day

The Castle in Transylvania
By Jules Verne
Melville House $14.95

Before Stoker's Dracula, there was Jules Verne's The Castle in Transylvania which includes both vampires and zombies. This cover is rad, it seems to glow purple and I love the art nouveau font and lines. Super cool all around.

Book Cover of the Day

Birth Marked
By Caragh M. O'Brien
Roaring Brook Press $16.99

I love the use of the brightly colored threads on top of the washed-out blue on the cover of this young adult dystopian novel.

Book Cover of the Day

Stories
Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio
William Morrow $27.99

This book is great and so is the cover. I love the illustration and the way the names of the contributing authors are listed all around the edge.

Book Cover of the Day

Procession of the Dead
By Darren Shan
Grand Central Publishing $19.99

I like this cover a lot. The silhouette puppet and the shadowy typography, simple and effective.

Book Cover of the Day

Zombies vs Unicorns
Edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier
McElderry Books $16.99

This is just awesome.

Book Cover of the Day

Zero History
By William Gibson
Putnam $26.95

A new book from William Gibson is an exciting thing, especially when the cover looks this good.

Book Cover of the Day

Foreign Flowers, An African Journey
By Peggy Rogers
ZSF $12.95

This cover has a great illustration but the best part about this book is that all of the proceeds go to help poor students go to school in Zambia.

Our store reviewed at Salt Lake Denizen

Lauren Dahl at saltlakedenizen.com has written a great review of our bookstore! Check it out!

Book Cover of the Day

The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea
By Philip Hoare
Ecco $27.99

Why have just one whale on your book cover when you can have four, and one of them is a narwhal! (I sometimes forget that narwhals are real, they're the unicorn of the sea)

Book Cover of the Day

The Organic Herb Gardener
By Graham Clarke
Guild of Master Craftsman Publications $17.95

This cover is just plain cute. It looks like a craft project put together on a lazy Sunday afternoon with potato stamps, stickers, and construction paper.

Zach Recommends

Urban Soul Warrior: Self-mastery in the Midst of the Metropolis
by Lalania Simone
978-1-59376-212-4
Soft Skull Press
$15.95

This book shows how anyone can rule their own mind and run their own life. Lalania Simone lays it all out. The book is full of mindfulness exercises. Different meditations and plenty of blank space to put your ideas and notes on.

Book Cover of the Day

Becoming Animal
By David Abram
Pantheon Books $26.95

Simple and eye-catching, this cover is fantastic. What at first looks like a familiar image starts to look kind of off the more you really look at it.

Book Cover of the Day

Eating Animals
By Jonathan Safran Foer
Back Bay Books $14.99

Typography! I love that they didn't use any black to outline the letters, no extra additives... I like this cover a lot even though I might never actually read it. I enjoy my blissfully ignorant carnivorism and I'm afraid if I read this I won't enjoy my food anymore (it does seem a little like vegan propaganda to me even though I know what he says is true). I do agree that we need to eat actual food as Michael Pollan would say, food that our grandmothers would recognize, and to eat animals that aren't kept in factories. At any rate, depressing food industry talk aside, I really like this cover.

Jan Recommends

Truth & Beauty: A Friendship
by Ann Patchett
978-0-06-057215-0
Harper Perennial
$14.99

Stunning and conflicted story of Patchett's 20 year relationship with college roommate Lucy Grealy. Patchett's fiction (Bel Canto, etc.) is good, but this is inspirational.

Book Cover of the Day

Freedom
By Jonathan Franzen
Macmillan $28

This long-awaited new book from Jonathan Franzen was given a strikingly great cover. I love the tilt of the text on the front cover and on the spine, it gives it a strange illusion of depth. Also, the bird's eye is iridescent which is just a fun tiny detail you notice as you pass by it on the shelf.

Book Cover of the Day

The Four Fingers of Death
By Rick Moody
Hachette $25.99

This cover is so fun. Awesome typography, colors, and the shadow hand coming from the cactus that's missing the middle finger. This cover begs to be looked at from the shelf.

Book Cover of the Day

The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution
By Henry Schlesinger
Harper Collins $25.99

This is quite the creative cover for a history book. I love the sort of vintage advertisement look it has, the fact that the colors are a little bit muted. It almost looks like something Warhol might have painted, very pop art (which happens to be my favorite kind of art). New books in our History section are 20% off during September, come in and take a look!

Catherine Recommends

Down and Derby: The Insider's Guide to Roller Derby
by Jennifer "Kasey Bomber" Barbee and Alex "Axels of Evil" Cohen
978-1-59376-274-2
Soft Skull Press
$14.95

Curios about the Derby revival? Perhaps you've gone to the Derby a time or two and STILL can't figure out what's going on? Derby aficionado? This book is for all of you. Written by two derby gals, one of whom is an NPR local host.

Book Cover of the Day

Beat the Reaper
By Josh Bazell
Hachette $14.99

This cover is just fun. It comes in multiple different colors, the ones we have are blue and red instead of yellow. The book is pretty fun too, click through the picture to get to the book's website.

Book Cover of the Day

Next Hundred Million: America in 2050
By Joel Kotkin
Penguin $25.95

I'm a sucker for good typography and symmetry. I like the grid-like way the words are mapped out, it reminds me of old display boards with flip-down numbers and letters. This book is in our Current Affairs section, in which the new books are 20% off during September.

Neil Recommends

The Peregrine
by J. A. Baker
978-1-59017-133-2
New York Review Books Classics
$15.95

This book is a fight to put down, and you will most likely lose that fight. J. A. Baker follows a falcon as it lives in northern England for a season and masterfully tells this story with the bird.

Book Cover of the Day

The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart
By Mathias Malzieu $22.95

I don't have a lot to say about this cover except that I find it to be really pretty. It's difficult trying to find words for why something is aesthetically pleasing to me. This fairy tale is about a boy with a cuckoo-clock for a heart that is too fragile for strong emotions, he must never fall in love. And of course, he does fall in love. Click through the picture for a great animation form the book.

Book Cover of the Day

Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century
By Ruth Harris
Macmillan $35

All the good covers aren't saved just for fiction, "Dreyfus" by Ruth Harris is in our history section (new books in our history section happen to be 20% off during September). The book is about Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, who was wrongfully convicted of being a spy for Germany and imprisoned on Devil's Island in 1894. I really like when non-fiction books have great covers, often they end up with generic boring covers featuring a picture of whatever historical thing is on the pages within and the title. This cover was artfully thought out.

I Recommend

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
by Anne Fadiman
978-0374-52722-8
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
$12.00

Fadiman's collection of essays on the joys of reading, of words, and of books never fails to delight me and renew my passion for the same.

Book Cover of the Day

Art of McSweeney's
$45.00

Book Cover of the Day

Fever Chart
By Bill Cotter
McSweeney's $22.00

Book Cover of the Day

Zeitoun
By Dave Eggers
McSweeney's $15.95

Book Cover of the Day

Maps and Legends
By Michael Chabon
McSweeney's $24.00