Fantastic Metropolis

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Forrest Aguirre

I just picked up a copy of John Batchelor’s John Ruskin: A Life. This book seems to have the right heft—substantial, but not un-manageable. The cover design is simple: A portrait of Ruskin to the right, a strip of gray parchment texture to the left and over the spine, and a black text box beneath the portrait. I think the simplicity is what impresses me the most. It is appropriate to the text—and maybe that’s what I consider good design: the outside should accentuate, but not draw attention away from, what is on the inside. I’ve seen books that are lopsided, where the artwork and design outweigh some characteristic of the text. Perhaps the colors are bombastic and the text timid, or vice versa. I want the whole package to work together. Call me silly, but that’s important to me.

Hawk Alfredson

Recent examples? How about that Garry Nurrish design on Breaking Windows!

Neal Asher

Well, being utterly selfish, the Pan Macmillan edition of The Skinner and now the Tor USA edition of Gridlinked for appearance and durability. I’m grateful when you can read a book a couple of times without the pages starting to fall out.

Dale Bailey

I like books that stand alone as artistic objects—even without the content. The first edition of Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish, by Richard Flanagan, is a beautiful book.

R. M. Berry

Michael Martone’s Blue Guide to Indiana.

K. J. Bishop

Monsieur Zenith the Albino by Anthony Skene, published by Savoy Books. It’s beautifully designed by John Coulthart, with illustrations from the original stories, and chapter heading illustrations by Coulthart. The binding, the typesetting, the paper, are all excellent. It’s a very classy book.

Richard Bleiler

I am exceptionally fond of the publications of Tartarus Press, which strike me as uniformly well made. Everything from their typography to their paper to their bindings to their dust wrappers speaks of superior and understated quality. The same holds for the publications of Golden Gryphon, though their dust wrappers tend to be too ornate and cluttered for my tastes. I’m told that the publications of Savoy Books would please me.

Jonathan Carroll

Anything by the German (mostly art) book publisher Benedikt Taschen, especially their astonishing SUMO, the collected work of the photographer Helmut Newton.

Jay Caselberg

Hmm, hard question. I’m not particularly sure that the design and construction have as much impact for me as the gestalt of bookness. Though, come to think about it, Candas Jane Dorsey’s Black Wine was a gorgeous presentation.

Michael Chabon

Ricky Jay’s book on dice. Ben Katchor’s Jew of New York.

Michael Cisco

City of Saints, as I’m sure many have already pointed out. Nightmares of an Ether-Drinker, and the various other fine Tartarus Press volumes. Their AKLO collection and their edition of M.P. Shiel’s Shapes in the Fire are also beautifully put together. Likewise Durtro’s collection of Stenbock’s rather pitiful poetry, which I bought only because it was a beautiful book. Zone Books has produced two collections in the last few years, the Decadent Reader and another (Symbolist? Surrealist?), both designed in similar ways—a striped cover of interpolated images in a cloudy translucent white jacket (softcover) with the title and salient information on it. Very pleasing. Also those V.C. Andrews books with the holes in the covers through which the faces of terrified orphans appear (I’m kidding). Also, the Library of America, which is a non-profit, produces such handsome books I tend to buy them whether I want them or not. They are built to last, flexible! The hardcovers (their paperbacks are wonderful, too, especially the big thick ones with the silky feeling covers) with ribbon bookmarks, thin acid-free paper, and a highly readable design. Each one comes with a timeline in the back—the only problem with them is the often unsatisfactory paltriness of their endnotes. I also want to put in a word for those yellow and blue Langenscheidt foreign-language dictionaries. I’ve always found them very easy and pleasing to use.

John Coulthart

The Artificial Kingdom by Celeste Olalquiaga (Bloomsbury).

Ian Covell

The original hardcover of Northern Lights [Pullman] which I gave away to someone, though I don’t remember who. The Peter F Hamilton trilogy. The Penguin 60s. Most art books.

Peter Crowther

I like to think PS is improving with every release but I’m constantly impressed by Cemetery Dance, Subterranean, Golden Gryphon, and Night Shade—and Telos’s new Hank Jansen series is a pure delight. The trick is to approach this business as a reader/collector and not as a businessman—at least that’s the way I’ve approached PS. My accountant (and particularly my bank manager) wishes I were a bit more hard-nosed but my real profits come with emails from customers who, having shelled out a fair amount of money (because, let’s face it, PS books are not inexpensive), feel they just have to let me know how wonderful the new books are that they’ve just received. As it happens, I’ve just received three such letters concerning our latest trio of publications (Paul Di Filippo’s Fuzzy Dice, Ramsey Campbell’s Told By The Dead and Brooke and Gevers’ Infinity Plus Two).