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).

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Jack Dann

As a contemporary example, I think the Folio Society in London makes very nice books. Also small press publishers such as Arkham House, Easton Press, Ziesing, Lord John Press, Shadowlands Press, and especially Donald M. Grant.

Ellen Datlow

Coraline by Neil Gaiman with illustrations by Dave McKean. I love smaller than standard-sized hardcover books. There is something very neat about them. They fit into your hand like a paperback but with more heft, e.g. The Lemony Snicket series and the small press collection of Mrs. Moleworth’s Collected Ghost Stories I picked up at a recent convention. The outside of the book looks and feels wonderful—robin’s egg blue cloth with gold stamping and a lovely-eerie illustration on the cover. Unfortunately, the interior is less interesting but still…

Alan DeNiro

The paperback of Dictionary of the Khazars is a neat little book. Hmm, this is a difficult question to answer because a “successful” book design doesn’t necessarily draw attention to itself. It can help a reader [achieve] greater focus on the work at hand—which is not a gimme with a crappily designed book. On the other end of the spectrum are the handmade, letter press, more overtly artistic designs for books. There are a lot of these folks in the Twin Cities, as well as the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, so it’s always incredible to see their sundry, nearly indescribable, wares.

Cory Doctorow

Kelly Link’s Stranger Things Happen—I love the cover stock and the illustration.

Brian Evenson

McSweeney’s recent Stephen Dixon book is interesting from a design perspective, as is their Neal Pollack book. I also have a series of old pulpy Georges Simenon books I like because they’re small enough to fit comfortable in the hand but the print isn’t too small, and the covers are black white and red, with each cover containing an object and its mirror image. They’re very simple but very appealing. Coffee House and Black Square both do consistently well designed and beautiful books (Coffee House more in the last few years than before). I also very much like books like City of Saints in which the confines of the book are played with, in which the story spills out onto the cover and into the author’s note.

Tim Feeney

Well, besides City of Saints and Madmen... A few publishers have recently put out small (7” X 4 1/2” or so) hardcovers—Alessandro Boffa’s You’re An Animal, Visskovitz! (Knopf), Haruki Murakami’s After the Quake (also Knopf), Peter Carey’s 30 Days in Sydney (Bloomsbury)—that are oddly satisfying to hold. They’re small enough to appeal to people’s love of miniaturization, but big enough to seem legitimate, less gimmicky. They’re fun, and simple and inexpensive. On the other end of the spectrum are designed-to-be-collectable books like Easton Press editions, which have leather covers and heavy paper and gold foil on the pages and are often signed by the authors and printed in limited numbers and are obviously excellent examples of the book-designer’s art; and for all this wind up embarrassingly artificial and cheesy.

Jeffrey Ford

The boxed edition of Issac Babel’s short fiction, recent editions of Borges’ collected non-fiction, poetry and fiction, plenty of children’s books, and City of Saints and Madmen.

Karen Joy Fowler

I’ve recently received the design pages from my own forthcoming novel and have been admiring them a bunch. Until this I paid shockingly little attention to matters of typeface and chapter headings and the like. My aesthetic experience has been limited primarily to the cover. I thought Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress had a very beautiful cover, and also Margot Livesey’s Eva Moves the Furniture.

Neil Gaiman

Persopolis.

Stephen Gallagher

The Annotated Lost World, edited by Pilot and Rodin and published by The Wessex Press, Indianapolis. A perfect meshing of content, design, and materials.

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Theodora Goss

Kalpa Imperial, published by Small Beer Press. A beautifully designed cover, and the perfect size to read on a subway car. (Not to mention the gorgeous stories.)

M. John Harrison

Among editions of my own books, the Night Shade Things That Never Happen stands out.

Barry Hughart

A Trip to the Stars by Nicholas Christopher, Dial Press, and Ghostwritten by David Mitchell, Random House.

Rhys Hughes

I admire the productions of Tartarus, Sarob, and Savoy. One of the nicest books I have ever seen is Savoy’s recent reprint of the obscure Monsieur Zenith The Albino by Anthony Skene. I like novels with strange designs or pictures included among the text. Milorad Pavić’s The Inner Side Of The Wind consists of two separate sections printed back to back. There are some intriguing charts and symbols and patterns in The Dumas Club by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. I have a particular fondness for the old Collins Classics, which I started collecting before I could even read them properly. The gold lettering on the spines always impressed me. Once I became so agitated by the excellent glitter that I took a pen and recolored one title red. The book in question was The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, which I have still never read, and I was about ten years old. If books are too nicely produced, I generally feel reluctant to spoil them by reading them. This is possibly linked to the fact that I have never slept with a virgin. Possibly so, but probably not.

Shelley Jackson

I., by Stephen Dixon (McSweeney’s Books), which has a giant “I.” die-cut through the cloth-covered front board, through which you can see part of the Dan Clowes line drawing (blue ink on white) on the endpapers.

Harvey Jacobs

The books published by Pushcart Press are particularly attractive.

Stephen Jones

Quite simply, the best books currently being produced in the genre are the Robert E. Howard titles being published by Wandering Star. Every element of the production and design is immaculate—acid-free paper, beautiful sewn binding with bookmarks, copious illustrations (color and b&w), attractive type and layout, extras such as slipcases, chapbooks, or CDs. These are amongst some of the finest books ever produced in our field.

Henry Kaiser

The Vance Integral Editions. Truly amazing. All I can compare the experience for reading and holding them with is when my college pal Owen got to be the lover of his favorite porn star, Annette Haven, after he went backstage to meet her at a Mitchell Bros. live show in San Francisco (except I get to keep the books—and Annette broke up with Owen after a few months—but she put him in charge of her fan club and he got to help answer her mail). (And then, later on, he got called in to be a “stand-in cock” in one of her movies and then appeared in several more, but that’s all another story.)

James Patrick Kelly

It’s self-serving to say this, but I think that all the Golden Gryphon books are well-made and most of them are quite lovely. And I was amazed at the size of Hartwell and Cramer’s The Hard SF Renaissance, which is the largest book of science fiction I own. A feat of engineering Heinlein would have been proud of!

Rick Klaw

City of Saints and Madmen, Carter Beats The Devil, Abarat, Stories from a Lost Anthology.

John Klima

Wow, there are so many. I recently wrote an article about typography which delved a little into design. I think your average book has a pretty shitty design, as if the production department goes through the motions, but every once in a while something great comes out. The hardcover of City Of Saints and Madmen is a great example of an exceptionally designed book. You can tell great care was given to the choice of typefaces, illustrative introduction pages, footnotes, etc. The most amazing thing about the book is that it’s print-on-demand, so it has to set up in a way to make this great design without needing plates. Mark Z. Danielewski’s House Of Leaves did some very difficult things with layout, leading me to say that it was well-designed, but that the design didn’t help the story. The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd had phenomenal design. The writer subtly changes typefaces about half-way through the book to indicate a major life change for the main character. Interesting design for cover and even printing along the edge of the pages.

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David Langford

Alasdair Gray’s anthology The Book of Prefaces (2000), which like most of his books calls attention to splendid excesses of design—commentaries in red running down the margins, for example, and pages at the end devoted to 33 ink sketches of everyone associated with the book. Gray writes his own blurbs, too: “To every generation appears an ageing writer who, with some published work behind him and no ideas for more, decides to produce THE BOOK OF BOOKS by grafting together pieces cut from the corpus of other writers: mostly the mighty dead whose copyrights have lapsed. These books compare with a work of true genius like Frankenstein’s monster and Michelangelo’s David. They are uglier but more popular.” Less obtrusive good design: the 2001 Walker reissue of Sylvia Louise Engdahl’s Enchantress from the Stars. Even though it won’t lie open on the table without assistance.

Jay Lake

Sadly, I find recent books tend to a higher proportion of production errors and cost-cutting decisions re paper weight, typesetting, than the books I remember as a kid. This may be my adult, writerly/editorial perspective intruding. My favorite book ever was the limited edition printing of Gene Wolfe’s Empires of Foliage And Flowers, a book for which I paid more money than I ever did before or will again.

Tanith Lee

The fascinating Margaret Atwood’s gorgeously produced hardback of Oryx And Crake. In this case, I ignore the dust jacket—the actual cover is luminously wonderful.

Des Lewis

The hardback edition of City of Saints and Madmen. Honestly. The latest paperback translation in Vintage Books of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Reading Proust makes me feel like a book myself. As if he’s reading me. Arkham House books.

Nick Mamatas

I thought Album Zutique #1 was cute. Fit in the pocket! Very important.

Javier A. Martinez

The hardback version of City of Saints and Madmen is a beautifully designed book. I like how you’ve made the cover part of the narrative flow of the novel. House of Leaves by Danielewski is a nice package. Mieville’s latest, The Scar, is beautiful to look at. As for quality, John Hopkins U Press does a nice job. Comic Book Nation is a very well put together hardcover book with nice binding. Delany’s books with Wesleyan U Press are also very nicely done. Nice cover art, nice packaging, nice font, good use of images to convey the themes of the works.

Michael Moorcock

Savoy is for me the epitome of great modern book design. Most of their design is done by John Coulthart, who has also designed some excellent books for Ministry of Whimsy and Night Shade, whose design and care I also greatly admire. Savoy’s edition of Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, Skene’s Zenith the Albino, Richardson’s The Exploits of Engelbrecht, and several others are outstanding. Savoy doesn’t publish for profit, of course, and this allows them to spend enormous amounts on paper stock, binding, and half-tones. In some ways they represent a modern ideal of the book as an art form—David Britton and Michael Butterworth publish books as others might make sculpture, paint pictures, or create jewelry. Profit is not an important element in what they do. Britton does not select the books he publishes for any other reason than that he is driven to publish them. Savoy also issues records on the same basis and they, too, are objects of art rather than commercial design. Their version of P.J. Proby, the Texas soul singer, reading Eliot’s The Waste Land is an act of pure genius.

Darren Nash

Alastair Reynolds’ covers look fantastic; although I deplore her attitude, the hardback of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake is a very impressive package; and at the risk of nepotism, the hardbacks of Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s Arabesk trilogy are superbly produced.

Richard Eoin Nash

MIT Press’s book on Gordon Matta-Clark. Taschen’s series Projects On The City.

Lance Olsen

Anything Fiction Collective Two has done recently.

Milorad Pavić

Interactive, nonlinear ones.

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Justina Robson

Design-wise I liked House of Leaves and I liked the cover of my last book a lot, Natural History. The size and shape of the PS Publishing quartets is nice and I particularly like the feel of the silky finish they do on recent paperback covers here in the UK, I don’t know what it’s called. I think that the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror has had very nice collectible cover art that does justice to the contents. I recently got the Collected Strange Stories of Robert Aickman, a very minimalist hardcover with a plain jacket and I thought it looked and felt very “authentic,” like they didn’t care if you liked them or not. I liked that.

Luís Rodrigues

I love hand-made books. For example, Tim Powers’ limited edition of Where They Are Hid is gorgeous… though expensive. In regards to design, City of Saints and Madmen is exceptionally well done. John Coulthart’s work for Savoy Books and, more recently, The Thackery T. Lambshead Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases is nothing short of impressive. And I’m sadly unable to remember the title right now, but one of the best covers I saw made the book appear uncannily like a box of Cuban cigars.

Mary Doria Russell

A recent biography of Louis Sockalexis was wonderfully designed. Sockalexis was a Penobscot Indian—the first Native American to play professional baseball. (He was the inspiration for the name of the Cleveland Indians, so the legend goes.) The title of the book was perfect: Indian Summer, and the old photo of Sockalexis in his uniform is printed in a lovely burnt orange, like autumn leaves. Don’t get better than that…

Lucius Shepard

I like Pete Crowther’s stuff from PS Publishing and though I’ve only seen two of Nightshades books, they looked quite fine.

Delia Sherman

I like the Small Beer Press books, especially The Mount and Stranger Things Happen. The covers are evocative, and they don’t fall off after a couple of readings.

Mike Simanoff

Many of the highly-priced independent press editions are very high quality books. Night Shade’s new William Hope Hodgson title, The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ and Other Nautical Adventures, is a perfect example. Its ethereal cover is aesthetically pleasing, and the book itself is sturdy.

Brian Stableford

The loveliest one I received recently is Savoy’s new edition of David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus.

Peter Straub

The Mooring Of Starting Out, John Ashbery, Ecco Press; Collected Works, Lorine Niedecker, University of California Press; The Complete Poems Of Kenneth Rexroth, ed. Sam Hamill & Bradford Morrow, Copper Canyon Press.

Anna Tambour

Insect Lives: Stories of Mystery and Romance from a Hidden World, edited by Erich Hoyt and Ted Schultz, John Wiley & Sons, 1999… Last year we had to pack a car with our belongings to flee with, in case the bushfires took our house. This was the first book I packed, and I could only take so many. This hardback has everything. It has the attention to detail and to appropriate aesthetics that every collection of fiction should. Its arrangement is logical, table of contents visually distinctive and appropriate. Its index works. As a read, it is the perfect combination of ripping yarns, beautiful artwork (wisely sparse, and all black and white), and hilarity. A fine judgment has gone into the choice of fonts and styles of type, as well as white space on the page.

Jeffrey Thomas

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, with its intricate use of fonts, interior color, artwork, daring page composition. City of Saints and Madmen for its use of a story directly on the front and back covers, encoded story, copious footnotes, and other imaginative treats.

Scott Thomas

Recent books? I’d say that the Ministry of Whimsy’s Leviathan 3 has an overall sensibility that is very appealing. The design evokes a mood that seems right for the content, and makes for a fine package. The Monkey’s Paw and Other Tales of Mystery and the Macabre, from Academy of Chicago Publishers, has a lovely autumnal cover by French artist Victor Prouve that sets the perfect tone for a collection of old fashioned stories. A very dignified treatment, design-wise. Alexander Theroux’s The Strange Case of Edward Gorey is a delight. A fine example of a book in which the packaging and the content have a certain (consistent) harmonious something that just clicks.

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William Thompson

City of Saints and Madmen for its illustrative content and typeface; Savoy’s reissue of Voyage to Arcturus, particularly notable for its smythe-sewn binding, gilt edge, as well as quality overall.

Jeff Topham

These days, these are few and far between. Big publishers are more interested in profitability than quality, with the subsequent result that books are ever more cheaply made. The significant exception to this appears to be the small presses, which produce books that are either well-made or well-designed, and occasionally both. Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves is one of the most stunningly designed books of the last few years, but is exceptionally shoddy in its production (I returned the book twice with a cracked spine). At the risk of being seen as a total kiss-ass, I cite City of Saints as a book that is both innovative in design and quite well-made. Tartarus Press pretty much sets the standard for truly beautiful books, although most of these titles are seen only by a small circle of collectors.

Lisa Tuttle

I will sometimes buy a book chiefly because of my pleasure in it as a pretty, tactile thing—although that’s never the only reason for buying it. But if it’s a really attractive hardback, nice typeface, feels good in the hand, etc. I will buy it rather than wait for the paperback. Or the physical attributes may make me buy a particular second-hand book that I wouldn’t look at twice in a different edition—I recall a small, cream-colored, very cuddly volume of Shelley’s letters which I bought at least ten years ago and still haven’t read. I had no particular interest, then or now, in Shelley’s letters, but the book was so cute (and inexpensive) that I couldn’t resist it. I do tend to like small books, attractively designed, and with good paper. One series I’m often drawn to in second-hand shops (and they tend to be really inexpensive, too) is the old “Everyman’s Library” (London: J.M. Dent & Co.)—as they advertised themselves, they published “in two styles of binding, cloth, flat back, colored top, and leather, round corners, gilt top.” Both are nice. I have more of the former, but the latter are undoubtedly more sensuous and desirable objects. I’m sorry, those aren’t “recent” examples, just the sort of thing I especially like.

Gordon Van Gelder

The hardcover of A Gentle Madness by Nicholas Basbanes (Holt) is my favorite recent book from a trade publisher.

Alan Wall

Anvil have been doing some nice editions of Rilke, with translations by Michael Hamburger. They’re reasonably-priced, printed on decent papers and with typefaces sensitively leaded so that the words have space to breathe. This is important in poetry and is often forgotten by publishers. Books like this impress me more and more. They are doing what they are meant to do. Special editions, and there have been a few of my own books, are beginning to strike me as icing on the cake. The money could be better spent improving trade editions. In any case, collectors should never be catered for: they should crawl around dingy bookshops and charity sales, getting their sensibilities dirty.

Liz Williams

Hmmm. It would be too self serving to say “mine”—oh, go on then. I’m very pleased with the Tor UK imprint.

Richard Winters

You know, I haven’t seen anything recently that has really impressed me. Apart from the occasional art book, the major publishers seem to have given up the craft (craft implies custom work, and that’s expensive). I like to look at atlases, medical and scientific texts, where real skill is very apparent. There are of course many beautiful books—I just haven’t happened to encounter them lately.

Paul Witcover

I have to say that I rarely pay much attention to design; I’m just interested in the words. And using them to hit cats and other things.

Gene Wolfe

The best-made book I have ever seen is the Cheap Street boxed Bibliomen. Is it cheating to name a book I wrote?

Zoran Živković

By all means City of Saints and Madmen. It isn’t only an excellently-designed and excellently-made book, but a genuine object of Art. So much, in fact, that I was tempted to read it using gloves. Since that would most certainly make me look rather suspicious to the members of my family, who already have their doubts about my sanity when it comes to books, I found a proper alternative: I washed my hands thoroughly whenever I was about to touch the book… The other book I recently treated almost reverentially was the only advance copy of the Serbian language edition of Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell, sent to me via DHL all the way from Singapore where it was printed…