-
-
Ad Space
(728 x 90)
Published at 10:56am
Sign up today!
You know you do it.
You’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but let’s be honest, when presented with the hundreds of books on display in any of the city’s bookstores, whether it’s conscious or not, you gravitate toward the pretty.
That’s why we asked Joseph Sullivan to take a look back at this year’s Chicago-related books—those about our city, by local authors or published by a Chicago press. Sullivan publishes the Book Design Review, a daily blog featuring the work of the industry’s best designers. Here are his favorites of the year.
—Jonathan Messinger
The Death of the Detective
By Mark Smith. Northwestern Press, $18.95.
Book designers and illustrators don’t scribble without a good reason. This National Book Award–nominated tale of a Chicago detective chasing a murderer, and the identity conflict that arises, is one good reason to start scratching away.
Unmarketable
By Anne Elizabeth Moore. New Press, $15.95.
“You want a Fugazi shirt? Make a Fugazi shirt.” There’s no way Chicago author Moore’s thoughts on the appropriation of the DIY ethos by corporate America could be presented any better than what you see here. Hands down, one of the best covers of the year.
Loving Frank
By Nancy Horan. Ballantine, $23.95.
Read this book on the El and someone’s going to say, “Wow, I love Frank Lloyd Wright, too!” You won’t learn anything about the Robie House, though, in this fictive retelling of Wright’s scandalous affair with Mamah Cheney. Both are represented here as they lived their lives: coldly and abstractly.
Sin in the Second City
By Karen Abbott. Random House, $25.95.
The Everleigh Club, located at 2131 South Dearborn from 1900 to 1911, offered Chicagoans less-than-legal ways to spend their leisure time. But the Everleigh sisters tried to run a class joint. Clean, inviting cover; dirty details inside—probably just like the club itself.
The Chicago Way
By Michael Harvey. Knopf, $23.95.
It’s great that this shouts “hard-boiled detective story” from across the room, but pulls up just short of pulp tackiness. This cover could—and should—lead the way for an aesthetic of Chicago crime fiction to come.
Then We Came to the End
By Joshua Ferris. Little, Brown, $23.99.
For a story about the excesses of a Chicago-based advertising agency in the late 1990s—and the speed and stupidity with which the company blows up—is there a better visual metaphor than the Post-it note, with barely enough glue to hold onto something just as you barely hold onto your job? In a word, no.
The Boy Who Cried Freebird
By Mitch Myers. Harper Entertainment, $25.95.
Chicago’s hyperliterate answer to Lester Bangs writes straightforward criticism in addition to trippy time-travel Grateful Dead adventures. So the vague surreality of this cover—Dude, you’re outside in an empty field! Put away the lighter!—works nicely.
See more of Joseph Sullivan’s work at thebookdesignreview.com.
