A blog about translation, writing and language in all its glorious aspects
…for the purpose of appreciation and categorisation. Or, if you like book covers, a website to get lost in: The Book Cover Archive. The beautifully designed Archive is run by Ben Pieratt of General Projects and Eric Jacobsen of Whisky Van Gogh Go. You can search the archive by designer, title, author, art director, photographer, illustrator, genre, …
Continue reading “Book covers (2): an archive of book cover designs and designers…”
“Birdsong”, by Sebastian Faulks. UK version (left) and Chinese version (right) A recent Observer newspaper article warns us, Don’t judge a book by its cover, particularly in France. Books are routinely given completely different covers abroad, often with baffling results. This doesn’t just apply to foreign language versions. When I lived in Rome and shopped …
Continue reading “Book covers (1): transformed in translation”
I wrote the other day about scent, as one of my favourite words (serendipity’s another). Scent isn’t a word you’d normally associate with the war in Afghanistan. But it cropped up in a Radio Scotland programme, Black Watch, 3 Scots: A War in Their Own Words, recounting life in the Afghan war zones. The account takes …
I hadn’t checked the Peachpit Press web site for months, but I’ve found more titles to tempt me. So, not just the new titles by Robin Williams, but new books too by Steve Krug and by Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice of the Nielsen Norman Group. Steve’s book, a “do-it-yourself guide to finding and fixing usability …
I don’t know whether to be delighted or dismayed. Peachpit Press has published new titles by Robin Williams. Dismayed, because I’m in the middle of a clear-out and decluttering exercise that involves tens if not hundreds of books that I’ve accumulated over many years. And I’ve just splashed out on cut-price books at Borders, so I …
I visited Borders UK’s Glasgow store a few days ago, feeling like a vulture as I filled my basket with cut-price books (TimeOut travel guides, IT (Mac) user-guides and English language reference books. Plus two novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard for my daughter).To my surprise I found myself feeling sad and nostalgic at the store’s …