The assignment: redesign Vladimir Nabokov’s book covers, all 21 of them. The result: 21 designers, and, in a nod to the author’s passion for butterfly collection, 21 specimen boxes. See also: Michael Bierut’s eulogy for designer Fred Marcellino, previously at Design Observer, and Nabokov Under Glass.
Michael Hart, founder and former editor of Project Gutenberg, discusses the evolution of the ebooks project. (Via.)
Anthony Burgess, Jerzy Kosinski, and Barbara Howar ask talk show host Dick Cavett about writing and reviews as his book (published in 1974) appears. “I don’t know why we have to suffer reviews,” says Burgess, who reveals that he once wrote five and a half books in twelve months when he believed he had one year to live. “Reviews don’t . . .
Harold Bloom says Samuel Johnson, who identified with Falstaff, himself seems like a character from Shakespeare.
For Alan Bennett, like a Borges character, “All the books he ever published filled him with a complex feeling of repentance.”