Kyle Minor short up at Fifty-Two Stories – I really, really, need to catch up on my reading of the short story offerings at Fifty-Two Stories, because another plate of steaming story has been placed on the serving platter, and it looks to be a tasty one. This time it’s a story called The Truth and All Its Ugly, and it comes from Ohio-based Kyle Minor, author of story collection, In the Devil’s Territory, and co-editor of the utterly intriguingly titled The Other Chekhov. Of Minor’s short story collection, Donald Ray Pollock, the gritty author of Knockemstiff says he would “walk through Hell to be able to write like him”, so I’m expecting big things of this story.
“The Making of a Book Cover” – Galleycat links to a superb 2-minute video which shows the six hour process that Orbit Books creative director Lauren Panepinto went through in her design of the cover for an upcoming novel by Gail Carriger. Fundamentally the video is nothing more than a demonstration of ‘collage Photoshoping’, which most designers are more than familiar with. However with the demonstration also comes an insight into the ingenuity of Panepinto (coming up with an original idea is of course often the hardest part of design), and a reminder that attention to detail is of huge importance i.e. replacing cars with carriages and eliminating the Eiffel Tower from the Parisian skyline so that the cover accurately reflects the correct time period of the novel. Excellent stuff!
“Just taking some books back to the palazzo of human thought, love!” – Am I going insane? Absolutely not! ‘The palazzo of human thought’ is the term dubbed by Mike Whitby, Birmingham city council’s leader, for the £193m currently-under-construction Library of Birmingham (to be fair he was joking, or was he? 
). This reference comes from a wonderful article on the Guardian website today, in which columnist Stuart Jeffries looks at the building of this new ‘super library’ while at the same time contrasting and comparing it to some of the ultra-modern libraries that are already in operation around the UK. A highly recommended article to go and read, especially for those who have any interest in the state and role of our libraries in modern and future times.
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