We want to thank Andrew Wheeler for posting a fine Book Review on his blog, ANTICK MUSINGS, about Chip Kidd and Dave Taylor’s recent Graphic Novel, BATMAN: DEATH BY DESIGN (DC Comics). His review is kind of funny in the way he came up with the concept of “Good Chip vs Bad Chip”. We’re not quite sure what he means by it but he does write some pretty interesting views on the book. Overall he praised the book for it’s merit, so that’s cool. Hey, tell us what you think. Please CLICK HERE and give it a quick read. (Thanks Again Andrew!)

This post is a friendly remind that the CHARITY BUZZ Auction where you can win the opportunity to have Designer Chip Kidd create a Book Cover for your book or novel. The contest ends in about 3 days & it’s going pretty good so far but we could always use more action! The bidding right now is up to $1600.00 so you still have a chance to get this special freelance work at a great price. Also, please remember, all this money goes to an extremely important charity. So, don’t miss out!!

Here’s the LINK for more info, just CLICK HERE!

The most talked about prequel miniseries in the comic industry, BEFORE THE WATCHMEN, are about to be collected in 4 deluxe hardcover editions. DC Comics just announced that the book covers will be designed by Chip Kidd and they have given them a release date of this summer.

Having previously designed a variant cover for BEFORE WATCHMEN: RORSCHACH issue #3, Chip Kidd was recently asked by DC Comics about what it means to him to design these historic covers. Here's what he had to say, “To design these covers is both a privilege and an honor. And a challenge! The ‘Before Watchmen’ creative team did a truly impressive job, and I will try to do justice to them. So to speak.”

Well, we can't wait to see them and we hope you're just as excited as we are. So stay tuned for their future reveal.

We have some really great news to share and we’re also very proud of the Author/Graphic Novelist Leela Corman. She just received a really great Book Review over at the VILLAGE VOICE for her new Graphic Novel, UNTERZAKHN, published by Pantheon Books.

HELL YEAH! They have a News Reporter over there named Diana Clarke and this Woman wrote a wonderful review that is both very in-depth and has a lot of insight into the book. So, when you get a chance, or if you’re not doing anything right now (ha ha), then please CLICK HERE and give it a quick read. If you have been thinking about reading this book then it will really inspire you.

We were pretty thrilled this morning to wake-up to a wonderful book review for Chip Kidd’s, THE CHEESE MONKEYS: A Novel in Two Semesters. Lindy, over at the LINDY READS AND REVIEW Website shared her thoughts on the Cheese Monkeys and what it meant to her. She also took some very excellent photos of the special page treatment this book has. You see, if you look at the page edges of the book and then slightly bend them, 2 different “magic messages” appear. One message is even the title of this blog!

Please read Lindy’s Book Review by click right HERE!

In today’s ultra-stressful world we can all use a good laugh every now and then. So, here is our attempt to share some awesome parody book covers and even a few hilarious comic strips… all related to the love of reading books. Plus, the art of writing them.

The 2 parody book covers shown here are just way too funny, and so well done, that we had to share them! The 1st one is not an actual book cover but a mash-up of J.R.R. Tolkien’s THE HOBBIT, if it were a Children’s Little Golden Book, ha! Then, believe it or not, the 2nd one is an actual real-life book, a cook book, that is an amazing idea capitalizing on the fame of “Fifty Shades of Grey”.

OK, These comic strips pretty much explain their self but the one of the confused book buyer in a bookstore totally cracks me up! Plus, if you’re an Author, then be sure to check out the 2nd strip because you know you have met this “Muse” before, ha!

All of us here are really proud of the Book Author, Karen Russell, for receiving a totally wonderful and well thought-out book review for her latest work titled, VAMPIRES IN THE LEMON GROVE (Knopf), at the New York Times Sunday Book Review! Her work is both entertaining & hilarious! This new book is a collection of stories and check out what one of the things the NY Times Reporter, Joy Williams, had to say about them, “Her work has a velocity and trajectory that is little less than dazzling and a tough, enveloping, exhilarating voice that cannot be equaled. Sometimes not even by Karen Russell herself.”

To read the Review, please CLICK HERE!

This is just a fun post to share some recently created graphics that celebrate both Book and Authors. You might recognize some of these Writers: Haruki Murakami, Dr. Seuss (represented by the Cat in the Hat! ), and Neil Gaiman.

Please feel free to share these on your favorite social networking website, like Facebook and Twitter. Thanks!

The finalists for the 33rd L.A. Times Book Prizes were announced Thursday morning and we have to say that we’re pretty proud of the Authors who made the list who are published by Random House, Knopf, and Pantheon. Actually, we’re happy for everybody on the list but we also want to send a shout-out to the Authors we are associated with, ha! So, Please check out the complete list down below.

The 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes will be presented on Friday, April 19, 2013, 7:30 pm, in a public ceremony in the Bovard Auditorium on the campus of USC. The 2012 Book Prizes Innovator's Award Winner, Robert Kirsch Award Winner, and category finalists as listed below were announced publicly on February 21st, 2013, in advance of the April 19th ceremony. For more details, CLICK HERE!

Los Angeles Times Book Prizes 2012 Honorees
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Biography
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H.W. Brands / The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace (Doubleday)
Robert Caro / The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Knopf)
Alice Kessler-Harris / A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman (Bloomsbury Press)
David Nasaw / The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy (Penguin Press)
R.J. Smith / The One: The Life and Music of James Brown (Gotham Books)

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Current Interest
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Katherine Boo / Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House)
Steve Coll / Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (Penguin Press)
Karen Elliott House / On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines - and Future (Knopf)
Jim Sterba / Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds (Crown)
Jake Tapper / The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor (Little, Brown and Company)

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Fiction
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Jami Attenberg / The Middlesteins: A Novel (Grand Central Publishing)
Michael Chabon / Telegraph Avenue (HarperCollins Publishers / Harper)
Ben Fountain / Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (HarperCollins Publishers / Ecco)
Lauren Groff / Arcadia (Voice/Hyperion)
Lydia Millet / Magnificence (W.W. Norton & Company)

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Graphic Novel/Comics
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Alison Bechdel / Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Leela Corman / Unterzakhn (Schocken)
Sammy Harkham / Everything Together: Collected Stories (PictureBox)
Spain Rodriguez / Cruisin' With the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Toote (Fantagraphics)
Chris Ware / Building Stories (Pantheon)

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History
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John Barry / Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (Viking)
George Black / Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone (St. Martin's Press)
Fergus M. Bordewich / America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union (Simon & Schuster)
Amy S. Greenberg / A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico (Knopf)
Geoffrey Kabaservice / Rule & Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party from Eisenhower to the Tea Party (Oxford University Press)

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Mystery / Thriller
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Tana French / Broken Harbor (Viking)
Nick Harkaway / Angelmaker (Knopf)
Fuminori Nakamura / The Thief (Soho Crime)
Chris Pavone / The Expats (Crown)
Ariel S. Winter / The Twenty-Year Death (Hard Case Crime)

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Poetry
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Louise Gl ck / Poems 1962-2012 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Rowan Ricardo Phillips / The Ground: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
D. A. Powell / Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys: Poems (Graywolf Press)
Bin Ramke / Aerial (Omnidawn)
Cole Swensen / Gravesend (New California Poetry) (University of California Press)

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Science & Technology
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Susan Cain / Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Crown)
George Dyson / Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe (Pantheon)
Jonathan Gottschall / The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Nate Silver / The Signal and the Noise: Why so Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't (Penguin Press)
Florence Williams / Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History (W.W. Norton & Company)

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The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
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David Abrams / Fobbit (Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, Inc.)
Kevin P. Keating / The Natural Order of Things (Aqueous Books)
Lydia Netzer / Shine Shine Shine (St. Martin's Press)
Maggie Shipstead / Seating Arrangements (Knopf)
Robin Sloan / Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Book Store: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

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Young Adult Literature
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Paolo Bacigalupi / The Drowned Cities (Little, Brown Books For Young Readers)
A.S. King / Ask the Passengers (Little, Brown Books For Young Readers)
Martine Leavitt / My Book of Life by Angel (Margaret Ferguson Books/Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers)
Matthew Quick / Boy 21 (Little, Brown Books For Young Readers)
Elizabeth Wein / Code Name Verity (Disney-Hyperion)

Please be sure to read the very recent & quite excellent Book Review for BATMAN: DEATH BY DESIGN over at the TOM BADGUY Website. This guy has an interesting take on the new DC Comics’ Graphic Novel and there’s also some nice pictures to drool over. Overall, it was well designed & very well thought out. ( Thanks Tom, nice job! )