My summer reading list

I'm pretty pleased with the books I read this summer. As in, most of them were so good I wanted to read them twice. 

Jules Verne : "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea". I honestly only read these books because Jim designed their sweet 3D covers. But you know what? They were pretty good. If I ever have children, I will require them to read Jules Verne stories. Also, I need a cool submarine. 

Bill Bryson: "A Walk in the Woods" and "The Lost Continent". I'd lost track of how many people told me I HAD to read "A Walk in the Woods" so when I found it in a box at my dad's, I decided I should probably start reading. I loved it. I missed out on a camping trip this year and this seems to have filled the void. "The Lost Continent" was great too, but doesn't quite reach a five star status in my book (aka on my Goodreads). 

Chuck Klosterman: "Eating the Dinosaur" and "Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas". Klosterman is Klosterman. Great pop culture essays as always but what I really loved about "IV" was the piece of short fiction at the end. I actually did read it twice and told a bunch of people about how wonderful it was, practically begging them to read it also. Do it.

Max Barry: "Machine Man". Another book I honestly only chose because of the designer. Matt Roeser did a great job on this cover and the second I saw it on the bookshelf I bought it (and then tweeted about it). I read it all on the plane ride to and from Detroit and when it was over I decided my life has been seriously lacking in the Max Barry area. I can't wait to read more from him. 

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I'm also currently reading "Blink" after having it unread on my shelf for about three years now. It's so great. Malcolm Gladwell's writing is so easily readable and understandable. I definitely recommend it as well. 

What did everyone else read this summer? 

UPDATE: Machine Man

So back in May I had the pleasure of doing an interview with the wonderful Matt Roeser about his project New Cover. A few days after I posted the interview, it was announced that Max Barry was letting people vote on the cover of his next book, "Machine Man", and that a few of Matt's designs were in the running (CLICK HERE for that post).

And finally, after much waiting Vintage & Anchor has announced which design had the most votes. Not surprisingly, it was one of Matt's.

Congrats to Matt and hooray for a nice little experiment in the publishing world.

Machine Man

The internet is such a huge space, and yet it seems to get smaller each day. For example, I saw this great post on the Vintage & Anchor blog about Max Barry's upcoming book "Machine Man". Apparently the publisher gave him permission to have Reddit users vote on the cover design, which is super rare and also super awesome.

The crazy "it's a small world after all" part is that three of the covers (1 & 2 & 5) were designed by Matt Roeser, who I interviewed earlier this week. I love pixel art and think Matt did a great job using it on the first cover:

I also really enjoy cover 3 but I think it would have been better to have illustrated knuts, bolts and legs instead of actual pictures cut out:

Quite honestly, the only covers I'm not crazy about are 4 & 6 but I would be happy to see the rest in print. In fact, I'm having a hard time picking a favorite. If you're interested you should head over to Reddit and let Max know which cover you'd like to see on shelves.

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