Re: The Last Buy & First Impressions

The last book I bought was MotherLoad. It was special circumstances. It was written by a classmate from my magazine writing class last semester. She had to produce the book to complete her MFA in creative writing. She read from it our last class and had one copy with her. I think I bought it for several reasons -- to help her sell the copies she had to get printed, because she's a great writer, and because I liked the cover design. It was interesting to hear her talk about how she got the art for the cover and how she tweaked it for her book. 

I buy a lot of books and magazines and love printed paper products of all kinds. I love going to book stores and picking up the books and feeling them. I am definitely drawn to books by their covers. If I like a cover, I will pick it up and look inside. I seem to have phases with certain books, like cookbooks, design books, knitting books, and so on. I get one of a certain kind and I want more. Covers will get my attention and then photos and illustrations inside will convince me.  I am pretty much always drawn to cookbooks. Cooking is fun, and there's so much potential there. 

One cookbook I was sucked into and have loved for a while now is Homemade Winter by Yvette Van Boven. Beautiful picture of interesting food on the cover, hand-drawn type, great photos throughout, fun recipes, cozy writing, beautiful endpapers, hand-cut paper illustrations, so much good stuff here. There's also a summer version, which I (stupidly) loaned to a friend (a year ago) and would love to have back now. Must do something about that.